Digital Media News

Once you have established a sound online advertising campaign strategy by setting up your social media profiles, creating content for your website, optimizing your website's infrastructure and content for the search engines, you should start seeing a significant increase in traffic within the first few weeks. However, what really counts when it comes to website traffic is not numbers alone - the quality of this traffic is what's important. You could have a thousand unique visitors per day, but if you are only generating one lead or getting one sale per day on average, your marketing efforts clearly aren't achieving much. In order to make your increasing visitor numbers count for something, you will need to take every step that you can to increase conversions. Converting as many visitors to your website into leads or paying customers is the ultimate key to success rather than sheer numbers alone. 

Although some people believe that banner ads are losing their relevancy - the statistics suggest otherwise, with approximately 64% of marketers increasing the amount of money they spent on display advertising in 2013. This year, display advertising is forecast to grow by a further 21% - but how do you make sure that your display creative is as effective as it should be?

Advertisement fatigue and banner blindness are two common, and highly detrimental problems in the world of display advertising. Where banner blindness describes a users' tendency to ignore ads because they have grown used to the same old format, ad fatigue refers to the decline in click through rate and conversion after banners have been left to run for a certain amount of time. The truth is that no matter how exciting your creative may be when you first design it - after a while it will lose its novelty, and users will start to lose interest

So what can you do to make sure that your advertisements stay engaging for as long as possible? The following 5 tips should help you to kick start your advertising campaign, and avoid the strain of banner ad fatigue.

Banner ads are almost as old as the Internet itself. And they’re still alive and kicking. The trouble is, there are a number of issues with banner ads. If you get them wrong, at best you’re wasting your time; at worst, you’re butchering your brand.

Many online advertising experts dislike banner ads. Lots of customers even hate them. But here’s the thing: they can work extremely well. Online display advertising is an integral part of any multichannel campaign. Thanks to data and advanced analyzing techniques, businesses can verify that millions of ad impressions help drive traffic, conjure up leads and even convert.

It’s almost like it’s fashionable to slam banner ads. Opinion pieces about the sheer ineffectiveness of banner ads are commonplace, but consumer behavior often tells a different story. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Banner ads are like any other form of advertising. They can be compelling, efficient and profitable, or intrusive, ugly and repetitive, all depending on how you design them.

Banner ads go back a long way. In fact, the very first banner ad appeared on hotwired.com (now Wired.com) on 27 October, 1994. The copy read: “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.” And there was an arrow pointing to the right-hand side of the ad.

To say that the ad was successful is an understatement. In the first four months of its existence, 44% of those who saw it clicked on it. How CEOs would kill for that sort of click-through rate in today’s online advertising campaigns, eh? Certainly the client, AT&T, were impressed.

Let’s put that stat into perspective. Research tells us that only around 4 people out of every 10,000 click on a banner advertisement these days. Or, put another way, why did that first banner ad generate more clicks with 10 impressions than the average banner ad in 2015 generates with 10,000 impressions (besides that it was a new concept and piece of advertising content that no one had ever seen before)?

Establishing your own unique personality and brand identity online is a crucial part of managing a successful digital marketing strategy. Although there are various areas that you may need to focus on when it comes to maintaining brand identity, one of the primary things you'll want to concentrate on - is how you're going to distinguish your banner advertisements from those of your competitors. According to Business Insider, you're already fighting against tough odds if you've decided to use banner advertising as your primary form of online representation, but the truth is that poor design is often the cause of poor results. If you know how to make your banner distinct, innovative, and interesting, you can prove the statistics wrong and achieve a fantastic new rate of traffic and conversions. Following are four ways that you can optimize your banner advertisement design and leave your competitors in the dust.

As businesses rush around searching for new ways to advertise their company and increase product awareness, many brands seem to forget that web banner ads are still a key form of online advertising. Banner ads are one of the most prolific forms of display advertising used in the online World today. Almost every company utilizes them in some form because they are easily measurable, affordable, and effective.

Of course, like any form of marketing campaign that you may choose to pursue, the success of your banner ads will depend on how engaging, attractive, and enticing they are. For your banners to work, they need to be able to lure visitors to click on them and visit your landing page. Because of this, a good web banner should create not only a strong interest in the user to see what's happening on the advertising page, but also the potential to convert visitors into leads and buyers.

Online advertising tends to be one of those things that you either get right spectacularly well, or horribly wrong. Banner ads perhaps represent this situation perfectly. Online advertising and banner ads enjoy their fair share of trends and it’s important to keep up to date with what’s hot and what’s not. Having said that, there are 5 staple bits of information about banner ads that will stand the test of time.

1. Make sure that your banner ads are laser-targeted.

It’s common sense, yet a common mistake. There’s no point creating a banner ad if it’s not going to reach your target market. Therefore, picking which websites your banner ad sits on is crucial. Do some research!

Today, marketers have access to an avenue for accessing new potential customers unlike anything we've ever seen before. The Internet is an incredible way to establish brand presence, reach out to your target market, and create a relationship with consumers that develops brand loyalty, and could potentially turn your company into a household name. Faster than ever before, the online world can help a business to determine whether their new services, products, or ideas will be a phenomenon, or a flop.

Let's face it, quality content is hard to create and keep fresh, be it on a website or within a banner advertisement. We might all agree that a website or blog fed daily with fresh content will probably capture and keep more loyal fans than a web presence that never changes. Furthermore, content that engages visitors and creates a dialogue is even more powerful. But there are challenges and trade offs between static and dynamic advertisement content. 

Let's take a look at some examples and list the pros and cons.

Static Content

Examples: website pages; social media profiles; eBooks; whitepapers; ppc ads; social media ads; banner ads;videos and one-way webinars.

The eagle eyed amongst you may think that videos and webinars or rotating banners are‘dynamic’ because they move or change over time, but each of them is really one event that doesn't change, with a beginning, middle, end and a single purpose.

How to Avoid Making Ugly Banner Ads That Are Annoying as Kimmy Gibbler on Speed. You know, Full House—aka best show ever except for that menacing Kimmy. Any way, in order to prevent your target market from shrieking in horror and retreating from your banner as soon as possible, we are going to go over a few tips on how to create and design the best display ads.

Be Concise

Like a billboard, you don’t have much space with which to express the gamut of your emotions—or gamut of words explaining your product, deal, promotion, brand, etc, etc, etc. See how I went on and on right there? It’s annoying isn’t it? Well your ad will be annoying to your target market if you barrage them with words (or photos or flashing anything). Basically, don’t go overkill. The more concise and clear you can be, the better.

Good

Bad

Think about what is the most pertinent information to include, and if you have some room for creativity then go for it. But don’t go for it too much and always try to . . .