Revisiting the Banner

As we move into 2002, some industry analysts are beginning to predict positive trends again for online advertising. As consolidation continues among publishers and advertisers, it may look like fewer companies are advertising on fewer sites…but they’re actually spending more ad dollars, which is good news for the industry at large.

In the mid-90′s when online advertising began in earnest, the hype was that it truly fostered consumer interactivity. Although it seemed to deliver that at first, online advertising quickly earned a bad reputation because consumers realized that following these ads meant interrupting their session. Response rates fell dramatically.

Unable to prove the merit of online advertising, online publishers struggled to attract the big name consumer advertisers that spend many millions of dollars in off-line advertising. With the dot com bust, the landscape became even more bleak. In response, publishers and those who specialize in producing online ad creative have endeavored to create new advertising that’s more interactive while being less interruptive. So today we want to re-visit the topic of online ad creative and look at several new types of banners that you might see surfacing.

New Creative

As we’ve written about before, recent studies conducted by both the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) and MSN have stated that the true value of banners is branding. While this could be true, it should come as no surprise that the effectiveness of online ads are greatly impacted by two elements: size and format. In sum, large ads pull better than smaller ones and dynamic ads outperform their static counterparts. The industry has also seen the IAB approve an ever-growing list of new ad shapes and sizes, as publishers and advertisers alike clamor for something new to catch the viewer’s eye.

In 2002, here are some of the “hot” banner ad creatives:

• Ticker-tape banner: usually a standard (468×60) size banner at the top of a web page. Performs much like the news tickers that scroll around the sides of buildings in NY. The scrolling ad message, which is looped continuously throughout the banner, helps to draw the eye. This type of banner could be especially useful for promoting prices on multiple items for sale.

• Sticky banner: this creative can be of varying size, most likely a button-sized (88×31) creative. It “sticks” to the screen as you scroll down the site, so you never lose sight of the ad. This is especially good for branding, as it keeps eyeballs on the ad for a longer period of time than normal.

• Scratchy banner: arouses curiosity. Performs similar to a lottery “scratch-off” ticket in that half of the banner is a blank gray slate that the viewer uses the mouse to “scratch” off. Each pass of the mouse over the gray area reveals more of the image or text underneath.

• Confetti banner: a twist visually. When you mouse over the banner there is an explosion of multi-colored dots from the banner that rains down the page much like confetti. Serves to draw attention to the ad because the effect is completely unexpected.

• Mouse-moving banner: similar to the sticky banner, this ad is even more intrusive. Works best with button-sized creative. The ad hovers directly to the right of your cursor no matter where you go on the page. If the cursor stops moving the ad disappears – but it reappears as soon as you move the cursor again.

• Audio/Video banner: for advertisers still seeking the convergence between the Internet and television, audio/video ads on the Web are growing more common. They will usually be larger than the standard 468×60 size. However, the continued lack of broadband penetration makes these ads the least favored among advertisers and publishers, due to the fact that they are bandwidth hogs.

• Rich-media banner: rich-media ads give advertisers a great deal of creative leeway and are excellent for promoting interaction, capturing information, and branding. Formats include DHTML, Flash, Shockwave and Java.

==> Do you have examples of other hot banner creative? Tell us about it by sending us an email!

Common Theme

The common theme that runs through the majority of these banner types is interactivity. In a variety of ways, each ad encourages the viewer to interact with it, either by performing an action (i.e. scratching off the banner) or eye-drawing creative (i.e. ticker tape banner). Interactivity helps the banner to succeed on two levels, 1) branding and 2) click-through. If the advertiser can get viewers to start interacting with their ads they stand a much better chance of making a lasting impact.

But don’t forget that one tenet that every advertiser must abide by – relevancy. The best creative in the world won’t matter if the ad is reaching the wrong audience with the wrong message in the wrong location.

Related Links:

IAB’s listing of all currently IAB approved ad sizes

ADTECH

Related WebAdvantage.net articles:

Rich Media Advertising

Streaming Media As A Marketing Tool

Web Advertising – Making A Case For Branding

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