Advantages Of Online Advertising

Banner Ads and their Similarity with Traditional Media

Digital marketers regularly bemoan the fact that it’s often difficult to educate

the market about the value of Internet marketing techniques. Traditional

buyers of advertising have been conditioned in a certain fashion and have come

to understand advertising in a certain way.

Banner advertising goes a long way towards bridging the advertising divide.

Adverts have a set size, they can look very similar to print adverts and they

occupy a particular bit of real estate in a publication with a particular number

of views. It’s easy to understand and it does the things buyers are familiar with.

Bottom line - if done correctly, online advertising builds brand awareness and

increases sales!

Images - Display can offer a rich brand building experience

Some campaigns are better suited to having images rather than the plain text

of a PPC campaign (although recently PPC image and video adverts have been

introduced in the USA). Consider the following types of campaigns:

• Promoting travel packages. What stirs more emotion - an image of a

tropical paradise or the words “tropical paradise”?

• Build a brand within a specific sphere. Use banner advertising to brand

the websites of every major player in that niche.

• Running a competition. Keep the target market’s eye on the prize.

• Launching an exciting new sports car with a Call to Action. “Test drive it

now” - or interactive rich media that highlight all the exciting new features

as you mouseover that part of the car on the image.

• Digital shadow. Using banner adverts that shadow the above the line

activity to drive the message both on and offline.

Interactivity

Since banners can contain rich media, they offer levels of interactivity that

other forms of advertising cannot achieve. It allows your target market to not

only see your banner, but to play with it too. Interaction builds a bond and

improves the chances of the consumer remembering your brand tomorrow.

Cognitive learning is a powerful outcome of interactive display advertising.

Modern online advertising is able to bring together a number of other online

marketing tactics such as animations, games, video and Flash.

• A few years ago, Flash microsites were all the rage. Now the same

functionality can exist within the advert. This includes filling in a form

or playing a game within the advert, there’s no need to be taken to a

separate page.

• Viral Marketing: clever viral marketing games or “send to a friend”

functionality from within the advert.

• Video: check out video previews or trailers from within the advert.

Measurability and Data Gathering

Banner ads, like all digital marketing tactics, are measurable. Track

clickthrough rates and you get an idea of exactly how many people are

responding to your Call to Action. Some publishers even have the ability to do

post-click tracking i.e. you can track the user all the way to a sale if that is the

purpose of the advert.

An Online Publishers Association (OPA) study revealed that of the 80% of

viewers who reported to have watched a video advert online, 52% have taken

some sort of action, including checking out a website (31%), searching for

more information (22%), going into a store (15%) or actually making a purchase

(12%).