Bringing Advertisers & Publishers Together

Where in your webpage layout should you leave room for advertising? Ready made banners are offered by almost all affiliate programs and affiliate program networks for immediate download or code copying, but where to place them on your website for the most click thru’s? The important thing you need to do to achieve higher click through rates and higher conversion rates is in placing your banners in a very smart way. Ad Placement Should Always Be Above The Fold? Many studies have shown that ads placed above the fold are seven times more effective than those that are displayed below the fold. This is a huge margin and one that should be taken notice of by all publishers when designing their websites. Many ad networks already have this placement as a requirement before you will be accepted as a publisher. Repetition Works? It’s a proven fact that Ads shown to users more than seven times were 12-14 times more effective, however, when over saturation occurs, then the interest of the user falls – so it is recommended that advertisers should cap the number of ads shown per user. The First Ads That Users Are Shown Are The Most Effective? Banner blindness is something we have to contend with, while the CTR averages remain around the 0.2% mark for online display advertising. If your ad is one of the first few shown, users are much more likely to click through on that ad. Banner blindness becomes more of a problem as the viewers browsing session continues. The success or failure of affiliate banner advertising and banner click through rates ( CTR ) is based on where your banner is displayed, the banner format you have chosen, how it is worded and the marketing power of the advertiser´s product as well as the the banners colours and style. In a recent study, website visitors looked at 52% of banner ads that contained text only while 52% of visitors also viewed banner ads that had images and their text separate. Viewers also visited 51% of sponsored links on search-engine pages. Ads that displayed text on top of the images received less attention. In general, people in the study saw 36% of the ads on the pages they visited. Example of an eye-tracking heatmap that shows where users looked at different parts of a Web page. Eye tracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern, two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe. Areas where users looked the most are colored orange, the yellow areas indicate fewer fixations. Gray areas didn’t attract any fixations. Some points to note… Visitors are more likely to look at images of an object set against a very simple background than against a crowded one. Visitors tend to look more at images of a single object (26%) than at images with multiple objects. (20%). Visitors look at unrelated images just 14 percent of the time. The more an ad looks like a native site component, the more users will look at it. Banners of larger size are more likely to create more clicks. Do not choose banners that use excessive animation. Banners that are asking questions encourage visitors to interact with the banner. Use fast loading banners only. Banners should never be more than 12kb in size.