Banner ads
Summary Description They're on most Web pages we
view, but where do they come from? Newswire's 5 Minute Guides
looks at the Web banner advertising industry.
Author
Publication
Roullas Top10 Simon Vandore
Newswire
No
Editorial InformationArticle Location
http://www.newswire.com.au/0006/5mg15.htm
Article Topic 5 Minute Guides, Advertising
Story Order
Story Group 000618
Post Date 15/06/2000 08:04 AM Status Posted Entered by Simon
Vandore on 14/06/2000 06:53 PM
ImagesLead Picture
Heading Image
Content
Introduction
They're on most Web pages we view, but where do they come from?
Newswire's 5 Minute Guides looks at the Web banner advertising
industry.
Body
How does online advertising work?
There are many ways to advertise on the Web, but the most popular
is the clickable banner advertisement, normally measuring 468
pixels by 60 pixels.
Banner advertising is usually priced on a 'cost per thousand page
impressions' basis, known as CPM. Measurement software counts the
number of times a page is served and advertisers buy a package
based on a guarantee that x thousand page impressions will occur
while the ad is displayed. For example, if a Web site charges
$1,000 per banner ad and guarantees 20,000 page impressions,
people will talk about a CPM of $50 ($1,000 divided by 20).
An alternative, older pricing model is 'cost per click' or CPC,
where advertisers pay host sites a few cents each time someone
clicks on the relevant banner ad.
What about affiliate programs?
Some sites also favour referral schemes, or affiliate programs,
over the standard Web advertising models. For example, if someone
clicks on a banner ad promoting an online store and buys a
product, the store might pay $10 to the site which hosted the ad.
However, unless such a referral takes place, the ad is hosted
free of charge.
Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) makes it possible to see which
site referred someone, so this type of scheme is relatively easy
to measure. Referral payments are particularly popular with porn
sites, which all tend to promote each other and pay commission to
the relevant site owner when a referred person signs up.
What constitutes a successful ad?
For an ad to be successful, it has to generate a high
'click-through' percentage. That is, the ad must entice visitors
to the host site to click on it and claim as many of the
impressions as possible. However, some of the most successful ad
campaigns in click-through terms are also some of the most
deceitful -- those which contain false text entry fields or
yes/no buttons that actually constitute a click on the ad when
the user tries to access them.
For advertisers, the prime position on a Web page is at the top,
perhaps even in a frame which remains at the top while a person
scrolls through pages. What happens after the click is also
important, as many people will simply hit the 'back' button at
the first opportunity. Often a person clicking on a banner ad is
taken to a 'jump page' or 'splash page' -- an arrival point on
the advertiser's site which relates specifically to the content
of the ad, or the type of person assumed to be arriving from the
referring site.
Note that page impressions are not the same as 'hits' on a Web
site. A page impression constitutes a unique (or repeat) visitor
to the site, whereas a hit is simply the serving of one item (a
graphic or text file) to a visitor. Web pages are made up of
multiple elements, so one page impression can result in several
hits.
How does ad serving work?
Most large sites form a relationship with an Internet ad serving
company. The world's biggest is DoubleClick, which acts as the
advertising agency for more than 1,500 of the Web's busiest
sites, such as AltaVista and Dilbert.
Under this system, when someone accesses a site, they also
automatically request an advertisement from the advertising
agency's site (the HTML of the page tells the browser to do so).
The ad servers supply one which fits the perceived demographic
and it is slotted into the page. As long as both the client's
site and the advertising agency's site are up, the person doesn't
notice any difference. Clients of ad serving companies benefit by
outsourcing their advertising needs and gaining access to a
larger number of potential advertisers. In return, advertisers
have a single point of entry into the sites they want to target,
and receive statistics on the types of people clicking on their
ads, with detailed reports on the success or failure of their
campaigns.
Other Internet ad serving agencies include Engage Media and
Sabela.
What other types of Web advertising exist?
Beyond the banner ads, things can get pretty controversial. For
example, certain search engines offer companies 'keyword
advertising' which associates their name with searches for
specific topics. Some people find this offensive as it affects
the purity of search results, but companies have been known to
object to search engines 'abusing' their power in this way.
Perhaps the most annoying type of Internet advertising is the
'interstitial'. An interstitial (the word means 'in between')
interrupts your browsing in some way, such as by opening its own
browser window or making you look at another page before you have
access to what you really clicked on. Some adult sites have been
known to open multiple advertisement windows when trying to close
the first porn page accessed. Interstitials tend to take up
bandwidth and system resources that people would rather use for
their own purposes, instantly generating a negative reaction.
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Bulletin Summary5 Minute Guides: Banner ads
They're on most Web pages we view, but where do they come from?
Newswire's 5 Minute Guides looks at the Web banner advertising
industry.
WAP Summary
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5 Minute Guides: Banner ads
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