UKNM: RE: UKNM Banner Ads

[Richard Martin]

Hi chaps,


In my humble opinion, Russell certainly has a point when he says banners can

be used to achieve most objectives. The point is that you must nail that

objective down before you go ahead and plan your campaign.  In the meantime,

here are a few points to keep the ball rolling:


- Online advertising remains the cheapest accountable method of reaching a

large audience.


- The average response rate for a DM campaign is 1% and no one is talking

about abandoning that despite the (comparatively) high costs and the

public's distaste for mailing lists and junk mail.


- Clickthrough rates are yesterdays news; Post click tracking and post

impression tracking will give you a far better idea of the effectiveness of

your campaign and also allow you to help your client improve their site.


- GIF banners are also today's chip wrappers.  While not every user has the

necessary plug ins for rich media (these punters can be served GIF

alternatives) new shapes, sizes and forms of execution deliver the cut

through to get you and your clients better results.  I'm not talking about

Novelty Island here, by the way.  Don't go for the gimmick just because

you've not seen it before unless it is clearly relevant, will add value and

doesn't promise things the destination site won't be able to deliver.


And now a short rant: The key point and one that seems to be happily

neglected by a great deal of marketers, is that banners require a lot of

thought.  It's too easy to bang out fifteen words of copy, stick it on some

garish colours and cross one's fingers; even the most simple execution

should be so only if it's the best or most cost effective way of getting

your client's message across and maintaining their brand values.  Online

campaigns should be the result of consideration over time.  Online

advertising should not be an afterthought.


Yours, with Seasons greetings


Richard


> I think you should mainly think of banner ads as being brand awareness

> building only, as click through rates are normally very low, you would

> certainly never expect any click through rate, let alone a

> high one for a

> run of network campaign, unless you had some extra-ordinary

> creative or a

> promise of cash funds for doing so!  Also most results from

> people visiting

> a site as a result of seeing the banner are not that traceable as many

> people may visit a site as a result of seeing a banner at a

> later date, but

> may not necessarily click on the banner.


> The highest click rates we've managed are 7% (very high) but

> that was highly

> targeted and that is really the key if you want to a high response.


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Lucy, I don't see how you can say that banners should just be awareness only

given we've had cases of over 20% click-through.  At the end of the day, it

simply depends on the overall objective, and then how you achieve that in

your planning and execution.  For fear of repeating myself from a previous

thread in this group - here's something I sent last week about click-through

vs awareness


Message cut due to tiresome case studies



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