So let’s say you’re ready to start advertising your company on various websites, or perhaps even an ad network. Before we start discussing the best banner sizes, let’s first focus on the goals. A web banner is a graphical ad and thus you must immediately strive for a comfortable and enticing visual. Even if you are using a text only graphic, the colors and the font style should be eye grabbing and appropriate to both the website and your company.
What Are the Best Banner Sizes for Your Strategy?
Your strategy may also depend on whether you are using a CPM system or a CPC setup. CPM refers to Cost-Per-Mile, and refers to how many impressions your website is getting—and thus how much you’re paying for every one thousand impressions (or mile). This is a somewhat risky strategy, as you could be paying a lot of money for impressions that don’t lead anywhere. CPC refers to Cost-Per-Click which means you only pay for the clicks your ads get.
Naturally, both of these systems and your ultimate success will depend on quality banners. In general, it’s safe to say that banners need to feature catchy content and impressive imagery. The colors and graphics should be appealing to the eye and match the background of the website. Of course, unless you are creating a huge skyscraper banner, then it is best to keep text to a minimum. You are not writing a text ad but a banner ad, which ideally consists of very short text and a picture that speaks a thousand words.
The Best Banner Sizes by Pixel Size
Another area of concern is that you as the advertiser must ensure that you are placing your ads on relevant pages and on color-coordinated pages. The more related your message is to the website’s content the more likely visitors will click through to your landing page. It is best to focus on one product or service per banner rather than simply announcing your store (unless of course the content is a perfect match). Be sure to link the correct landing page so that you don’t waste the user’s time.
According to a recent study by Marketing Sherpa, the best banner sizes in terms of click response are 300 x 250 and 728 x 90. Surprisingly, the default size of 468 x 60 proved to be one of the least successful sizes. Larger ads proved more successful, and it was suggested that many users have trained their minds to ignore traditional banner sizes because of the ubiquity of these ads online.
Banner sizes are also partly determined by where on the page they are situated. Most webmasters state that banner ads look better at the top of the page, rather than farther down, as this is where users are most likely to look and click. There is clearly a debate among webmasters and designers as to whether bigger is better. While audiences are not necessarily opposed to viewing large ads, loading times, color mismatches and irrelevant content are still a major issue.
Only you can determine the best banner sizes for advertising purposes, based on what you know about the website or network you are working with.
