10 Best Practices for Creating Effective Banner Ads …continued

Posted Posted in Banner Design, Blog, Premium     

You can never have enough tips when it comes to banner advertisements. What you need, therefore, is a compilation of the best practices for creating effective banner ads. In this session we give you the top ten tricks to create banner-blindness-proof ads.

1. Subtle Animation

Animation may be a great way to attract attention but can be easily overdone. A good banner ad has subtle animations that do not irritate the viewer. Animations that loop a thousand times a minute and run across the screen can cause banner blindness and very long loading times. Use tasteful animation that loops at a medium pace and then freezes on the most important shot.

2. Loops

Fast looping of banner ads slows computers down and increases the loading time. The IAB guidelines have laid down that banner ad animation cannot exceed more than 15 seconds, including loops. Have the animation complete three cycles of looping before it stops because by then the visitor would have seen it at least once, and extra looping may be completely redundant.

3. Go easy on expandable banners

When you rollover or click an expandable banner, a new DHTML appears with the new expandable banner displayed. More often than not, visitors find this extremely annoying and want to exit as soon as they can. Therefore, if you are using an expandable banner, make sure that the longest it stays open is three seconds. Better still, make these ads expand only when the visitor wants to see them, and have a clear “Close” tab on the banner for a quick exit.

4. Use Rich Media Banners Sensibly

Rich Media banners are like mini applications that help your visitors get more information than they would on a sequence of .gif files playing on loop. While they are great advertising tools attracting more clicks, these ads use multiple media and therefore load slower. The IAB has severe guidelines relating to use of RM ads, and those, in addition to the effort and money required in creating them, make RM ads best left to ad campaigns with a huge budget and planning.

5. Remember Your Landing Page

When you are creating an effective banner advertisement, it is important to envision what your landing page should be like. Your landing page is where your banner redirects visitors and therefore it should

A. Relate to the banner advertisement that redirects to it
B. Have multiple calls to action
C. Contain the same offer as the ad in more detail
D. Lend credibility to your campaign by including a contact detail.

To be continued to..