You are probably familiar with banner ads - you know them, those square or rectangular windows that pop up when you enter a website. Such banner ads will promote a product or service and ask you to click on them. That is advertising with banner ads at its simplest.

But there is more to advertising with banner ads, because many different factors come into play when a person sees your banner ad. One could be the pressing need or want of the person when it comes to your product or service. Another could be the type of recall generated by the name of your brand. Third could be the physical condition of the person at the time he saw your banner ad - for example, if he was tired from work, it would be unlikely that he would spend much time reading your banner ad. This is why many banner ads may get ignored, or at best merit a quick glance then nothing follows.

How to make your banner advertising campaign more effective?

It is best to follow certain rules of thumb to make your banner ads more effective at drawing in visitors to the website of the advertiser:

1. Use a banner ad that is not too big. The bigger your banner ad is, the slower the time it takes for the server to load the webpage. In the amount of time needed to load the webpage, the visitor may have become bored or irritated and gone on to another website.
2. Try not to use very obscure content for your banner ad. A simple banner ad that sends its message straight to the point may be better than a very complicated banner ad whose meaning is too vague or complex to understand.
3. Animated ads serve a double purpose (that static ads may not) - they entertain the viewer, and they are informative as well. So use animation when possible.
4. Banner ads are at their best when they are placed at the top of the host website. This way, they are the first window of content to be seen by the site visitors.
5. Create a link between your banner ad and the particular page of your website where you advertise and sell your product or service. This saves the visitor a lot of time looking for the right place to click on your home page.
6. In connection, you should promote your product or service on the banner ad itself - which is why many banner ads are so big, so they can contain so much relevant information.
7. Speaking of relevance, it is best to post your banner ads on websites or web pages that have content related to the product or service you are offering. For example, if you are selling a brand of soap, then why not post your banner ad on a webpage devoted to home care? Little things like this create an association in the minds of your visitors, so that later they will correlate your product or service with what they need.

Follow these general guidelines and hopefully more people will be drawn to your banner ads in the future.

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