Stereotypically, PPC is more widely known for displaying and advertising text links which consist of a structured headline, description and web address. Although these produce healthy CTRs, to gain better results in PPC, you can have the option of adding image adverts to your PPC campaign. Image adverts have much more of a potential to gain a higher CTR. You can display whatever you are trying to advertise much clearer with image adverts because you have more space to advertise in with less restrictions. Therefore, here are some things your image advert can include.
The first part to creating an image advert is choosing what size. The sizes range from:
- 336×280
- 330×250
- 428×60
- 728×90
- 250×250
- 200×200
- 120×600
- 160×600
- 300×600
There are the main types of advert sizes you can pick from. To gain best results (a high CTR), choose the largest adverts as these will attract the web users attention the most (giving the strongest possibility of gaining a click). For publishers of Adsense, they are recommended to display the 160×600, 336×280 and 728×90 adverts. However, a point to bare in mind is the level of competition with each ad size. If an ad size is known for being more successful, with it will come much more competition and a higher CPC. Therefore, you will need to balance your CPC with CTR.
After choosing the size advert you want, you will need to know what you want to include in your image advert:
- Headline – All image adverts will have a headline. This is usually the largest font on the advert and is the first bit of text the web user will read. Therefore, make it catchy and appealing.
- ‘Sort of’ description – This is optional (hence the ‘sort of’) whether you want to include this information now or let the web user find the information out after they click on the advert and land on the landing page. If you feel your headline does not give enough information about what you are trying to advertise, you may feel it is a good idea to include a sentence or even a few small bullet points about the benefits of what you are trying to sell.
- Click through button – Some of the good image adverts will include a button at the bottom of the advert such as the one below by Blurb. Although the button is not going to move when the mouse hovers over it, it encourages the web user to click on the button since it is a button and buttons have to be clicked. With the button, the web user knows much clearer that by clicking on the image will move him/her to a page on the content of the advert. It’s almost like the button is a subconscious a call to action.
The last bit you need to include in your image advert is a nice colour blend. Think of creating a PPC image advert for Adwords like creating a colour scheme for text adverts for Adsense.
- You can blend the colours together to produce a nice simple colour scheme.
- You can compliment two contrasting colours like Blurb have done above with orange and blue, to add a bit of colour to the advert without making it seem like it is trying to be as bright as possible to attract web user’s attention.
- You can contrast the colours completely although this is not usually the best option. Remember that your advert should reflect your brand image and you don’t want to make it seem like you are trying to grab the web user’s attention as cheaply as possible through bright contrasting colours.
There are the main points to creating an image advert to help start using image adverts in PPC.
