Accenture Digital Skills | DM_L2_V1_What_is_Banner_Advertising

So now let's talk about banner advertising. So first of all, what do I mean by banner advertising and what are

banners? Banner advertising is used by companies to push brand awareness around their products or services,

typically on a website or a mobile app. So usually a banner can be at the top or the side of a website or an app. And typically, it's
to the side of the main content and the purpose of that page or app that the user is using at the
time.

So giving you an example there, imagine you're typically on one of your favourite news websites or a sports

websites. Typically, obviously, the main content is in the middle, but actually you could see an eBay banner,

typically on the right or at the top, which is pushing various products that perhaps you've searched in the past.

So the intention of the banner is around driving traffic to the company's website. And that's actually sometimes

called click-throughs because what the user is doing is clicking on the banner and then being taken forwards to

the actual company's website.

Let's quickly talk about the pros and cons of banner adverts. So on the pro side, they're very visible, they're very

attractive, they're eye-catching, and they can really drew you in as a potential buyer and prospect. And also,

they're allowing you to target individual customers and actually measure, as well, which customers are actually

clicking through to your website.

On the con side, because of that attractive nature, they all use abundantly. They are used on almost every page

out there. And actually, that causes users to actually ignore them. So you've got this battle here between being

very appealing and quite dominant on the page, which actually causes users to be switched off by them.

A certain examples here have been, I've seen, where you can hover over a banner advert and it expands to take

up the whole page and starts playing a video and even audio. And it's very invasive in that sense. So you've got to

be careful and use them appropriately.

So let's talk quickly about what good looks like for a banner advert. Let's look at a few simple tips that hopefully will

make your life easier in designing one. So first of all, start with a very clear, concise message. It should be in a few

short words or sentences, a call to action, to the person who's actually seeing this banner. They should

understand at a glance, really, what you're trying to advertise, be it products or services, and what really they

need to do. It's not always actually click on the banner, although typically it will be.

Keep the iconography or the actual graphics, again, quite simple. Again, at a glance, the user or the visitor should
be able to understand what it means without having to really analyse it and draw their eye too much to it. Also, it shouldn't
attract too much attention away from the main content on the page because ultimately you are wanting

to place this banner on potentially other people's websites, and they're wanting to make sure it fits nicely perhaps

within their styles, as well.