Understanding
Internet Banner Advertising
Banner advertising is an effective way of getting your advertising
message seen on the Internet. Banner ads should not be your only
online form of advertising, but they are an essential part of your
online advertising mix.
This article assumes that the reader knows what a banner ad looks
like, but do you know how they work, and how you can derive benefit
from them? Let’s define a few terms before answering these
questions.
1. “Page views” or “page impressions.”
These terms are interchangeable and they refer to the number of
times that a page within a website has been displayed on a website.
2. “Banner view.” Like a page view, a banner view is
the number of times that a banner has been displayed on website.
3. “Click through.” A click through is the number of
times a website visitor has “clicked” on a particular
banner ad and was transferred to the website of the banner advertiser.
4. “CTR.” CTR is the acronym for “click through
rate,” which is the ratio of the number of banner view versus
the number of times visitors have “clicked through”
to your website. CTR is expressed as a percentage, so a click through
rate of 1% means that for every 1,000 banner views, 10 visitors
have clicked through to your site.
5. “CPM.” CPM is an acronym for “cost per M,”
where “M” is the ancient Roman numeral for 1,000. Translation:
CPM is the price your business will pay to have its banner advertisement
displayed 1,000 times on a website, e.g, the cost of 1,000 banner
views. So, for example, if the CPM to advertise on a site is $80.00
your business will pay $80.00 for every 1,000 banner views.
6. “ROS.” ROS is the acronym for “run of site,”
which simply means that a banner ad is displayed on every page in
a website, as opposed to being displayed only in a particular category
of a website or only when a particular keyword is entered into a
search engine.
Everyone who is in charge of a advertising or marketing department
(that’s you if you’re the sole shareholder of the company)
knows that advertising is, in large part, a numbers game. The more
frequently your message is seen or heard, the more likely the consumer
is to purchase your service or product.
Take Mattress Mac with Gallery Furniture , for example. If you
live in the Houston area, or if your radio can pick up the signal
of almost any Houston area radio station, you cannot go a single
day without hearing or seeing an advertisement for Gallery Furniture.
Peppering your senses with constant reminders that “Gallery
Furniture Saves You Money!” has enabled Mr. McIngvale to build
his single location furniture store into an empire. (Of course,
advertising alone won’t do it; you still must have a quality
product or service). I have no scientific data to support this assertion,
but I’ll make it anyway:
I’m willing to bet that Gallery Furniture is known to more
people in the greater Houston area than any other single business.
How did that come to be? Mattress Mac understands the advertising
numbers game and plays it better than anybody else.
Banner ads are a numbers game. The industry standard click through
rate for online advertising in general is around .5%. Not 5%, but
.5%. Doesn’t sound very encouraging for your banner ad campaign,
eh? Well, there are ways to significantly increase the CTR of any
given banner. The best way is by targeting a particular banner ad
to a narrow audience, an audience that is looking specific for a
product or service just like yours. Highly-targeted can boost your
CTR to as much as 2%-3% or higher and significantly increase the
traffic to your website.
Another valuable purpose of the banner ad is branding. Intertwined
with the messages Gallery Furniture delivers about particular sales
events or types of furniture is the company’s consistent and
recognizable logo, color scheme, and tag lines. Your banner advertisements
can, and should, perform the same function; they should be designed
using your company’s logo and colors, at a minimum.
Sometimes incorporating the tag line is the way to go, but other
times you may want to advertise a particular special offer, product,
etc. The important thing is that you take advantage of the numbers
game by continually displaying your name, logo, and colors. The
more visitors that see you, the more they will come to associate
your name with your type of product or service, and the more likely
they will be in the future to buy from you.
About the Author Henry J. Fasthoff,
IV - Principal & General Counsel - HoustonBusiness.com
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