Banner Advertising

Banner advertising was the first form of advertising to be used on the Internet.

The idea is very simple – an advert or ‘banner’ is placed on a website which the advertiser considers might be popular with the target market it is seeking to attract. If the person looking at the website in question clicks on to the advert he or she is taken to the advertiser’s website and the banner advert has done its job, especially if it leads to a sale!

Banner advertising is analogous to advertising in newspapers where a provider of goods or services targeting its wares at a target market similar to that of the paper’s readership might find it appropriate to advertise in that newspaper. In the same way a provider of goods or services who considers his its target market is, or may be, similar to visitors to a website might place a banner advert on that website.

Banner advertising enjoys the same advantages, and disadvantages, as traditional newspaper advertising. The advantages are that you know, or can reasonably assume, that visitors to certain websites might be interested to see your product, and a percentage could click onto your banner and hence be taken to your website.

The disadvantages are that you pay for your advertisement with no guarantee that it will be seen or read by anyone. The effectiveness of such advertising is difficult to assess or measure although it is possible to install software tools on your own website which can indicate the sources of web traffic to your website.

Banner advertising is now less popular than Pay-per-Click.