If you are running your company’s online marketing campaigns you should read this.

I know a lot of media companies charge hefty fees for running your banner ad campaigns.

Is it really worth the money you pay for it?

In my opinion Banner Ads SUCKS and if you have to pay to put your banner ad on a web site you must be very careful.

Here are my reasons for above comment:

I run various ad campaigns from various ad networks on my web sites. I also run Google Adsense campaigns. Those who do not know this yet, Google Adsense is those little text ads you see on the web site.

This banner ad thing has been bothering me for a while now.

I can see that people “block out” banner ads more and more. They pretend no to see them.

I still notice banner ads because I am always looking at the ads in search for good ideas but most visitors do not pay attention to banner ads.

I pulled the statistics of two of the the ad networks I use most and also from my adsense ads.

You will note that on all my sites the banners are normally placed at the top of the page under the header and on the right of the page.

The ad networks display only banner ads and with Google I prefer to display mostly text ads.

The results was:

Ad Network 1
801,893 displays, 2,729 clicks, 71 sales.
Thus only 0.34% of banner displays resulted in clicks.

I will not look at the conversion from clicks to to sales as this will be influanced by each ad campaign individually.

Ad Network 2
433,127 Displays, 6,625 clicks and 114 sales.
Thus is a click ratio of 1.52%

Ad Network 3
608,813 displays  and 1,543 clicks which is 0.25% click ratio.

Then on the Google Adsense text ad side I had during the same period:
3,919,287 displays, 56,475 clicks which is an average click ratio of 1.44%

Are banners totally useless then?

No, not if you place the banner ad for the right reason and if you do not pay too much for banner displays.

If you place a banner ad you must either pay a low fee for displays (impressions) or you must opt for a pay per click option.

Many marketing companies will sell you ad space based on cost per impressions, remember that an impression means that your ad has been displayed. If you look at the stats above there will be a 1% chance that somebody will click on that banner once it has been displayed.

The pay per click option might be a better option if you deal with a reputable company who will not make them self guilty of click fraud.

You must design your banner correctly and make sure it always contain your company name and logo and if you have an easy to remember web site address it must also display your URL. The reason is, although people may not intentionally look at the banner and click on it, the banner ads are normally displayed in such positions that you cannot miss it. So you can use your banner ad for brand awareness and that is why it is important to also get your company details on the banner.

In my view the best way to do banner advertising is to create a banner which displays your brand and web address. Then us and affiliate network like OfferForge or TrafficSynergy to get their affiliates to promote your product. That way you will only pay for successful business but in the mean time you will have hundreds of suckers with web sites (like myself) who will display your banner on their web sites and MAYBE get paid for it.

There are some banner campaigns I had on my site where I never made one sale in a month, after a couple of thousands of impressions. Those company had FREE exposure on my site.

So do not get caught by companies selling “impression” banner ad campaigns, rather opt for an affiliated option.