Do online banner adverts still work?

Cast your mind back 5 years and it seems that people were clicking on online banner ads for fun! - not anymore. Why is this?

Does the banner now fall undr the term of 'traditional media' or is it just a little tired.

I have been running and uploading banner adverts for online companies for around 10 years and there seems to be a definite shift in the way people look at banner advertising these days.

It now seems that static banners with simple messages actually create better responses than complicated animations. 

Any thoughts?

I am not totally sure whether online banner is affective or not . At times I feel the success of online banners would depend on the nature of advertisement. Recently I have been influenced by an online banner to apply for a credit card. I know for many the use of credit card is part of life especially when you are getting it for 12 months 0% interest free. Without seeing the banner online, I may not have the incentive to approach a bank to use its facility.  I understand that my experience is not alien to most of the readers here. I feel online banners can be useful but this would depend on the nature of the advertisment. As long the banner looks easy to read, the success of the product would also be great.

I think that banner ads were given a bad name by stupid banner ads run on most websites by the adservers. The choice of who's ads the adserver is hosting is probably a question to be asked, and once again I'm not sure that there is complete control of when and where your banner is going to appear.

 Website with great banners, showing the possibilities that exist.

http://www.bannerblog.com.au/ 

If I go to a website I seem to completely ignore any banner ads appearing and just focus on the actual content of the site. I could not tell you what banner ads i've seen in the past because i've never ever clicked on them and hence don't remember any...

So to me the banner ads are a waste of time, but perhaps other people do click on them? Maybe a survey is the way to go? You can put me down as a "No, I don't click on them".

Interesting Jacquie. I don't think you are alone, although I think it is almost a sub-concious effort (if that makes any sense) for use not to click on banners. The simple banner ads that actually relate to material and content on the page, as well as a design that blends in with the surroundings and colour scheme of the site seem to work best. A lot of network ads are served incorrectly these days and that doesn't help.

There's another thread over on the digital forum asking the exact same question.

As I said over there, of course they don't "work" in the current climate. 

Research from ADTECH last year showed that click rates in March 2007 were, on average, just 0.18%, down from 0.33% in 2004.  In more mature markets, like Finland and Denmark, rates are even lower at 0.11% and 0.09%.

Targeting and relevancy help uplift response rates, (up to 250%) but no one in digital really seems to understand how you might go about that, from what I can tell.  

In their rush to tell us they've taken over the universe, the digital people seem to have forgotten all the basics of selling.  "But look it moves!"     

Given the right knowledge and expertise, with people asking the right questions, banner advertising can surely work better.

But right now, it's basically useless. 

I head up digital for an agency and also use to sell banner ads as sales director of an internet sales house so I come with a 'two sided view' on banner ads.  I suppose the real question is what constitutes 'working' and this is likely to be different from client to client.  There's no question click through rates were dropping from their initial introduction but I feel thats as much to do with the format as the rush by the web sites to monitise their traffic by adding 2,3,4,5 banners to each page and increasing the clutter on a page.  If a CTR of .18% delivers revenue of x% and thats a profitable figure the CTR is irrelevant - its the conversion rate that is vital and the banner is only a small part of that equation.

Short answer for me is yes they still work but with the basic premise that the message is relevant to the audience - right message, right time, right person (this will be horribly familiar to anyone with an offline background).  The behaviour targeting that is being developed will help here but crap creative will deliver crap results.

I can't agree with Mike Middleton that they have never worked - the issue has been people judge them purely on their click through rates and fail to measure the influence of the banners post the click or fail to evaluate the branding impact of a banner.  If this was press advertising you can bet your bottom dollar it would have research behind the campaign to measure effectiveness.  I still fail to understand why clients invest nothing in understanding what users take out of their online banner advertising - if they did then overlays and pop ups etc would cease to exist I'll wager.

I think Damien has a point with 'look it moves' - quite often agencies create ads that do things becuase they want them to - not becuase it makes sense to the user.  A new technology comes out and that becomes the creative idea - users will not give a flying frack that its a clever use of Flash 9 or a full page video overlay only that this message gets in the way of the task they were looking to perform.

Ultimately, in my opinion, the banner format will remain with us for some time to come and the focus will switch to the conversion metrics and brand impact.  If advertisers can influence sites to reduce their advertising clutter then that too will make a significance difference to users experience and advertising performance.

The problem with banners is you get so many on a page that they all scupper each other's chances of being read.

One banner stands a chance, if it's relevant and gets straight to the point with a strong benefit

We've trialled a few online ads in the last few months and had more response from them than ads in newspapers.

I think the key is simple, rather than overdo the ad with trying to force every single sales message to it, it needs to be short and catchy. The ad is purely to stimulate interest in your product and to get the customer to click through to find out more information.

 I agree, online ads are now mostly made up several of them on the screen, with most of them selling useless products like ebooks, or get rich schemes.

It should work almost as well as the offline world if it's one eye-catching advert that's promoting a product that's related to the page they're on.

I don't believe there's any loss compared to the good old days where more people clicked on ads casually if they weren't buying something anyway.

Some online banner ads are still really successful, take the Pringles one for example.

One thing that almost no one knows about banner advertising is that it can still be immensely profitable, if done right. What is banner advertising? It is the process of placing banners that advertise your offers on sites that usually get lots of traffic. If you target your ads right, it can be a reliable source of visitors for you.

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