Do-It-Yourself Banner Ads

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DO-IT-YOURSELF BANNER ADS

For all you shoestring marketers out there, sometimes the initial steps of launching an online advertising campaign seem like the most daunting. In addition to figuring out where to advertise and how to buy the ad space, you might even be at a loss to know how to get your banner ads created. Yes, you can design them from scratch or you can hire a graphic designer to do them for you, but the Web actually presents a few neat free or low-cost solutions. Let’s review some of them now.

Link Exchange (now part of bCentral.com)

bCentral, as part of its $19.95/month “Traffic Builder” membership fee, let’s you create your own banner ads for free. The advertising part of the Traffic Builder service allows you to get 5,000 banner ad placements per month, which you choose to display on a network of over 400,000 sites much like your own, and if you agree to accept ads on your site, you get more ad placements as well as ad tracking.

One thing to bear in mind with bCentral’s service is that although it certainly gives you a way to get more visibility, their member sites tend to be less well-trafficked than other sites on which you can buy advertising. My point is, don’t rely solely on a bCentral campaign to drive traffic to your site.

SmartAge.com

SmartAge.com has an online advertising system, Smart Clicks similar to bCentral’s: for every two ads you display on your site, one of your ads is displayed on someone else’s, all for free. If you need to create a banner, they have a program called Instant Banner. Through templated banner designs, you can select those that appeal to you, insert your copy, and you have an instant banner. Simple banners are free; more complex banners start at $29.99 and go up from there. These banners are powered by Animation.com, and they’re the next banner creation service we’ll talk about.

Animation.com

With a variety of banner sizes and choices of animation, Animation.com allows you to create multiple types of banners. Costs range from free to over $100 per banner.

Amazing Media

Amazing Media has put a bit of a spin on the low-cost banner creation and placement model. Individual advertisers can create their own rich media banners (or coupons) instantly, target and place the buy, track campaign performance, and manage/edit the campaign, all for low rates and little commitment. Plans start as low as $30/month for serving 2,500 impressions and go up to $300 for 40,000 impressions. If you have created a banner elsewhere, you can also upload your own banner to run on Amazing Media’s network.

If you’re a web publisher looking to sell advertising, Amazing Media also licenses out their AdVariant ad building marketing system so sites can make simple ad campaign building accessible to their clients and sell excess inventory at higher gross margins.

Miscellaneous Other Banner Builders

MediaBuilder’s Animated Banner Maker- by inputting some very simple specifications, you can generate your own banners and preview them instantly.

Crecon - free instant banners using multiple templated options and sizes.

Placing Your Banner

In addition to those services mentioned above which have their own banner placement networks, you might also want to check out GrowYourSoHo.com, a community and service provider site for small businesses. They offer a free service called “Post Your Promo” which allows you to upload your banner (once you’ve created it, of course), select a solutions category on which to run the banner, and they’ll upload and run it for you.

For some helpful hints about buying online advertising, refer to these archived marketing tips:

Successful Media Buying Strategies

Two Market Conditions Make for Great Ad Buys!

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