Thursday, March 5, 2009

Use Banner Advertising to Boost Your Website's Revenue

A banner ad or a web banner is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. Actually, this is one of the most highly sought out advertising on the web, and the competition is relentless. Its intention is to attract traffic to a website by linking the website to that of the advertiser. The banner ad is constructed from an image. Images are either wide and short, or tall and narrow and why they are referred to as banners.

The images are placed on web pages that contain similar content, and target the same general range of the community. Web banners are displayed when a web page that references the banner in loaded into the web browser. When the viewer clicks on the banner, the viewer is directed to the website that advertised the banner. This is known as the click through process, and the way online marketers make money.

When the advertiser scans their logfiles and finds that the web user visited the advertisers site from a specific content or affiliate site by clicking on the banner ad, the advertiser usually sends the provider a percentage of the profit. This is a huge market that continues to grow each day, and the limit to make huge streams of revenue is almost endless.

Web banners function the same way as many other marketing methods used today. They notify consumers of the product and service, and try presenting convincing reasons as to why the consumer should purchase the item. All web banners may be tracked and monitored, so you can see which ones are generating profits and which ones are losing you money. The whole key to web banners is to target the viewers interest, and exploit niche areas.

Banner advertising can be an effective method of driving targeted traffic to websites and generating huge profits. Learning to exploit specific niche areas and find relevant keywords of interest to general communities can make your banner advertising experience a well worth one. Using this method can make you a consistent stream on revenue.

Online Ads - A Guide For Buyers

Easy and fast accessibility of the internet helps the people in acquiring information of different products at timely intervals. Online classification is an appealing form of advertisement.

Looking for a used car to buy? Or want to buy a house in your favorite location? Which service will be best for you? Or which fitness equipment is more useful for you? The answer to all these questions can be found at one place, which is called as online classifieds. This is online version of the classifieds where you can find everything that you need. Just like the conventional classifieds, online classifieds hold a huge collection of advertisements of various products and services.

Features Of Online Classifieds

1) Online classifieds is such a place where you can find everything you need. A large number of sellers across the world register with such websites. That is why you can view various products on the internet which are not available in your own country.

2) Large number sellers put up their advertisement on such websites. Hence, there is a competition between them to attract customers. In order to achieve this, they provide discounts and various other offers to the customers. This is a great opportunity for the buyer. If searched properly, one can even get best deals that are impossible in the real life market.

3) The online classifieds are similar to the online shops. However, the online shops and stores display only consumer products for sale. On the other hand, online classifieds display advertisements of consumer products, business services, sale of real estate apartments and many such things. This is like a one- stop - shop for the users like you.

4) If you want to buy a used car, then online classifieds is the only place where you can hundreds of advertisement related to this. There are some automobile dealers which put up the ads here. Here you can get the best buys for the used cars. Sometimes you can get better deals offered by the owners of the cars as well. You can see numerous individual ads of used cars from the car owners in online classifieds.

5) Buying objects and services from online classifieds is most convenient. This is because; you don't have to shop around the town to search for the best buys. You simply click on several ads and compare the prices to the get the best.

6) The procedure of buying products from online classifieds is extremely easy. One simply needs to fill up the form provided with every product, fill up the details and they pay through your credit cards.

7) You can confirm about the product and the seller by contacting him on the contact number given with the advertisement. This way you can check with the authenticity of the seller.

8) You can even search for the local classifieds site by state and city featuring employment jobs. This is the easiest way to search for a good job.

These are some of the features of the online classifieds. With the help of these features you can start surfing these websites. You never know that a good deal may just a click away.

Get Your Banner Header Working For You

Because your banner header runs right across the top of every page of your website, it's an absolutely huge part of your branding. And because it's generally the first element of your page that catches your website visitor's eye, it needs to be relevant, attractive and memorable.

If you can engage strong target market recognition through your banner header, it sends out the immediate message to your target market visitors that this is a website worth taking a look at. This is a website that has something really interesting to offer. This THE website for them!

* You don't have to get a lot of fancy design work done...

Logos used to come in the form of an image that accompanied the name of your business on letter headers and business cards. In the web world nowadays, it's not so much about having a standalone logo as about the whole logo/banner effect.

Believe it or not, you don't actually have to get a lot of fancy design work done. Your logo/banner can simply be your business name in a distinctive font and colour. By consistently using the same combination of font, colour and wording at the top of every page of your website, you can create recognisability.

* But you do need to make sure you are consistent

What if you have a banner, but it's not consistent across every page of your website? Well I'm sure you will already have justifications for this... maybe you're offering different products or distinguishing between different parts of your business. But I believe that it's counter-productive to use different looks for different parts of your website. If you want to do that, you should have separate websites altogether.

It's important that your visitors identify strongly with what they see on your website. If they keep being presented with different images and messages, how will they recognise your business when they encounter it again?

* Add a strap line

To add an extra element of market identification to your banner header, you can also include a strap line. One that says loud and clear what market you cater for, in terms of either the results you achieve or who you work with.

While the key information in your banner header is your business name, the strap line allows visitors to assess at a glance whether this is a website that has something relevant and interesting to offer them.

The best strap lines catch the imagination immediately, so it's worth sitting down and scribbling out lots of ideas before you pick one. Try them out on your friends and family - see what their response is. And even more relevantly, ask your current clients what they think (assuming they fall into your target market - otherwise it might not be such a wise move!).

Most coaches use a strap line that goes something like: 'Life and leadership coach'. Hardly inspiring! Or they get so generalised that it's all but meaningless. For example: 'Expanding potential' or 'Powerful coaching for growth'. Good strap lines go back to their target market for inspiration.

3 Effective Ways to Make the Most of Your Banner Ads

Banner ads have been around for almost 20 years and are a very standard part of the Internet any more. They have been standardized in many ways though, adhering to careful rules about site advertising, costing a lot more than they used to, and requiring quite a bit of flare and imagery to capture the doggedly jumpy attention of the Internet masses. So, how do you make extra money online with a banner ad? You make sure to follow the three steps outlined below to optimize how it looks and performs:

  1. Split Test Your Banner Ads - Always have a series of banner ads to work with so that you can learn which ones perform better and which ones are a drain on your budget. Run two of them at a time in similar demographics if possible (AdWords makes this easiest) and see which ones makes you the most extra money. Constantly revise and look for ways to increase CTR and conversions this way.
  2. Carefully Integrate Text with Images - Banner ads are flashy - that's what they're for, but you need to have enough text to tell your potential customers what they're even looking at. Do this by integrating some text and images together to showcase both your visual identity and a little description of what you are selling or doing to draw their attention.
  3. Have a Call to Action - To truly make extra money online though you need to have a call to action in every banner ad you place. Too many times have I seen banner ads that are flashy enough and attention grabbing but make little or no sense. Sure, there are plenty of people who will click on those just to see what you're selling, but more will ignore them because they see them as fishing lures to a random site they probably won't be interested. Know how to identify your visitors' needs and convey that in your banner ad as simply as possible.

When you do all three of these things, you not only draw the attention of more people to your banner ad, you ensure that you keep it held tightly and that when they click on your ad, they are aware of where they are visiting and you are not wasting your valuable advertising budget. Done right banner ads are a tremendous tool and you will start to make extra money in no time.

Easy Ways to Generate Traffic With Banners

Banner ads are a tremendous tool for your online business and will help you make extra money online quickly if you know the basic tenets for how they operate, how people see them, and how you can format them more effectively. But, they can also be a drain on your budget if you are not careful, so let's take a look at what works and what doesn't work when you start creating new banner ads for your site:

What People Want to See

People want to see things that are going to help them, entertain them, or give them something. A banner ad needs to convey at least one of those three things and if you're really good, it will convey two or three of them.

To make extra money online, you need to showcase in your ad something you think your specific audience will need. Some markets use flash type games, others use free offers, and others still just tell the truth and show them what you're selling. Whatever you do though, you need to be sure that what you showcase in your ad is something that your potential customers will be intrigued enough to click on and read more about.

On the flip side, stay away from cheap tricks to get new visitors. When someone is tricked into clicking something, they are much less willing to give you the benefit of the doubt at your site. Instead, you should create leading ads. Promise something free or entertaining and when they arrive, continue to showcase that promise as you lead them toward your product.

This will ensure that you not only generate new traffic to make extra money online, but that you do not waste that new traffic by scaring away or angering all that new traffic you just paid for.

The Goal to Effective Traffic Boosting

If you want to be effective in boosting your traffic, creating a more pleasing banner ad, and ensuring that they not only click on your ads each time through but that they are not disappointed by what they find, you need to integrate both catchy imagery and unifying text. Together, you will find that these two things will create a symbiotic relationship that will entice hundreds of people to check out your site that might otherwise have passed. You'll make extra money, they'll find a good product and everyone will ultimately be very happy.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Contextual Display Advertising - For Many Advertisers, Context is King

Contextual can mean different things to different marketers. Whatever it means, it's a way to drive return on investment in advertising.

More specifically, for some, contextual means search advertising.

When Google unveiled its AdWords platform in the year 2000, a new opportunity in contextual advertising was born. After users entered a query, they would now be shown a relatively unobtrusive ad in the right hand column that was contextually relevant to their request. For example, if the user said "new car", contextual display ads would be shown from advertisers from automobile advertisers.

What a boon to advertising! Here was a unique opportunity to capture the consumer as they were researching and preparing to buy any particular product. In marketing speak, this was near the bottom of the purchase funnel - just before the consumer strikes. And, the simplicity of tracking purchases online made it easy to justify ad campaign budget and resulted in driving marketing to new levels of success.  

Search advertising isn't the only contextual opportunity and it just so happens Google is the leading player in another online contextual advertising marketplace.

Known to webmasters as Google's AdSense platform and begun in 2003, website owners could sign up put a small snippet of Google AdSense code into the HTML of their web pages. When the web page loads in the user's browser, an ad is shown.

At first it was only text ads, and Google has since added graphical display ads. What's significant for publishers and marketers alike was that each text or graphical display ad was contextual. If the site was about sports, Google's AdSense technology would show sports display advertising. If it was about home decoration products, it would show - you guessed it - ads from home decoration marketers.

Other contextual advertising opportunities are also available online. Whereas Google's technology reads a page and determines the appropriate ad via a bot, some online ad networks have grouped similar sites together into contextual blocks, such as finance websites, and repackaged them to marketers. Specific Media, Advertising.com and Valueclick are a few of the names you may have heard of.


Banner Advertising Secrets - How to Place Simple Banner Ads For Tidal Waves of Traffic

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.

Here is how to place simple banner ads for tidal waves of traffic:

Step #1: Create Your Banner Creative

To get this method of advertising to work, obviously you need an ad that works! I find that the best kinds of ads are not actually graphic ads in the sense of the word - but text ads. In other words, create a graphic, but only put text in it! People have been conditioned to ignore graphic ads, but when they see a prominent text link, they will click on it. Want to create ads that are almost guaranteed to work? Take your copy from other places where you are getting good results (such as perhaps your signature file on forums, pay per click ads etc), and plug the same text into your ad!

Step #2: Find Banner Networks To Advertise In

Now it's time to find some networks to place your ad in. The one I'm using is AdBrite, but there are other networks like Tribal Fusion, Blue Lithium and of course Google AdWords Image Ads! Google's Image Ads basically works like normal AdWords ads, except you get to place banners to work alongside your text ads.

Step #3: Track And Test

Consistently track and test your campaigns. Create alternative banners to 'compete' against your own banners, so that you will know which ads perform best for you. Spend more money on campaigns that work, and dump those that don't.