Banner advertising is a form of advertising that has been around for tens, if not hundreds, of years and will be an important part to advertising for the future to come. Text adverts are severely limited by the amount of content that can be displayed, whilst having the obvious limitation of being in text form. With banner advertising and image adverts, a picture can, and usually does speak, a thousand words, simply because there is freedom within the constraints of the banner advert for the advertiser to put whatever they want.
Continuing this, here are some ways to go about designing an advertising banner that will gain clicks, regardless of the type of conversion you are looking for on the landing page.
 

Use Standard Banner Sizes

Although banner size success depends, in terms of PPC, on the competition vs amount of publishers that have such banner size units on their website, Google states that the most effective banner sizes are:

• 728×90 leaderboard
• 336×280 large rectangle
• 300×250 medium rectanle
• 300×600 half page

Albeit, this does all point towards the largest adverts (and, therefore, the adverts with the most exposure) to be the most successful. However, it is likely you are to gain the best results using one of the above size adverts.
 

Use a Button Call to Action

There are mainly two types of banner adverts. Those that are looking to promote a brand (and do not necessarily need clicking to achieve this) and those looking to convert (which generally need clicking on to do so).
The chances are that the vast majority will be with the second option, where they might want a sale, lead capture etc. to gain a conversion. In these cases, it is a good idea to have a button call to action. What this does on the banner advert is direct and make clear to the web user the action they are required to do to continue with the advert – i.e. a click onto the advert. Call to actions do this generally, and so do buttons. From this, combining the two together can produce great results.
 

Use Animations

As much as an image has the potential to speak a thousand words, animations can go that step further. It is recommended that your banner advert be an animation. This is because:

• It enables movement of your advert, which can help to grab the web user’s attention.
• You are able to display, potentially, more information in your advert than if it was just an image.
• Showing a simple process relating to your advert might be able to better explain what your advert is about.

However, animations come with a word of warning. Too much animation can work against the advert, making it appear ‘busy’ and confusing to the web user. Therefore, if you are to implement animations and motion into your advert, make it subtle at first and increase with the aid of A/B testing.