How A Web Banner AD Is Designed | A Step-By-Step Guideline

For over 5 years on end, your online lovey-dovey jmexclusives has been preaching and still continues to teach and offer examples on how effective a web banner ad can be. That said, everything you need to know about them is right here on this blog! In the past, we all have been talking about how to create them.

Whether it’s from a designer’s perspective, from a marketer’s perspective, or from an entrepreneur’s perspective. In that case, you’ve even seen people talking about how banner advertising works or even which colors work best. There are so many variables that affect the revenue and many of it is unique to your website and the layout of the website.

For instance, the Custom URL Channels gives you the ability to track Adsense performance for a specific domain or webpage. And you can create channels for a single page or a hierarchy of pages based on the URL.

See Also: 24 Clickable Banner Ads Examples (And Why They Work!)

Having Custom URL Channels on your AdSense account can greatly help increase your daily revenue even faster. By getting advertisers to bid on your websites or blogs real estate space. But, the point is when you sign in to your Adsense account. The are some questions you need to ask yourself first.

You may also ask yourself questions like;
  1. Where do you best place them?
  2. How do you make them clickable instead of annoying?
  3. What strategies do you need before designing a banner ad?
  4. Which other questions to ask yourself before you create a banner ad?
  5. What’s next, so that it actually works and resonates with your audience and so on.

As such, that’s why this post among other blog articles will always be a good source of education and inspiration to any aspiring webmaster out there. May it a beginner or even a pro designer.

It’s a great source of web research examples when it comes to talking about strategies used by different companies and industries when creating successful banner ads.

What is a Web Banner Ad?

A web banner ad is an advertisement displayed on a web page. It consists of an image (.jpg, .png, .gif) or of a multimedia object (usually created using Flash). Thus, banner ads can be static or animated, depending on the technology used to make them.

If you’re looking for a definition that’s a bit more formal, according to Wikipedia:

A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web delivered by an ad server. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser. In many cases, banners are delivered by a central ad server.

Learn Also: How to Deactivate or Archive an Ad Manager Ad Unit

To understand even further, I’m going to share with you one more example below:

Banner ads are image-based rather than text-based and are a popular form of website advertising. The purpose of banner advertising is to promote a brand and/or to get visitors from the host website to go to the advertiser’s website.

But, to sum it up and make this as simple as possible, all banner ads share the same basic function.

Whereby, as soon as you click on this image/multimedia object you see on a web page, your internet browser takes you to the advertiser’s website/landing page. They are simple yet very important pieces of HTML. And their presence on the web can make a big difference for internet-based companies and brands.

Web Banner Ad available options Are:
  • Banner types: Images, Flash, HTML or HTML5
  • Opening: Click to open, rollover to open, auto-open, set a timer to open
  • Closing: Close button, click to close, roll-off to close, set a timer to close, set the close button on the outside
  • Dimensions: Set any dimension to any dimension
  • Animation: Set the opening/closing animation to be instant, fast, or slow
  • Show once per day: Use a cookie to set any banner to show once per day
  • ClickTag: Any banner can be set with a ‘clickTag’ from the banner manager you might be using (eg, DFP, OpenX, Adzerk,)

Our Banners uses a custom-built JavaScript library built from the ground up by our team of expert JavaScript developers. It will not conflict with any jQuery or other JavaScript elements you might be running on your website.

Compatible with HTML and HTML5, Flash or images. Easily insert a Youtube video, a Slideshare presentation, or a signup form. As well as DFP, OpenX, Adtech, Open Ad Stream, Adzerk, and many other banner tracking systems. As long as you can edit the HTML for the banner in your system, our Media Kit will work for you.

When was the first Web Banner Ad implemented?

Some of you might know already about when the first banner ad ever created. But if you don’t, here’s your chance to travel back to simpler, “ancient” times. As you experiment more on an old-school website and its first clickable web banner ad.

Take your time to study it, I’ll be waiting here. You can also, check out the interview with Joe McCambley, the creator of banner ads. How cool is this? Ok, all set? Let’s move on. There’s still a lot of confusion around this term and others related to it.

Related Topic: SiteGround | A Web Host for Top Site Performance & Speed

So, instead of skipping the basic information and jumping straight to “ways of using banner ads for your content marketing”, we’re gonna take a stroll down memory lane and go back to the basics. To make sure that you understand what banner ads actually are and also why and how they work, once and for all.

As someone who is still learning about banner ads as well, I’m taking this chance to learn by explaining and sharing my own opinion after careful research. Shall we?

So, why exactly are they important?

It’s really easy and simple to realize how banner ads work. Just like the way a physical banner outside a shop would make you enter the shop. Simply, because it says they offer a great discount on a specific product. Or that they have some kind of this new product; which sparks your curiosity.

You see! It’s the same with online banner ads. Whenever you start creating a banner ad you usually have a single goal. In short, banner ads are intended to generate traffic to your website by linking to it. And from there you’ll try to seal the deal, whatever your deal is.

Related Topic: What is a Featured Image? Why it matters & How to use it

But, you need to do that by attributing a role to your banner ad and see what fits best in that specific context. Web banners work the same way regular print media advertising does. And as such, they inform visitors, notify them about a new product, and grab their attention. This also increases the preferred brand awareness and so on.

Having that in mind, there are a few ways of sending people to a website in order to find out more about the product, brand or business, through banner ads. In that case, we’re going to call those the roles a banner ad can play:

1. You’ll grab more attention 

We all know that capturing someone’s attention nowadays can be very challenging. Especially in the digital environment where it’s all about being creative enough.

But, you have a lot of information on how to be creative and how to design everything from scratch. So that it’s going to make your banner ad stand out from the crowd.

Then again, it’s up to you to study your target market and see if what you need is an animated bouncy ad or a classy font on a neat background.

2. They help sell a product

Banner ads encourage you to buy certain products. And here it’s all about the right context and placement. For it to be relevant and effective, the banner ad placed on a certain website has to be related to that niche and to offer an answer to the question the visitor that ended up on that website has.

Let’s look at Airbnb for instance. Airbnb’s success and outreach were made possible through Google display ads. They started expanding by searching for platforms and channels that target a specific audience. And by putting ads out there that are related to what the audience is searching for.

3. Helps increase customer traffic

The banner ad encourages the visitors to go on the advertiser’s website by clicking on it. And through this method, the ad is paid in many ways (CTRs, impressions, time spent on the web page etc.)

If you haven’t tried it yet, let me remind you that the best tool for measuring the banner ad’s effectiveness when it comes to increasing your traffic and wanting to see if people click, hover or leave is Bannersnack Analytics. A great example of how banner ads are used to increase traffic is provided by Target.

Basically, they plan their ad strategy around certain time periods. You can see how Target uses ads related to baby products and baby registries. Because the specific research time period mentioned in this article was when many women were pregnant.

4. Best method for discounts and sales offers

Please, have no fear, banner ads are here! And they’re not leaving anytime soon! So, you might as well learn how to design ad banners and use them because they are a powerful tool that can have a great impact on your business.

And by all means, another way for businesses to generate and increase revenue is through the announcement of sales and discounts. That said, what better way to reach potential customers than through banner ads?

Let’s say it’s Black Friday and, of course, you offer discounts and a lot of your products are on sale. How do you spread the news and let your consumers know about them? Of course, it’s by designing a Black Friday themed banner ads that talks all about it.

5. They are a big part of visual advertising

In reality, banner ads are a big part of the visual world. And they’re not only that but are also visual content materials that do really work. Perse, because people react better to visual content or a message that is accompanied by a visual example.

Now that you have a big part of banner ads, you can download the pdf guide directly from the source. So that you can read and learn more about how, why, as well as about the present and the future importance of visual media.

All in all, just like with commercials, you have to challenge yourself and your brand to stand out in the visually competitive world. By being creative enough and then find out what makes you different from your competitors.

You should also do thorough research on what makes your audience engage with your business, brand, or products. And in addition to that, you need to know what makes the customer respond to your ad. As well as when and where you should show up relevant visual ads.

Video Guide: Web Banner AD Design Tutorial  By Photoshop CC

Since we’re here, I want to shed some light on another term that seems to get in the way of the banner ads’ success. And that’s banner blindness.

Yes! It means just that; being exposed to thousands of ads daily. Fortunately, the consumers have developed a certain immunity to them and they’ve learned how to focus strictly on the information that interests them. But. that’s far from concluding that they don’t work anymore.

If you’re already battling with this problem and want to learn how to make your banner ads work, you can take Neil’s advice on how to overcome banner ad blindness.

Related Topic: Ad Inserter | The No. #1 Plugin to Insert & Manage Ad Units

NB: If you are using a banner tracking system different than the ones mentioned, our developers will try their best to integrate the Media Kit into whatever system you are using. So, to get your own customized web banner ad or recipes, you can reach out to our team for a customized or even tailored and pocket-friendly invoice.

Finally, it’s my hope that the above-revised guide was helpful enough to you and your marketing team. But, if you’ll need more help, you can Contact Us or even share your additional thoughts and questions in the comments sections.

All in all, you too can join our wellwishers and donate in order to support our service solutions, online research work, and other related projects here.


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