Though online banner ads faded in popularity for quite some time, they are back and with a vengeance, taking on an invigorating life of their own.  If properly managed, banner ads can be a good source of new visitors to your website.  The success of your banner ad campaign is directly linked to the design and placement of your ad.  For this reason, it is important that you be willing to go through a period of testing, running your banners over time, with slight changes here and there, and measuring your results. 

Many studies have been performed to determine what makes a banner ad effective, resulting in the following recommendations:

• Placement is key.  As we have discussed before, visitors usually scan your site in the shape of an F, starting at the top scanning left to right, moving down a bit scanning left to right, followed by a quick scan down the left side of the page.  Ads should be placed based on these guidelines, with one caveat.  The center of the page tends to be the biggest hot spot for ad placement on your site.  This is followed by ads across the top, down the left, and immediately after an article.  Take a look at the heat map  from Google Adsense to the right, where placement performance is indicated with darker colors meeting the highest expectations. 
   
• The IAB (Internet Advertising Board) produces annual ad unit guidelines and studies have found that a couple of their recommended ad size formats tend to perform the best; the large rectangle, 336x280, and the leaderboard, 728x90.  That being said, it is important that you not try to squeeze an ad into your site if it simply doesn't fit.  Instead, you should use the format that is best suited for your site, placing it where it makes the most sense.
   
• 85% of responders in a Yahoo! survey indicated that their ads were more successful if they blended them in with their site.  What?  Traditionally, we have been told to use bright colors that attract attention.  Not so any longer.  Users have become comfortably numb to advertising, and this requires a bit of trickery.  Ah!  That's not really nice, is it?  But it works.  So, now you are probably wondering about the best way to make your ad blend in.  Here's some ideas: 

  • Use a color scheme that blends or compliments the color scheme of your website.

  • Remove borders from around your ads.

  • Make use of web standards:  

    • Use Times New Roman, Arial, or Verdana font for ad copy.

    • Use blue underlined text for hyperlinks.

    • Duplicate the look of a radio button, drop-down menu, or submit button in your graphic.

• As a matter of fact, users have become so numb to advertising, being bombarded daily by hundreds of off-line ads, that they may actually see your ad and think there is nothing more to it.  So, if you want action, you've got to ask for it!  Simply adding in the words, Click Here, Sign Up Now, or Submit, will let the user know there is more, and often they will take advantage of that fact.  You can even add to this some text that emphasizes the benefits of clicking on your ad, not necessarily the features of your product, to let them know how you are going to make their life easier or better.  Something like "Want to reach your target audience?" or "Need help with taxes?" should work very nicely.  Whatever message you decide to deliver, keep it simple and concise and consider adding the keywords free, secret, or proven for even more effect.  

• As you know, you have very little time to capture your user's attention, typically under 10 seconds, so you need to take that into consideration when creating your banner ads.  File sizes need to be ultra-small so they will load quickly (under 10K if possible), and any animation you include should finish before the user even considers moving on.  Just in case, be sure to include your call to action in the first slide if you are incorporating animated ads.

• Finally, and most importantly, you need to make sure that when your user clicks on your ad, they get relevant information.  Don't simply link to your home page where they now have to hunt to find what they are looking for.  Instead, link them directly to the specific page that has the information you promised them.  Otherwise, you will end up with a lot of clicks and very little follow-through.