The Publisher Network Blog » Internet marketing

Online Banner Advertising is Not Dead

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:15:30 +0000

Some say Banner ads are dead and some say Banner ads never had a chance. We at ThePublisherNetwork.com, Global Display Advertising Network strongly believe, Banner ads are never going to go away! And this is not just a cynical belief but this is the belief out of knowledge gained by evangelists who have diverse experience in web advertising since the early days of Internet when Banner ads were the only choice available. The Beauty of the Internet Advertising game is the nature of Internet as media and the Consumer behavior. Both constantly try to match and influence each other’s ever changing nature. Clickable Banner ads, the basic form of interaction that internet proposed long ago between advertiser an its audience, too have seen its share of technological change.

How about putting it this way – instead of talking about whether Banner advertising is dead or not, we should be talking about what is it that advertiser community is losing if they think Banner advertising is dead and are keeping it out of their advertising budget. Let us start with what we at ThePublisherNetwork.com start our conversation with any new client: Whats your campaign objective?

Branding?
According to a research study done by Journal of Consumer Research, repeated exposure of your brands or products can generate a positive feeling among the consumers. Banner ads job is precisely the same. Familiarize consumers with your products similar to TV ads! The advantage with Online Banner Ads is that it does deliver measurable results and unlike TV ads don’t interrupt the user, right when they are completely into the content and that too with no option left to close the ad.

Performance?
Untill recently, “Banner Advertising” in the Internet Marketing world was compared with “Branding” of Traditional (offline) Advertising. This isn’t the case anymore! Rise of user generated content on internet, Blogs and social media, and how Banner ads are used on Blogs or Social Channels is quite a proof. Targeting options available with Banner advertising campaigns is something that is second to none among the other advertising options on Internet.

Targeting Options

Contextual: A contextual advertising system scans the text of a publisher website for keywords and display advertisements to the webpage based on what the user is viewing. What else an advertiser can ask for, an interactive banner ad right where the user has got the relevant content.
Behavioral: Users’ browsing behavior is captured and analysed by variuos tools used by publishers and advertisers. The idea is to make sure the user gets the most relevant advertising experience.

Other Targeting Options:

Banner ad-sizes: Most of the internet users across globe are learnt to read from left to right, top to bottom. Clickable rectangular banner ads are placed across a web-page in various sizes for grabbing attention. Most popular Banner Ad Sizes are: 728×90 (the huge, top of page banners), 300×250 (the large square box banners), 120×600 (the tall skyscraper banners) and 468×60 (traditional banner)

Banner Ad Formats: The next phase in traditional static banner advertising that mapped the success of Banner advertising. Popular in this phase of web advertising are the ones that you see on just about every web page now – Tower ads, inline ads, sliding ads and video based ads. The sliding ad and pop-up ads are more aggressive in this new cult of Banner advertising that are used to grab users’ attention.
Choose banner placement on web pages – top, middle, or bottom
Target by industry/topic | Target by Country/Geography
Target by Demographics (gender/age)
Set Frequency Cap: Specify time of day or day of the week / month for the ads to appear
Set Daily Budget Cap: Specify how much you want to spend per day
More about Targeting

In the Paid advertising part of the Internet Marketing world, it is estimated that 70%-85% of traffic comes from banner ads and not search engines (organic + inorganic) or anything else. Did you ever ponder on it, that if your focus has been shifting lately from Banner ads to PPC (Search Engine Marketing) / SMM (Social Media Marketing), you are actually losing out to 95% of the money making opportunity.

Dual benefit of the Banner ads –

Banner ads get you some of the most targeted, interested users you can possibly get from any other medium. As Internet marketer, you do realize that by advertising on sites that are relelevant to whatever you’re promoting, you’re already narrowing down the market to those that may actually buy and further when your banner creative is at work, those people click, you are narrowing it even more to get the best ROI of your marketing dollars.
No other advertising medium but a well designed and promoted banner ad can leave an impression of your brand in a user’s mind. Not every time one is on net to buy something. But when they are looking to buy a product or service in your segment, s/he will directly look for your brand if at all you have been displaying your ads and have left your brand’s image/message in a users head/heart (emotional buying v/s logical buying behavior).

Let’s consider the most ideal campaign objective for a marketer: Advertising Goals are to drive demand for the product/service, improve brand awareness and gain maximum exposure during the course of the campaign. Online Banner Advertising does all of it and more.

What is Online Banner Advertising

admin — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 09:27:57 +0000

Online Banner advertising is graphical promotion of products or services via Internet advertising units. These advertising units are called Banner ads. Banner ad images are displayed across various pages of a website 9also called an Online Publisher) or on a network of high traffic publisher web sites (also called as Publisher Network). An advertiser can place his Banner ads on category specific publisher web sites that attract visitors who are interested in what you are offering or on ‘All Categories’ called RON (Run On Network). The typical size of a banner ad measures 468 pixels wide and 60 pixels in height (i.e. 468×60). Most used Banner ad sizes are 350×200 (called Large rectangle), 728×90 (called Leaderboard), 120×600 (called XYZ) and 160×600 (called XYZ). For detailed information on ad placement and size options, tag formats, etc., please refer to the Ad Specifications & Guidelines page. Internet banner advertising has an edge over announcement placements in traditional newspaper print, television ads, and direct mail – they give internet users instant gratification by giving them the ability to immediately “click through” to either your online business profile or directly to your offer to make them learn more about what you have in store for them.
5 Benefits of Banner Ad Campaign:
1. Targeted Banner Advertising Brings Quality Traffic for Less
Experienced internet marketers understand how difficult it can be to get the much needed exposure of their e-commerce web site / direct offers to a true targeted visitor. With this goal in mind, Online Publishers offer various ad-sizes, cost models and in ever inventive ad formats. All put together aiming to achieve the desired campaign, advertisers can opt for web’s most cost-effective Online banner advertising rates and packages that deliver true targeted visitors to your web site at the lowest possible price.
2. Launch and maintain your name or brand.
By using a similar look and feel for Display Ads that you as an online marketer use for your other business related materials, you can utilize these ads to reinforce the image of your company to prospective customers. Even if the prospect doesn’t click on the banner ad, they are still exposed to your company logo, announcement, and company image. This solves the very purpose and the basics of advertising or marketing a service or product offer, that is, constant reinforcement of your product, service or offer to the targeted segment by applying company trademarks, colors and product names in your banner ads. This will boost your brand image and remain in your viewers’ minds, which will add value to users’ search behavior in your market segment. Instead of searching for the product or Services, users will type in your brand name directly into the Search engine to get to you. Research has proved that using Display Media along with search in your online marketing strategy boosts ROI by 22%.
3. Gives you the ability to measure results.
Let us explain this with the help of an example. Publisher Network as explained above is a network of various publisher websites. To maintain the ads on hundreds and thousands of websites, a network has to have a superior ad-serving technology, which also generates numerous ad performance tracking options. This adserving technology provides an administration panel which captures not only visitors on our ad but their actions on the ad as well. This data is then needless to say when analyzes gives extensive know how about 1) Audience action patterns on the ads 2) Which ad size works better 3) from which geo the responses are more 4) review of which ad placements direct the most customers to the offer website and so on. Basically we know how effective our campaign is. When this knowledge is accessible a Publisher Network ad-operations team helps advertiser fine tune his offers and ad placements to improve conversion rate. Traditional media on the other hand is more mass oriented but lacks the ability to measure performance the way New media can and hence this insight.
4. Stretches your advertising budget.
By now you must be convinced that the Digital media (Online Advertising or New Media) is more efficient in terms of reaching to the target audience than other forms of traditional direct advertising, including radio, TV, newspaper ads, and direct mail. So let us also give you a bonus information that its also much more economical as well. Online advertising, typically, banner ads cost less to design and run. In addition, they often attract a more precise audience as compared to conventional advertising methods. Online marketing being so diverse and ever-changing, Display banner ads have seen the most since the birth of Online/Digital media, it still holds the most significant place.
5. Generates highly qualified sales leads. It is all about being at right place at right time. An ad network technology offers Advertising Solutions that can define geographic, demographic, vertical and many other technical targeting parameters in place such that our ads get exposed to the most relevant target audience by strategically placing banner ads on websites that are in line with what the offer is. For instance, a Hotel or Airline carrier business can display their travel package ad on Travel sites or an office supply retail store can advertise on business related web sites. When a user clicks on our banner ad, there is a strong chance that he or she will be interested in what it is that you are offering. As a result, you get access to highly targeted sales leads.

Challenges of an Online Advertiser

admin — Tue, 05 May 2009 17:56:50 +0000

As an online advertising professional, performance means – building awareness, delivering visitors, generating leads or driving sales . For you to be a smart Online advertiser, challenges include complex plans, tight deadlines, and getting results.

Online Advertising demands you to be smart, flexible, and quick to meet the challenges. Experts empower you with solutions that go further, work harder, and deliver improved accountability and on the way Learn the market stats.

Other than the very popular challenges some of the hard tests that an expert in online marketing professional face:

Targeted audience – Maximum results with Minimum waste.

RON Ad placement – on complete network,

Channel Targeting – ROC campaigns,

Contextual Marketing – Focused Keyword/URL Targeting,

IP based Geographical and Area targeting,

Duration (Month/Week/Day/Hours of the day) Targeting…

Choices are endless. Let expert give you options

Transparency - Number of vendors for the same audience. There are various Traffic Sources:

- Online campaigns across Premium Publishers like Yahoo, AOL, Rediff, MSN allows you to reach global audience.

- Online Ad Networks in this context have been proven effective as Advertisers and Agencies get choices and better rates at single point.

Branded publishers don’t want the inventory they release to an ad network be identifiable by the buyer because they feel their direct-sales staff will be affected adversely, especially if the buyer is allowed to hand-pick the site. Ideally the media experts backed by targeting technology at an Online Ad Network, should be given authority to decide for offers/products to be on a site that is contextually relevant to the offers. Again it’s just not possible all the time. And so all the parties involved have to be aware and give the consumer some credit, and only the media-mix to reach most relevant consumer in the most cost effective manner is what works.

Pricing – Aiming the marketing goals various pricing models are involved in the Internet Marketing arena:

CPM – COST PER THOUSAND under RON and ROC – Cost effectiveness of CPM model not only works wonders for ROI targeted but adds value to consumers’ Search behavior.

CPC – COST PER CLICK with Text or Graphical Banner on targeted content rich sites with highly experienced optimization team in place.

CPA – COST PER ACTION – Performance campaign with ROI targets with range of online advertising options available.

CPL – COST PER LEAD – Pay only for Lead Generation, Sign-ups.

CPV – COST PER VIEW – Keyword/URL Targeting to provide relevant online advertising to the internet user while they are browsing the web, based on the relevant terms they use to look for information.

It all boils down to extensive experience focused approach and technological advancement to deliver results. Got queries, please write to

Email: sales@thepublishernetwork.com