Banner advertising

Banner advertising is one of the most popular advertising types in the Internet. Banner is an icon of the advertised good or service, and this icon serves as a link to the corresponding site.

Nowadays there are two main types of banner advertising:

• ordinary banner advertising
• participation in banner exchange network

In the first case, advertisers just pay for their banner advertising placement on a site. The banner advertising cost is determined by the site owner, where the banner will be placed and usually the cost is determined for 1000 banner shows. Advantage of banner advertising is that it is one of the quickest ways to deliver information about your site to users and provide increase of target visitors number. However, the main disadvantage is that the target visitors inflow stops immediately as soon as the payment for the banner disposal is stopped. That is the reason to use banner advertising mostly at the beginning of site promotion process.

In case your banner has entered a banner exchange network, you will provide place at your site for banners of other network participants. By showing these banners you will earn shows of your banner. The network owner sets up a commission for the participation that is usually about 10 – 15%. Thus, in case at your site there were shown 1000 banners of other participants of the banner exchange network, you will earn 850 – 900 your banner shows at their sites. This commission is used by the network owner for showing paid advertisements and extra promotion of the banner exchange network participants.

Nowadays there are lots of banner exchange networks: small and huge ones. Huge banner networks are usually divided into sub-networks according to their topics. Every sub-network is an independent project and is very little connected to other sub-networks. In the Russian part of the Internet the biggest banner exchanging network is RLE network. Due to statistics there are 35 – 55 millions shows daily. TBN is a big banner exchange network which includes a lot of sub-networks. In TBN there are 5 – 25 millions banners shown daily.

The main characteristic of banner advertising efficiency is CTR (click through ratio) which means balance between clicks on the banner and its shows. The higher CTR is, the more frequent the banner show is. As the Internet only started its development as a global network, the normal CRT was 1 – 2%, however, nowadays for highly competitive spheres, the norm of CRT turned to be 0,3 – 0,5%.

Earlier, banners usage used to be the main method for the site advertising, however, now banner advertising got to be less popular due to the Internet development and other advertising methods appearance. By the way, this fact doesn't mean that this way of advertising should fall into oblivion. Correct management of banner advertising campaign can still bring high profits to advertisers in the process of their Web-sites promotion.