Window-shopping, display advertising, etc.

Posted By Vidar

Tuesday at 9:51AM EDT

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Tags:

bestpractices, CTR, display ads, Display Advertising

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Best Practices, Display Advertising, Online Marketing, Rich Media Banners

Banner ads on the web are analogous to storefronts on a busy street. It’s a menagerie of businesses promoting their products and services, enticing you to take a closer look or come in. Some pedestrians might throw a sales sign a passing glance or even stop by the window to see what’s on display.

Banners generate very similar behavior from customers. The goal, naturally, like the real-world storefronts, is to slow the customers down, get them to evaluate the advertiser’s offer and enter the store. This means one, noticing the ad, two, evaluating the ad for relevance and finally, clicking through to the advertiser’s site

It seems we’re asking a lot from a small little graphic on a very busy page. Are advertisers trying to make banners do too much? Could banners be more effective if their objectives were less ambitious?

We think so. At Linkstorm we’ve come up with a way to split these 3 tasks between the banner and a secondary navigational overlay triggered by a roll-over. Banners Powered by Linkstorm only have to grab the customers’ attention and entice them to roll over the ad. After that, our navigational overlay provides content to establish relevance and elicit a click-through.

This has dramatically improved ad effectiveness and click through rates across all campaigns employing our technique.

Now, if you’ve made it this far, you might also want to check out Sean X. Cummings excellent post on why “the way most agencies conceptualize banner ads is seriously flawed.”