Display Advertising: Is There a Better Chance the User Will Win the Lottery, or Click on a Banner?
Think about how many times banners are present while you’re online and you either intuitively block them out, or look at them all as screen noise. It takes great placement, an awesome product, or the slip of the mouse click to get a substantial amount of traffic from them. “Banner blindness” is a phenomenon in web usability where visitors to a website consciously or subconsciously ignore banner-like information. Are there actual ways to spice up your banner life? The answer is a resounding YES! We’ll discuss some of the ways our top display affiliates are able to make this work, while others aren’t as successful. Display ads and banner ads, are visible to your viewers whenever they are on the web, but not necessarily looking for your specific product. As most already know, brand placement is one of the more important parts to getting their name out there. It’s been studied, and more times than not, people are online just looking around at nothing in particular, rather than a specific search. Advertisers understand this, so their product placement needs to be spot on. Lets dive in to these four display tips that will help you ensure that your banner is placed successfully.
Get In Where You Fit In:
Placement, size, shape, and offer type are key! You need to be seen first, and at the same time, not seen as “just a banner”. It’s been researched, and the average person see’s almost 2,000 banners each month. Now you can get a visual as to why this type of media is tough to succeed in. The offers you’re running, need to be competitive, this will grab the attention of your viewer, as they most likely haven’t already been flooded with it’s images yet. I already know what your thinking, does size really matter? The jury is still out on that topic, one thing is certain, skyscrapers, squares and leaderboards are the most popular styles, and most have a variety of sizes to choose from. One also needs to understand that the bigger a banner is, doesn’t necessarily yield a higher conversion rate. Test them out and see what works best. Make sure to check in with your affiliate manager first, to make sure that what you plan on using is approved by the advertiser.
Call To Action:
Start Now, Watch Now, Click Here, View Now, Join Today, Sign Up, Schedule Now, are all Calls To Action (CTA) that have been proven time and time again to be winners. And it’s not just the words you use, it’s the font, color, etc. Do research, figure out what works best. One also needs to take into consideration their audience. Just because purple might be your favorite color doesn’t mean you should use it since it also represents death in Brazil. The same goes for the color white in the Chinese culture. Red, yellow, green, blue and orange, have been said to work best simply due to wave length…but lets not get too scientific here. CTA’s are more psychological than anything. Advertisers understand that they are trying to touch the viewer on an emotional level. You need the consumer to follow through with the purchase or inquire about the company, or whatever else it is that you are asking them to do. Think of HARP, Proactiv, and Medicare. These are all offers Madrivo is having huge success with, and they all have a call to action that grabs the users attention. Play around with it, but don’t try and reinvent the wheel.
The Female Touch:
Since the early 1900’s, it’s been documented, that using a female image in an advertisement, gets more views. You can see this in anything from cigarettes to weight-loss pills, cereal to alcohol, vehicles to toothpaste, and of course, cleaning products; you’ll find a strong female presence. And yes, before you ask, there is huge debate on the moral side of things, but that’s not what this blog is about…it’s about grabbing the public’s attention. It’s been studied, and the results show that images aren’t the only thing that will work, words work just as well. “Sarah was looking into going to college, but class times didn’t match up with her work schedule. Sarah’s now looking into online courses”. Not only does seeing the image of a female with a backpack and books in her arms, seem more appealing to the shopper, but reading her name has the same effect. If you’re able to find offers that have a strong female presence, the odds of you getting that click, or pixel to fire, are weighted a little more in your favor. Trust me, it’s more abundant once you start paying attention to it.
Recurrence:
Keep your banners static, if you have them on multiple pages. Google looked at their display benchmark, and flash ads were about 70% lower than static ads. Why? It takes those flash ads longer to load. The longer someone has to wait, the more likely they are to keep scrolling if the ad hasn’t loaded. A Google study showed that about 66% of the attention on a media page, is spent below the fold. The viewer is scrolling right passed your ad(s) if they aren’t loading. So barring slow internet and any other anomaly, a banner that doesn’t load quickly, doesn’t get seen.
So to answer the question posed in the title of this article, it depends. If your banner is terrible, contains misspelled words, unappealing imagery, is too small and so on, users may have better luck with a lotto ticket, but the right banner size and placement, a plain message, and an eye catching image can make a world of difference.
If you are interested in learning more about banners that get you the clicks you are looking for, reach out to Madrivo by clicking here, or emailing us at office@madrivo.com.
