Digital Banners: 101
January 2025
How effective are digital banners?
It has been mentioned that digital banner ads (aka display ads) are no longer effective within the online world of saturated advertising. However, they can actually be beneficial if you use them the right way and follow some well considered guidelines.
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The bad news first; The average click-through rate (CTR) for display ads is only 0.05% due in part to banner ad blindness affected 86% of consumers. Ad blockers and trust issues have also made it harder for businesses to breakthrough to consumers. Ad saturation and inadequate targeting are also culprits for the declining effectiveness of display ads.
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The good new; If you are more strategic in your approach and focus on better targetting while creating ads that genuinely resonate with your audience, you can vastly improve the above statistics. There are some guidelines below that will help you increase your CTR and conversion rates.
TOP PERFORMING DIGITAL BANNERS
Guidelines for better performing ads
OVERCOMING THE PROBLEMS WITH BANNER ADS
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Banner ads that are perceived as disruptive can cause users to quickly navigate away from the website and reduce the chances of conversion. They also create a negative perception of your brand. What can you do to avoid this:
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Create ads that add value: think less about hitting them in the face, and more about what consumers want. And keep in mind that people seek authenticity. Your goal should be to be engaging.
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Less is more: don’t shove everything and the kitchen sink into your ad. Keep it simple and easy to digest. Also easy on the eyes. More about this further down under ‘Creating banner ads’.
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Animation: an animated ad is a great idea, but again don’t be in their face. More on this below.
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Context: 68% of users are much more receptive to ads if they appear in context. Meaning they appear in places where your target audience are, rather than random websites that have no correlation to you.
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Respect: show respect for your potential customers by building non-intrusive ads. Brands notice an 18% increase in purchase intent for campaigns that use non-intrusive ads.
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Trust: build trust in your brand by considering your ad copy very carefully and ensuring your ads are aesthetically pleasing.
ADDITIONAL & ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS
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Commerce Media is a multi-faceted approach to digital advertising that in simple terms, delivers more relevant ads in the right places. Commerce media ensures marketers, media owners and consumers all mutually benefit. Your ads will be served to a much more relevant audience due to a complex collection of commerce data. Talk to your media specialist about how you can use commerce media for better outcomes with your campaigns.
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Content Marketing is all about providing valuable and relevant information rather than pushing sales. By offering something of value you can establish trust and loyalty to your brand and therefore increase likelihood of a future purchase. EG. what I'm doing here by sharing my knowledge in the hope that I’ll be seen as someone who knows what they’re talking about ... so when you want something done you’ll remember me.
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Influencer Marketing is all about social media and reaching a highly engaged audience through influencers. This is particularly good when you have a product to sell. Find an influencer who resonates with your target audience to create authentic, engaging content that will bring your brand trust and drive sales.
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Native ads; 2023 statistics found that native ads get 53% more views than banner ads. A native ad is when you search for a product/company/service, it will appear near the top of your screen and will just be text and no graphics. It will have “Sponsored” written above it.
ADVANTAGES OF BANNER ADS
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Cost-effective: you can set your own budget and quickly get out on the market. Pay for results rather than impressions.
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Brand awareness: banner ads are ideally suited to brand awareness campaigns as they’ll be seen by considerably more people than other advertising avenues.
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Analytics: A/B testing is great and measurable results to get feedback on what works and what doesn’t.
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Targeting: I would suggest this is essential. Target specific publications in the same business as you, target demographics by age and/or gender, interest and/or behaviour.
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Remarketing: Remind people to come back.
Creating banners that work
WHICH APPLICATION
Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop – if you're creating a handful of sizes or if you will be using the file as a template in the future, Adobe Illustrator is more ideal. If it's a one off banner, then photoshop does the job as well.
You do need to ensure your banner is pixel perfect though. This means your artboard in Illustrator needs to sit on the exact pixel, continue reading....
When using Illustrator, starting on the right foot right from the very beginning makes all the difference. Ensure you are creating a digital document (ie. under the ‘Web’ tab when creating a new document) and make sure ‘snap to pixel’ is checked under the view menu. Everything (especially artboards) must remain on exact pixels. You can’t export a fraction of a pixel. So if your artboard is sitting at x: 300.67px and y: 250.56px, when you export your artwork it will add the necessary amount to bring it up to an exact pixel size of 301px x 251px for example. Which will result in two problems; your ad will have a white line around the outside edge, and it will also be rejected as the wrong size when uploading.
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Illustrator shines when you use it as a template for large campaigns. You can have any number of digital banners all in one file. Name each artboard exactly as you would want it named when exported (NOTE: use hyphens for spaces rather than underlines for better SEO). Having multiple artboards means you can peruse your banners side by side to ensure consistency across all banners. Then once happy, you can ‘export for screens’ and it will use the artboard names. TIP: make sure the fields ‘suffix’ and ‘prefix’ are empty and that you are exporting at 1x (100% size). With much larger campaigns you can then duplicate your file for each different version and then you can easily and very quickly change the colour, swap out the image and update the copy. Which makes for an incredibly efficient workflow.
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TYPE
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Type needs to be legible and pixel perfect:
Similar to the above, fonts also need to be pixel perfect to increase legibility. Remember that the online environment is different to print. You won’t be able to see 7pt copy on a digital ad. Depending on the typeface you use, you could get away with 9pt or 10pt (12px or 13px)* copy for anything that is non-essential. “Your digital ad shouldn't have non-essential copy!” you say, and you're dead right. BUT for copy that is required on the ad but isn’t essential to the message you can use the smaller size. Thinking here of something like “*T&Cs apply”, for example.
However, anything that is essential to the message should be minimum 12pt (16px)* depending on the typeface. But for digital banners, larger is often better ... to a point. Have a look at other banners online to get a good feel of the sizes and type size that works.
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* One point = 1.333(3) pixels. One pixel = 0.75 points.
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Typeface choice will have a big impact:
You might need to revisit the corporate brand typeface for online banner ads. When the brand was set, it is likely the designer was only contemplating print material which is vastly different. Try to choose a typeface that is clean and open, which makes it easier to read even at smaller sizes.
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BANNER CONTENT
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Copy:
Your banner copy should be VERY carefully considered. I would even strongly suggest using a copywriter to deliver well considered copy content for your banners. See the bottom of this page, or my home page to contact my copywriting partner.
When considering copy length I usually opt for a headline to body text ratio of 2:1 (ie. the body copy will be half the size of the headline). Generally I will ask for several lengths of copy to suit a variety of banner sizes and this will, of course, depend on the design of the banners and image requirements etc, but this is a rough idea of what my request might look like;
• Target audience: geographic, demographic, psychographic, behavioral
• Message: what are you wanting to share with your audience
• Mood: chill, energetic, focused, happy, soothing, love, celebratory, relaxed
• Copy Length: please supply three options for copy lengths to the following maximums (please avoid the use of very long words as these can be very difficult to fit within narrow digital banners); Full – 58 character heading, 200 character body copy. Mid – 45 character heading, 160 character body copy. Brief – 18 characters of copy that will act as a call to action on the smallest banner sizes.
Call to action (CTA):
On smaller ads you may not have space for a CTA button, if not your copy should be able to stand in as the CTA. Where there is space for a CTA button though, do include one.
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Aesthetic:
Trust your designer. They know how to use space as a positive. This isn’t only true in the print world but also the online world. You need space to breath. Keep the style as simple as possible. You don’t want the design to compete with the message you’re trying to share.
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Images:
You may have an image or images as part of your digital campaign. I would highly recommend having an open mind to considering no images for the smaller banner sizes. Or keep the images very simple and ensure they're not so small that you can’t identify what they are. There’s no point having a muddy mess of an image that nobody can make out. A simple coloured background would be best in those cases.
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Animation:
Animation will cost you more to create, as it takes time obviously. However the payback can be well worth it. Animation is great when you have a longer message to portray as you can use slides/screens for each sentence. OR you can have a simple ad with just gentle animation that will catch the eye without overwhelming people. Remember to respect the consumer you’re targeting. I am quite sure you wouldn’t pass upload checkers if your ad was strobing or jarring anyway, but don't even try as it’s a massive turn off for people and will give your brand negative exposure.
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Accessibility:
Accessibility is the inclusive practice of ensuring there are no barriers that prevent interaction with, or access to, online digital assets (& websites) by people with disabilities or substandard devices. To make your ads accessible: avoid flash animations, don’t underline text, use fewer colours with greater contrast, use a clear open font, ensure copy hierarchy is clear (headings and body copy), keep font size as big as you can without it becoming ugly.
Check the colour contrast of your banners here: https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/
Got questions? Get in touch!
Let’s Work Together
Send me your brief documents along with any supporting files (images, brand guildelines, design concept etc) – and upload them here. - Please email me to alert me that you have uploaded files, as this folder is not consistently monitored.