How Relevant are Banner Ads in Brand Building?
By C.S. Raman
Though a banner space is small it serves multiple purposes for
an advertiser
— It is the ad message of the company/website,
— Allows visual display of the company name, logo and the
product
— It is the click-through device
— it is a concise sales pitch that can trigger customer
click-through
— It is the key for the affiliate tracking mechanism (if you run
an affiliate program)
What’s the point of banners if clicks are declining?
At the turn of the century it seemed like it was all over for
banners when research showed that click-through rates had
dropped to 0.5% or less from a level of 2-3% in the 1990’s.
Fortunately there was also research that showed that banners
play a big role in improving brand awareness on the net. In
fact, despite the finding that click-throughs are falling one
yardstick that gives us some insight that banners are still
effective - is the affiliate program concept. It is well known
that affiliates make a significant contribution to the Internet
economy and as we all know, affiliate programs use banners as
the main advertising format. This implies that banners continue
to work even at the reduced click-through rates and have
probably stabilized at this level after the heightened interest
in the initial years of the net.
If we draw parallels with the paper mailer based direct
marketing industry, the lessons learnt in direct response
marketing show that the expectations in terms of response rates
should be realistic and as a percentage of total mailers sent
out, the response is actually as low as 0.5%. It is therefore
not surprising that click-throughs on banners which is the
online equivalent of an initial response to the ad are also at
similar levels.
The point to be borne in mind is that banners still make
business sense especially due to their ability to create brand
awareness and maintain brand visibility.
What do banners do for brands?
Banner ads continue to be the internet’s most widely used form
of advertising and the use of ‘rich media’ in banners has
improved impact and given a fillip to the usage of banners. For
those who use traditional media forms like TV, Radio or Print
ads, the use of Internet banners increases brand visibility and
provides response capabilities through click-throughs. To quote
from a Forrester Research report “Online advertising can boost
brand impact at 60% less cost than piling on more offline ads --
under the right conditions. Marketers should use new
technologies to plan an online/offline mix to increase brand
impact”.
For those who cannot afford mass media or consider their
products too niche for traditional media, the Internet banners
can help establish brand name recognition. For such advertisers
who depend mainly on the Internet to create brand awareness, the
key lies in placing their banners within website environments
with focused and relevant content.
When customers view a company’s banner ads, whether they click
through or not, it adds to the overall brand building activity
and brand recall at a low cost. There is a tendency to run
banner ads as short-term campaigns of 4-8 weeks but it takes
longer for a banner campaign to establish a brand. Brand
building on the Internet has to be a sustained effort just like
in the case of traditional media but you could adopt a strategy
of regularly refreshing and changing your banner ad content.
This will ensure that you keep the brand top-of-mind as well as
renew interest with fresh copy/visuals.
The banner space is evolving in terms of sizes, location on
page, interactive capabilities and audio-visual delivery. If you
capitalize on these developments early in the game before all
Internet marketers wake up to it, the forerunner advantage and
the element of surprise will be yours and you can establish your
brands quickly and effectively.
About the author:
http://www.emarketinganswers.com C.S. Raman is a prolific
business writer on topics like marketing, web copy content, and
business management. He is a guest writer for
emarketinganswers.com, providing free emarketing resources and promotion tools.
He has over two decades of work experience as VP of two top US ad agencies.
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