Outline the Benefits of a Successful Banner Ad

To be clicked on, the banner ad has to be read. But getting the user's attention is only half of the task. To get the click, the user must also have a good reason to visit your website. This creates the need to use some traditional marketing tricks in your banner. Words such as "free" and "sweepstakes" for example are known to generate a healthy response from the average internet user, so if you are running a sweepstakes on your site or offer a product for free, it can be well worth it to mention it in your banner ad. It is also a well established fact that sex sells. Banners that contain a picture of a beautiful lady and a hint of sex usually perform extremely well in terms of clickthroughs.

Unfortunately, there are drawbacks in using these "power words" to boost your clickthrough ratio. If your site sells pet food, using the power of sex to draw in visitors is hardly a good idea. You would get more clicks, but at the same time you'd end up targeting the wrong audience. People would come to your site, but they wouldn't buy anything.

The same problem is present in using the words "free" and "sweepstakes", as they will draw in people who are interested in entering the sweepstakes or receiving the free product, but they might not be interested in actually buying anything. So be careful with these tricks. While they are occasionally very useful, using them can cause problems as well.

Include a "click here" note or two in your banner ads

If you have examined the banner ads on different sites, you have probably noticed that several of them include a button that says "Click here". Why? As always, the reason is fairly simple - banner ads that contain the words "click here" get on the average clicked more than those that don't.

At first I couldn't understand why this was happening, because I've always thought that if the viewer is interested in the product advertised in the banner, he will click on it. On the other hand, if he isn't interested, no amount of click here-signs is hardly going to make him do so. Still, the including those words does raise the CTR and there must be a reason for it.

This is one of those things I'd blame on the well-known scapegoat, the television. The advertisements that run on TV don't require you to do anything else except to stare at them, while the goal of banner ads is to get the user interact (click the banner). As people have been exposed to passive forms of advertising for decades, they assume that Internet advertising is similar in nature and doesn't require any action from their part. This is where the "click here" signs kick in by letting the users know that they can and should do something instead of just watching. The result is the increased CTR observed by many advertisers who incorporate these elements in their banner designs.

Whether my thoughts are on the mark or not, one thing remains proven: Including the words "click here" in your banner does result in it getting clicked more and you should use this fact to your advantage.