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Are Banners Dead?
 By James D. Brausch
©2004 All Rights Reserved
We've all heard the rumor that banners are dead. We've heard that the click-thru rate averages somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5% or so. We've also heard that conversion ratios after clicking a banner are much lower than via a text link. Is this all true? Should we just give up on banners completely in favor of text links?
I thought so for a while. I kept pledging to stop creating banners for my sites. After all, I knew (with some exceptions to the numbers) that the above rumor is generally true. It has been this way for more than two years now. While I was creating banners for a new site last week, I had to ask myself why I was doing it.
Here is the answer: I had to. Although I agree that text links are much better than banners, I still create banners because I would simply miss too many opportunities without having them. Let~s take a few examples of where I use banners to this day (even though I agree that text links are better):
1) I include them on a page on my site giving examples for how to exchange links with my site. Yes; text links are listed first, but lots of people want banner exchanges. I would lose out on those links if I didn't have banners. So; We create a 468X60, 125X125, 120X60 and 88X31 banner for every single site I own. It's part of our standard procedure.
2) Paid banner advertising. There are some select places where I really want to get my message out. I'm willing to pay for a link in those places. The problem is that the owners of those sites only spin banners. They have no provision for a text link.
3) Affiliate programs/networks. Just like #1 and #2, not having banners available is going to make you lose out on tons of potential affiliates who want banners.
I'm pretty sure those are the only places I still use banners, but you can see that I really do need them even though they don't perform as well as text links... or do they?
Although I generally use conventional banners for the link exchange page, I have starting using rather unconventional banners for my paid advertising and affiliate programs. What's unconventional about them? They look just like text links. That means, they end up performing just like text links.
Here's how I do it:
- 1) I open up Front Page Express.
- 2) I insert a table the size of the banner I want to create (468 X 60 or 125 X 125, etc).
- 3) I type my message into the table. I mark some text and turn it into a hyper-link... Just like I would if I was creating a real text link.
- 4) When it~s a perfect text link, I hit the preview button. This shows me the web page with the text link I just created.
- 5) I click the Print Screen button to save a copy of the screen on the clip board.
- 6) I open up my favorite graphics program (Corel Photo Paint) and paste the screen image from the clipboard.
- 7) Now it's just a matter of trimming around the text link to the right sized banner and saving it.
There... Now you have a banner that performs just as well as a text link.
AMES D. BRAUSCH
, is the Vice President of Marketing for Target Blaster, Inc., an Internet Marketing firm specializing in targeted traffic.
http://www.TargetBlaster.com
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