Banner Ads

A banner ad is an advertisement that appears on the Internet. Banner ads vary considerably in size, shape, appearance, and subject matter, but all banner ads take you to the advertiser's Web site if you click on them.

Banner ads are made of hypertext markup language (HTML) that instructs a Web server to call a particular Web page when a user clicks on the ad image, ad text, or ad animation. Banner ads are different from television, newspaper, or radio ads because banner ads take the potential customer directly to the advertiser's Web site. Another difference between newspaper ads and banner ads is the possibility for animation. Banner ads are similar to newspaper ads in that banner ads stay in one place on a Web page.

The Internet Advertising Bureau specifies eight different banner sizes that vary in pixel dimensions. Most Web sites impose their own restrictions on memory size for banner ads in order to maintain a reasonable file size for the Web page. A larger banner ad increases the time it takes for a browser to load that Web page. The simplest banner ad features one static GIF or JPEG image linked to the advertiser's Web site. A more common type of banner ad is the animated GIF banner ad, which creates the effect of motion by displaying several different images in succession. The most complex banner ads use audio, video, or Java or Shockwave programming, which causes the Web page to have a larger file size.

The goal of banner ads is to lure the user to click on the ad that takes the user to the advertiser's Web site. Once the user is on the advertiser's Web site, the user [Page 53]would ideally purchase something. However, even if the user does not click on the banner ad, the advertiser hopes that the user will see the banner ad, and the ad will register in their minds. Perhaps the user will visit the advertiser's Web site in the future, or is more aware of the advertiser's product or service, or will tell others about the advertiser's product or service. This is also branding, where users are made familiar with an advertiser's product or service so that in the future the user may choose their product or service over a competitor's.

In regard to their political use, banner ads have been found on traditional and alternative news media Web sites, interest group Web sites, nonpartisan group Web sites, nonprofit organization Web sites, networking Web sites (e.g., http://MySpace.com), and popular Web logs. Politicians have also placed banner ads on other like-minded politicians' Web sites and party Web sites.

The advertiser will pay money to the Web site that is hosting the ad (publisher site). To measure banner ad success, advertisers look at the number of users who click on the banner ad (click-through), the number of users who view the page (page impression), the ratio of page views to clicks (click-through rate), and the amount of advertising money that is spent making one sale. Most advertisers consider all of these measures when deciding where to publish banner ads and when judging the effectiveness of a banner ad.

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