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Advertising Resource Center |
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Understanding Internet Banner Advertising
Banner advertising is an effective way of getting your advertising message seen on the Internet. Banner ads should not be your only online form of advertising, but they are an essential part of your online advertising mix. This article assumes that the reader knows what a banner ad looks like, but do you know how they work, and how you can derive benefit from them? Let's define a few terms before answering these questions. 1. "Page views" or "page impressions." These terms are interchangeable and they refer to the number of times that a page within a website has been displayed on a website. 2. "Banner view." Like a page view, a banner view is the number of times that a banner has been displayed on website. 3. "Click through." A click through is the number of times a website visitor has "clicked" on a particular banner ad and was transferred to the website of the banner advertiser. 4. "CTR." CTR is the acronym for "click through rate," which is the ratio of the number of banner view versus the number of times visitors have "clicked through" to your website. CTR is expressed as a percentage, so a click through rate of 1% means that for every 1,000 banner views, 10 visitors have clicked through to your site. 5. "CPM." CPM is an acronym for "cost per M," where "M" is the ancient Roman numeral for 1,000. Translation: CPM is the price your business will pay to have its banner advertisement displayed 1,000 times on a website, e.g, the cost of 1,000 banner views. So, for example, if the CPM to advertise on a site is $80.00 your business will pay $80.00 for every 1,000 banner views. 6. "ROS." ROS is the acronym for "run of site," which simply means that a banner ad is displayed on every page in a website, as opposed to being displayed only in a particular category of a website or only when a particular keyword is entered into a search engine. Everyone who is in charge of a advertising or marketing department (that's you if you're the sole shareholder of the company) knows that advertising is, in large part, a numbers game. The more frequently your message is seen or heard, the more likely the consumer is to purchase your service or product. Take Mattress Mac with Gallery Furniture , for example. If you live in the Houston area, or if your radio can pick up the signal of almost any Houston area radio station, you cannot go a single day without hearing or seeing an advertisement for Gallery Furniture. Peppering your senses with constant reminders that "Gallery Furniture Saves You Money!" has enabled Mr. McIngvale to build his single location furniture store into an empire. (Of course, advertising alone won't do it; you still must have a quality product or service). I have no scientific data to support this assertion, but I'll make it anyway: I'm willing to bet that Gallery Furniture is known to more people in the greater Houston area than any other single business. How did that come to be? Mattress Mac understands the advertising numbers game and plays it better than anybody else. Banner ads are a numbers game. The industry standard click through rate for online advertising in general is around .5%. Not 5%, but .5%. Doesn't sound very encouraging for your banner ad campaign, eh? Well, there are ways to significantly increase the CTR of any given banner. The best way is by targeting a particular banner ad to a narrow audience, an audience that is looking specific for a product or service just like yours. Highly-targeted can boost your CTR to as much as 2%-3% or higher and significantly increase the traffic to your website. Another valuable purpose of the banner ad is branding. Intertwined with the messages Gallery Furniture delivers about particular sales events or types of furniture is the company's consistent and recognizable logo, color scheme, and tag lines. Your banner advertisements can, and should, perform the same function; they should be designed using your company's logo and colors, at a minimum. Sometimes incorporating the tag line is the way to go, but other times you may want to advertise a particular special offer, product, etc. The important thing is that you take advantage of the numbers game by continually displaying your name, logo, and colors. The more visitors that see you, the more they will come to associate your name with your type of product or service, and the more likely they will be in the future to buy from you. Henry J. Fasthoff, IV
MORE RESOURCES: Without the right focus in Washington, job creation will continue to be slow and unsteady, says columnist Frank Aquila The number of Americans seeking jobless benefits fell last week to a level that indicates the labor market has not improved this year even as the economy expanded. The U.S. economy is so bad that the chance of avoiding a double dip back into recession may actually be pretty good U.S. stocks extended Wednesday's gain as initial jobless claims fell and pending home sales unexpectedly increased Treasury 10-year notes fell for a second day as pending home resales unexpectedly rose in July and initial jobless claims dropped last week, reducing demand for the safety of government debt. Orders placed with U.S. factories rose less than forecast in July, restrained by a slump in demand for capital equipment that points to a slowdown in business investment in coming months. The biggest rally in almost two months in the U.S. stock market yesterday was missing the hallmarks of a move that’s likely to last, said Jeffrey deGraaf, the top-ranked technical analyst. AIA Group Ltd., the main Asia unit of American International Group Inc., submitted preliminary documents to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for an initial public offering, according to two people familiar with the filing. Naked short sales of shares and government bonds may be limited by European Union proposals that say the practices cause a “disorderly market and possible systemic risks.” Pending sales of existing houses unexpectedly climbed in July from a record low, indicating the real-estate market is steadying following the end of a government tax credit. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is examining whether high-speed traders helped trigger a 700-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on May 6 by repeatedly placing and immediately canceling orders in an attempt to manipulate share prices, a person with direct knowledge of the inquiry said. Wall Street analysts offer buy, sell, or hold opinions on stocks in the news on Sept. 2 Wall Street analysts offer buy, sell, or hold opinions on stocks in the news on Sept. 1 Aug. 31 -- Karl Case, an economics professor at Wellesley College and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index, discusses the U.S. housing market Aug. 31 -- Bloomberg's Ryan Chilcote reports on a dispute between Iceland and the U.K. over mackerel fishing quotas and the risk the row may affect the North Atlantic nation's bid to join the European Union Despite warnings by some experts, funds that try to profit from a falling stock market are an increasingly popular choice for investors With yields above other asset classes, real estate investment trusts are popular again. Pros tell Businessweek.com how to spot the best REITs |
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