Click tips from bmj.com on Building Better Banners
| Most of the following is to be found in a very useful book, available from amazon.co.uk:Advertising on the InternetRobbin Zeff, Brad Aronson John Wiley & Sons Inc.ISBN: 0471344044Click on the image of the book cover on the right to find out more |  |
Advertisers can precisely measure the response to their banner advertisement via the click-through reports available from our Realmedia™OpenAdStream™ advertisement server. This tracking capability can help advertisers to continually test new banners to see if they will achieve higher response rates.)
Presuming that strict compliance to the ABPI Code of Practice is observed, inclusion of 'intended for health professionals' and direct link availability of prescribing information (for brand banners), here are some hints for creating responsive banner advertisements:
Pay attention to placement. Some sites will outperform others for an advertiser. The more focused a site is on the target audience, the better the response. In addition to finding a focused site, advertisers should pay particularly attention to finding the best pages within a site. Performance on two pages of the same site can differ enormously.
Chart frequency -how often a particular user sees a particular ad. According to research performed by DoubleClick and I/Pro, users are most likely to respond the first one to two times they see a banner ad. Response drops significantly after the second time.
Call to action. Why should users click on the banner? How will they benefit? What might they gain? Without a reason to click, there is no incentive for a user to leave a publisher's Web site. The incentive should be relevant to the site on which you're advertising. "Free" works well, but you won't always get the most qualified audience.
Add "click here" to your banners". Banners with "click here" consistently pull better than those without. There will always be new users of the Web, many of whom won't know where to click. This may also explain why some advertisements have a better response rate when there is hyperlinked text underneath the ad. Hypertext links signal to even the newest users that something is clickable.
Create a sense of urgency. Give users a reason to "click now".
Do not use too much text. Encourage users to look at the banner with a simple offer and design. Seven words, or less is considered quite enough to be able to entice the viewer to Click Thru, however this is not logistically possible if including a drug name.
Incorporate animation. The banner is a small portion of the Web page, and there are a lot of other graphics and text competing for a user's attention. Animation makes a banner stand out, however too much animation can create annoyance.
Try HTML and rich media banners. Rich media banners tend to have higher click-through rates. So, as bmj.com also accepts rich media, give it a try.
Make good use of colours. Use colours that stand out. These will differ depending on the colours used by the site on which you are advertising. Banners emulating bmj.com brand colours, or styles, will not be accepted.
Rotate banners. Using multiple banners throughout a campaign almost always increases response.
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