We stick by our projections: Banners are an oversold format headed for decline. But a new survey confirms that banners are by no means ineffective. In fact, a recent study by comScore and the Online Publishers Association shows that banners have much more value as a branding mechanism than a direct-response generator. They can drive more viewers to search for a brand, cause them to spend more time on an advertised site when they visit, and spend more money when they purchase from an advertised site, according to the survey on the effectiveness of banner ads.
With click-through rates ranging from 17 viewers per 10,000 for entertainment-related ads to just 6 per 10,000 for financial services, it is hard for an advertiser to see value in a banner campaign that is measured only on that result. Plus, the OPA-comScore study shows that most of those clicks are from a small sliver of the audience: 6 percent of the Internet population generates half the banner clicks.
The real value of banners, then, is the turbo-charging effect they have on people’s subsequent search behaviors. Searches for a brand or trademark were 52 percent higher among people exposed to a banner campaign than in a control group. Even four weeks out, the lift was still 38 percent. The effect on site traffic is more dramatic: a 65 percent lift within a week of exposure, and a 46 percent after four weeks.
Banner ads got off on the wrong foot, billed as a direct response vehicle when in fact they were more similar to a display ad in a newspaper or magazine. Helping local advertisers understand and take advantage of this fact is one more step toward having happy, satisfied advertisers who renew their contracts.
Tags: ads, affiliate, banner, branding, effective advertising, exposure, internet advertising, local advertiser, online, rotation
Great post Colby. Part of the promise of banner ads is the actual content that can NOW get delivered within them – video and interactivity – which leads to more meaningful metrics than just the click that today’s banner ads achieve. If you think about the aforementioned study and the positive branding effects that lead to search and other actions down funnel, the ability to now run video in display should really amp up the benefits advertisers achieve with that same old display ad space that’s been knocked around recently.
One additional thought about banners: We saw a demo a few weeks ago from Mixpo that leads me to believe a new form of banners — a mix between video and static display advertising — might breathe more life into this ad format. It’s less obnoxious than the dancing girl in the mortgage ads, generally related to the content, and combined with a viable offer (like a coupon). Those dynamics should drive awareness and click-throughs.
I was pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of a recent in-house promotion with banner ads on one of our news sites to drive clicks and registrations for a small local sweepstakes giveaway, despite the theory that banners can aid with branding but aren’t very good for direct response. A simple, no-Flash animation, 72-hour banner campaign generated a significant number of sweepstakes entries for a chance to win tickets to a local minor-league baseball game. It reminded me that display advertising is still about the offer. A compelling offer does yield better results from banner ads.
If banners are dead then so is content online. The issue with banners has to do with faulty measurement — noted above — and lack of understanding of basic techniques of media planning including the impact of clutter and how audiences build over the course of a given campaign. comScore basically “productized” something that advertisers have been able to measure since 2001: the view through. Amazing that it has taken this line to drive home the point that click through is not the only measure of online performance. For a full assessment of this see: http://www.primaryimpact.com/stateofdisplay.html — this data is from Q1 of this year but an update will be published in October.