Do you want to increase your website traffic with online banner ads? If the answer is yes, then you have come to the right place. While almost anyone can create a standard banner ad that may or may not attract the attention of their target audience, it takes experience and skill to design a banner that demands to be clicked on.
Whether you are not happy with your banner CTR or you simply want to shake up your strategies a bit, below are five innovative ways to improve banner ads that promise to transform the way in which you advertise online.
1. Embrace rich media
Static banners are a thing of the past. If you want to stand out online when it comes to banner design, you need to embrace rich media and all that it has to offer.
If you are not familiar with the concept of rich media, let us enlighten you. Rich media ads are innovative digital ads that include features such as video, audio, and other creative elements. Designed to help your target audience engage and interact with your banner ads, rich media uses the full potential of HTML5 to deliver an unforgettable user experience.
Statistically, rich media banner ads have a 267% higher click-through rate than standard static banners. They also offer you the opportunity to avoid “banner blindness” and make your target audience sit up and take notice.
That being said, poorly designed rich media ads can reduce the overall performance, either by obstructing the content or slowing down the loading speeds. Therefore, it is recommended to use a digital advertising company that specializes in these types of programmatic creatives to help you get the results you want.
2. Use video
As briefly mentioned above, video offers a great way to drive clicks. In fact, video has been proven to perform nearly 20% better than a static image banner.
Video banners can also help to improve the overall user experience, which results in positive associations with your brand. If you are worried about video banners being too intrusive, you should know that in-banner video has evolved a lot and can now be easily scrolled past by the user if they do not want to watch it without affecting their online experience.
You can also ask a digital advertising company to help you take advantage of native video advertising. Native ads are a type of paid media that fit both the form and function of the user experience on the website where they are placed. Or, in simpler terms, they are ads that fit in and are more likely to be trusted by users.
3. Optimize for mobile
Creative mobile advertising is more important than ever before, yet again, like rich media, it can be hard to get right. If you want your display campaigns to be successful, then they need to work across all devices, including mobile phones.
You also need to think about what days of the week and times of the day people are most likely to be searching online on their mobile devices.
In terms of the creatives, users expect the online banner ads they see on their mobile phones to be just as exciting and innovative as they are on a desktop computer. A digital advertising company can help you to optimize your ads for mobile and ensure that your visuals are as vibrant as they can be.
4. Connect data feeds
Live data feeds can make even the most basic banner ad seem relevant and exciting. They enable you to showcase your latest brand information to your target audience, such as any new products you are launching or live offers that you have available.
Very popular in the iGaming industry, live data feeds are fairly easy to create and can be controlled via a CMP. A great tip is to combine live data feeds with retargeting, as this will enable you to show customers only the products and/or offers that are directly relevant to them.
5. Keep it simple
While you want to use all the latest innovations in creatives to make sure your ads stand out, when it comes to the message within them, you should aim to keep it simple.
One of the common mistakes that marketers make is trying to fit a brand’s entire story into one banner ad. It’s just not possible. Instead, you should aim to follow the KISS principle – Keep It Simple Stupid.
While this phrase originated in product design, it can be applied to many different contexts, including display ads. As you are probably already aware, the amount of space you have within an online banner is limited, so you have to be very selective about what you include.
If in doubt, stick to Google’s advice – keep it clear, concise, and compelling, and always include a CTA.
Author Bio
PadSquad is a digital advertising company wholly focused on high-impact creativity. We believe in humanizing the advertising experience, speaking to consumers as humans, not users. Our mission is to enable Brands to connect to people through more memorable advertising that stimulates the senses and inspires action. PadSquad is led by founder Daniel Meehan, an entrepreneur and change agent who began in publishing where it’s critical to deliver readers what they crave. Formerly, Dan was the founder and CEO of Haven Home Media, LLC, the first vertical content network in the Home & Garden category which sold to Reader’s Digest Association in 2011.
