Branding With Banners & Text Ads
A few years ago I had this crazy idea to follow suit with the entire ’splash page’ concept and transfer the same ideas to banners and text ads. With the popularity of certain scripts that allowed surfers to not only earn credits but also banner and text ad impressions, it seemed like a natural progression.
Take the ideas of splash page design;
A – Grab Attention with a strong headline, graphic or media clip.
C – Create Curiosity with a short paragraph, maybe some bullet points that outline the features of your offer.
A – Call to Action to seal the deal. Always tell your viewer what you would like them to do.
I lovingly called this the ACA’s of splash page design and it’s how I have created splash pages since the early 2000’s. So let’s take that same model, and create a banner…
Here’s an example of what I consider a ’splash banner’:
Simple, big bold images flying at you. It creates curiosity and almost dares the viewer to click it. You have to be creative when creating these banners but they do not need to be Picasso’s. Simple usually works best.
Here’s another example, and this one has gotten the highest click through rate of any of my splash banners during the past few years:
I also took that ‘Jon Olson Sucks’ campaign and used it in my text ads. Which again, sticks out like a sore thumb but also creates enough curiosity to get viewers to click or at least remember my name.
Remember, the traffic exchanges are a visual medium, so less is more when it comes to ad copy on your banners, splash pages and text ads. Keep it simple, use humor with anything you do and you are sure to capture some eye balls.
But above all else, have fun with it. Here’s is one of the best new resources for creating killer banners and splash pages. It’s free and you can create until your heart’s content!
Have fun =)
Ian Bakewell
Splash banners are a golden secret
Banners get just as much screen time as a splashpage
You can put a big punch in a small space branding wise
Banners are usually cheap, some places allow you to covert credits at a 1 credit for 20+ banner ratio
My average is 1:3710 for click thru
)
(roughly 185 credits worth of banners
Click thru = view that chose to take time to click
Highly valuable
Jon Olson
Oh it’s amazing how underused they are.
The people that are embracing it and practicing savvy banner advertising, are seeing great numbers, just like you mentioned.
Two of the most under rated avenues for branding on the net for sure.
Timothy Montoya
banners is a great way and surely a eyeball grabbing
content that makes people wonder just what you have inside!
graphics is another big colorfull thing that is becoming
popular i read an article where red is an attention color
and should be used in all banners and websites where as blue
is a not so inviting color well banners it is i’m
on my way to summon up my banner demon and create eyeball
poppin banners thanks guys Timothy
Jon Olson
Yeah for sure. I like using power colors like red, blue, yellow, etc…I mean those work. Red and blue are very important and very effective, not only in banners but ad copy too, headlines, etc.