Stretching Your Banner Ad Dollars

When one thinks of advertising on the web one often thinks of “Google” and why not supposedly they are the best.

They are the biggest game on the court and they certainly are the most recognizable force in online advertising on the web.

From the paid search return links on the top of every search return page, to those little to big add blocks on all of our favorite online news papers. All of them blazingly sporting the “ads by Google” prefix.

So you may ask your self if you are going to make a banner add to promote something you deeply care about. Will you try to mock Google or go your own way?

Well there are benefits and caveats to both scenarios.

Let’s go over a couple shall we?

We will start with dissecting the “mock “Google ad.”

“Google adds” start with a basic idea that works really well for most people that idea is “standardization” it works well for web masters and graphic designers because the webmasters and the graphic designers know in advance of building a web page where and how the adds will be displayed.

Although you can go to Google and get more customized ad blocks for your site as a rule most people don’t seem to bother.

This standardization works great in two ways for “Joe the web surfer”, too.

On one hand he can see these standard blocks on a website and almost tune them out.

But, on the other hand, when he’s ready to shop he has learned almost instinctually where to click when he’s ready to buy what he wants.

Pavlov’s dogs never had it so good.

Therefore if you are looking for this kind of reaction in “Joe the web surfer public”, you could make a bundle of cash by targeting your ads to be displayed on sites that put “Joe” in the buying mood.

But what if you don’t have a website that you can put ads on which leads Joe to using your ad as the solution?

Then you will have to place your ads on pages that have a lot of visitors with interesting content.

In this case you need to scream to be heard. In this area of advertising on the web you can’t expect a sale from a banner ad because the website you are advertising on is supplying the answer to the customer already that he’s looking for. All you can hope for in this scenario is to make an impression and stand out.

The more Joe sees your name in his peripheral vision on this kind of web site the more likely he will instinctually learn to trust you when it comes for him to make a purchase.

Good luck, and spend your advertising dollars on the web carefully to get the highest rate of return.