"Banners", 'Banner Ads" or "Banner Links" are
also known as "Internet Billboards". They are the billboards on the
Information Superhighway.
Banner advertising is perhaps the most widely known and visible form
of advertising on the Internet today. They work by increasing the
visibility of the product or service being advertised, much like a
magazine or TV ad. It is the perfect tool for announcing your web
presence or conveying a short commercial message to perhaps millions
of internet surfers.
A banner link is typically a GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) or
JPG image and come in various shapes and sizes from 468x60 (standard
size) to 88x31 (button size). Typically they will have a company
name, a slogan or a description of a product coupled with a call to
action such as "click here" (We'll talk about this soon). They can
be either static or animated. However, the limiting factor here is
size. The file size of the image should be less than 15 KB. The
smaller the file size of the image, the quicker the image will load
on the page being viewed. Unusually long downloading times may cause
a viewer to become impatient and move on before the image has been
fully displayed.
The image will contain a short text or graphical message to persuade
the viewer to click on it and be swiftly transported to that
particular web site.
The success of a banner advertising campaign relies just as heavily
on effective banner design as it does on proper placement and
management.
A well-designed banner can greatly increase the percentage of people
who click on your banner.
Banner Exchanges
One of the most popular way to earn targeted traffic is in banner
exchanges. If you are not a part of them now, you can find them at
other sites in your field. Put one of two banner exchanges on your
website and hits from visitors in your promotion earn credits for
your banner being displayed on other websites in your field;
targeted traffic. Most banner exchanges have a 2:1 exchange. The
100,000 promotion earns you 50,000 banner impressions. Have two on
your site and you've earned 100,000.
Definitions and Term use in Banner Ads
Impressions and Hits - What's The Difference?
An impression is counted when
an Internet user views a page on a
particular site that an advertisement appears on. An impression
based model is a more accurate measurement barometer to base
advertising on than terms such as `Hits' which only calculate a
figure based on the total number of files down loaded from an
individual site. It is quite common for a single Web page to be made
up of over twenty files therefore `Hits' can give an inflated and
subsequently unreliable estimate of visits.
Click-Through: When a banner ad is clicked on and the user is taken
through to advertiser web site this is termed a `click through.'
Cost Per thousand Model: Cost per one thousand impressions.
Web sites today are moving towards a cost per thousand model (CPM)
for advertising. This model allows advertisers to make valuable
comparison across a variety of web sites by giving an indication of
how much one impression will cost. For instance a CPM of RM 20
translates into a cost of 2 cents per impression. It gives you a
rate based on the number of times your ad will be served to a user
but not just the potential number of people who may see your ad like
other advertising.
Flat Fee Advertising: Banner advertising calculated by some period
of time, like one week or one month the banner ad will appear on the
advertising site. Charges do not related to the number of
impressions or click-through.
Gif or Jpg : File format that is commonly used for banner images.
Hit : An entry in the log file of a Web server. A hit is generated
by every request made to a Web server. Calculate based on the total
number of files down loaded from an individual site. It is quite
common for a single web page to be made up of over twenty files
therefore `Hits' can give an inflated and subsequently unreliable
estimate of visits.
Impression : One display of a banner to a single viewer. Advertising
rates are often related to the total number of times the banner is
displayed
Page : An HTML document that may contain text, images, and other
on-line elements. It may be static or dynamically generated. It may
be a stand-alone HTML document, or page which is contained within a
frame.
