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Become a Banner Ad Expert Starting Today

Guest post by: Robert Strong

Article Overview: If you have spent any amount of time on the internet at all, you have seen a banner ad. You may not have known what you were looking at or what they are called but banner ads are everywhere. Banner ads are either square or rectangular for the most part and are all over the internet on just about every website. While banner ads can come in different sizes, colors and some with flashing messages, they all have the same purpose.

Become a Banner Ad Expert Starting Today

If you have spent any amount of time on the internet at all, you have seen a banner ad. You may not have known what you were looking at or what they are called but banner ads are everywhere. Banner ads are either square or rectangular for the most part and are all over the internet on just about every website. While banner ads can come in different sizes, colors and some with flashing messages, they all have the same purpose. These banner ads purpose is to link and transport the individual clicking on it to an advertiser's site.

So What Is a Banner Ad

For many years we have all heard the stories of people making a very nice living by being on the internet. The internet is constantly evolving and making all of our lives simpler, for the most part. You are wondering though what all this has to do with banner ads. With all of the individuals and companies that own and maintain websites they have the ability to make money in so many different ways. One of the most profitable and lucrative ways is selling real estate on their website to people that want to advertise their product or service.

A banner ad has an HTML code that instructs the web server to bring up a specific website when someone clicks on the ad. Banner ads are a graphic that needs to be very eye appealing and be able to draw a person in so when the person clicks on it they are sent to the advertisement site.

You could compare a banner ad to something that you may see in a magazine, but with the ability to transport the customer to an online "virtual" store.

The Different Kinds of Banner Ads

No different than opening a popular magazine, the ads all come in different shapes and sizes. According to the Internet Advertising Bureau they only really recognize eight different possibilities and it all involves the pixel dimensions.

• 486x60
• 392x72
• 234x60
• 120x240
• 125x125
• 120x90
• 120x60
• 88x31

The most popular banner ads are 468x60, but as you surf the internet you will find so many different sizes. While file sizes of a banner ad are really not mentioned much, many websites do have a limit size of the file that they will allow. They do this because anything and everything on a website page has a total file size. In knowing this, it is very easy to say the larger the file the slower that the website will load. Knowing from experience; people are in a hurry and no one wants to wait around for even 30 seconds for a page to load.

Some banner ads only consist of one JPEG image; others become more sophisticated with displaying multiple images in a series to act as if the banner is animated.

What Are They Meant To Do

As an advertiser, banner ads really can do two things. The first thing that they really would like to see happen is when someone lands on a "publishers" site is that they click on the banner ad. As we discussed earlier, now this visitor gets redirected to the advertiser's site, a visitor that they may have not gotten otherwise. Obviously the total goal of the advertiser is not only to get visitors but also to sell either a product or a service. Now you may be thinking, "That sounds all fine and dandy but what if they don't click on the banner ad". That is actually a very great question and for it you're going to get what I consider a great answer.

It's called "Branding" - think of all the ads you see everywhere. Think of all the buses or cabs in New York, what are they driving around with. That's right; an advertisement on the side or on top of the vehicle and seeing it 500 times a month strengthens their brand to you. Think of the shoe industry, those ads normally don't make you drop what you are doing and go buy the pair of shoes you just saw. When you are thinking of a new pair of shoes though and in the store, you will remember seeing all those ads everywhere and sub consciously it compels you towards those shoes.

How Can You Be Sure It's Working

Oh, so you want to know your results, well you are in luck I have a few simple measurements to help you out.

Cost Per Click - many, actually most sites that accept advertising on their websites use a Cost Per Click arrangement. This means for each person that clicks on your ad it costs you the advertiser a predetermined amount. This amount normally ranges from .25 to 10.00 or higher, this really depends on the value of the site and the owner.

Impressions - This is well known as CPM (remember from school "M" in roman numerals means one thousand). Some of the banner ad accepting sites or also known as "publishers" still uses this method. While you cannot really measure how well the ad did there are TOP Secrets that I will cover in another article that there are special characters you can add to your URL that tracks the ad. With Impressions you really strengthen your "brand".

Click Through Rate - This really means the ratio of page views to clicks. This method is rarely used as the click through rate is normally under one percent.

Cost Per Sale - Just as it sounds, an advertiser compares the cost of advertising vs. the cost of the sale

While you can use any of these to judge how your banner ad is working for you, many advertisers consider more than just one.

Stay tuned for part 2 and 3 of this miniseries of "Be a Banner Ad Expert Starting Today".

Related Articles
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  Become a Banner Ad Expert Starting Today Series IV
  Become a Banner Ad Expert Starting Today- Series V
  Marketing Strategies - Banner Advertising and How to Choose Your Placements
  Become a Banner Ad Expert Starting Today Series III
  Marketing Strategies - What Should a Banner Advertising Campaign Look Like?
  Understanding Banner Advertising
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  Tips for Building a Better Banner Ad Campaign
  Banner Ads Basics: How It Works For Online Business
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Article Tags: amount of time, banner ad, banner ads, colors
Referred by: http://www.MeetKarenNewman.com



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Re: Why Some Websites Sell and Others Don’t? - There is myth that if you build websites people will come. It is never through, you need to do a lot of things to make your website to work. You have many models of attracting traffics to your site. PPC Article Marketing SEO Press Release Banner Ads Forum Posting Classified Advertising Media Buying Solo Ads and a lot of more. If you are not doing any of the above your websites will just be one of the millions of the unknown sites in cyber space
Re: Moderators on vacation - Hi Everyone, I will be away for the next 4 days. Starting now.
Re: How can I promote my site? - I think because you have a very visual product you should focus on creating valuable videos and post them to sites like YouTube, Viddler and Expert Village. Some ideas for videos could be an overview of how to create an animated movie, tips for editing, how to find actors ...etc...provide value to your customers and they will flock to you like a magnet. Rachel
Re: Service Or Product? - I agree with starting a Service-based Business in the economy. Here is what I think is critical: 1. Researching that your Service business has a market. 2. Marketing the Service with as much leverage as possible. 3. Product-izing the Service (aka Package Expert Knowledge). This will only help elevate you as "the" expert in your niche and make you accessible to people in different price points.
Re: What to do at the first roadblock? - We couldn't get out of competition and thus, we just have to conquer them with the best ways we can: Research is the key to get to know their strengths and weaknesses! Starting from that, you can now implement the things that they haven't utilized yet and add your own concepts. That way, it's easier to market because you can either magnet their audience out or make even bigger results in the future. Eitherway, it's not that you cheat and succeed but it's how you study your possible capabilities.


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