Creating effective banners The following 3 animated banners appeared in Yahoo when people searched on the keyword phrase "Starship Troopers" during the month the movie opened (November 1997). Guess which banner has over twice the click-through as the other two?
Answer:
The top banner.
The bottom two had CTRs of about 11:1 but the top one had a CTR of 5:1.
That means 20% of the people who saw it clicked on it.
Yahoo said their average CTR for keyword search banners is 3% to 5%.
They were quite surprised to see 20% for this banner.
Note that these banners were on an equal-weight rotation plan that guaranteed they would each be shown the same way (same keyword search, same days, same time of day, etc). CTR = 5.0 : 1 (20%) after 1293 displays CTR = 11.0 : 1 (9%) after 1291 displays CTR = 11.7 : 1 (8%) after 1298 displays Jeremy Ring, Eastern Sales Manager for Yahoo!, speaking at the Circulation Management conference in New York City, offered these banner design suggestions: Banners burn out after two weeks The words "Click Here!" can dramatically boost response Try a blue border around the banner (implying the whole banner is clickable) Try adding clickable text below the banner ("Click here for XYZ Offer") Try presenting a variety of messages in the same visual style Urgency helps ("Last Day!") If a consumer hasn't clicked on a banner after seeing it three times, a response is unlikely.
The Infoseek presentation at the Web Advertising '97 conference offered these banner design suggestions: Click here -- make it clear the banner is something to be clicked Catch their attention -- use animation to capture attention as well as the right audience Involve the audience -- interactive banners work Brand appropriately -- if the banner is for a new product/service of an existing brand, don't put the brand on; people may think they know everything already and not click through Change creative frequently -- on the Infoseek site, banners seem to wear out after 200,000 to 400,000 impressions Match your message to your targeting -- make sure your banner is targeted (banners attached to keywords pull much better)
Don't waste time/money on contests -- contest banners don't pull any better
Less is more -- keep banner sizes small (10K to 15K)
Be systematic -- set-up a mechanism to track what works and what doesn't in an ad campaign
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