Banner day: lure surfers to your site with enticing banner ads

Entrepreneur, Nov, 1998 by Melissa Campanelli

While the ads, designed to promote Web sites and the products and services sold on them, have been around for several years, they've recently become very popular with the entrepreneurial set. Business owners are realizing that banner ads can be a cost-effective part of their marketing mix.

Consider K.B. Lee, owner of the New York Golf Center of Long Island, a $6 million golf merchandise retail store in Hicksville, New York. His Webmaster (and daughter), Jenny Lee, started using banner ads to promote the company's site shortly after it went live in February. Her ads were designed by the first Web site she decided to advertise on: that of Perfect Present Picker Inc. (http://presentpicker.com), a gift-oriented site. "If banner ads are targeted correctly, they can be a great advertising medium," says Lee. "I know the majority of people who came to my site from presentpicker. com actually ended up buying."

New York Golf Center is just one of many businesses touting their products with banner ads. According to a report recently released by the Internet Advertising Bureau (www.iab.net), Internet advertising expenditures totaled $351.3 million during the first quarter of this year, nearly triple the $129.5 million spent during the first quarter of 1997. And banner advertising accounted for more than half of all online spending during the first quarter of 1998, comprising a whopping 55 percent of total revenue.

GETTING STARTED

As Lee did, some Webmasters pay the owners of the sites they advertise on to create their banner ads. But you can also design them yourself with off-the-shelf software tools, such as Microsoft's FrontPage 98 (www.microsoft.com) and Zapa Discount Warehouse (www.zapa.com). According to Zapa, its product can create a banner ad complete with multimedia effects in six minutes, with no technical skills required.

Banner ads are most often designed as rectangular strips that appear across a Web page, but they may be reshaped according to the specifications of the Web site in which they appear. Then comes the creative part. Animation is a commonly used design element, but be warned: It may be detrimental to sales. According to a 1997 study by User Interface Engineering in North Andover, Massachusetts, Web shoppers tend to block out animated banners, even when those banners tease the viewer with information for which the viewer is surfing.

When designing your ad, keep it consistent with your other marketing materials, such as your logo, color scheme and slogan. And whatever design elements you choose, be sure to include the one simple phrase experts say may bring the best results of all: "Click here."

SITE SELECTION

Once you've designed your ad, you need to place it where your potential customers are most likely to see it. If you sell aviation products, for example, don't just choose aviation-oriented Web sites; also try weather-related ones because pilots tend to be habitual weather watchers.

You can also advertise on search engines or portals that sell keywords or search terms. When a book buyer searches for "books" using search engines, for example, the banner ad for the online bookstore Amazon.corn often appears, encouraging the viewer to visit its site. Most search engines provide reports that show total impressions (the number of times your ad appears) and click-throughs received each day the ad ran on the site.

GOOD TRADE-OFF

One way to increase your banner ad's exposure and save money is to get involved in a banner exchange program. In these programs, similar to advertising co-ops, affiliated companies post their ads on other exchange-affiliated Web sites. Exchange programs also offer detailed reports that highlight advertising activity so you can see what kind of response your ad receives. The best - and worst - feature of some of these programs is that they're free: With so many companies in the program, your site may get lost in a Web never-never land.

There are about 20 banner exchange programs currently running on the Web. LinkExchange (www.linkexchange.com) is the Web's largest and most established advertising network, offering more than 1 million Web sites on which to advertise. SmartClicks (www.smartclicks.com) is quickly becoming another major player, with a network of nearly 100,000 Web sites.

Lee signed up for LinkExchange in May; New York Golf Center's site is now listed on numerous golf sites. She's less than ecstatic, however, about the results so far. Lee says she hasn't received the level of response she was hoping for and is uncomfortable not having control over the sites on which her ad is listed. "A lot of times, I see my banner on my own site," she says.

"I've gotten better results from advertising on sites I've chosen myself," adds Lee, who paid less than $1,000 for 30,000 impressions on a variety of sites in LinkExchange's network. Nonetheless, she says she may continue using LinkExchange for the exposure it provides.

Lee actually prefers another banner exchange program called AdArcher Banner Exchange Service (www.adarcher.com). This advertising club offers banner exchanges with sports-related sites and has a section devoted exclusively to golf. Says Lee, "Targeting my banners is much more effective [using this service]."