How to Know if Your Banner Ad is Successful
You may already have a banner ad campaign designed or about to be deployed. Now is a good time to consider once again what your original marketing goals for your ads were.
Take a moment to click over and read Calvert Creative’s recent post called 6 Easy Tips for Successful Banner Ads, or simply check through the following list to make sure you already have the majority of the basics covered:
- Your file size is small, and your banner is the correct size for the site
- Your message is not overly complex
- You have the best banner ad placement you can afford, preferably above the fold
- Your banner ad will be placed with relevant content
- You are using animation if possible
- Your ad leads to a relevant place within your website, and delivers on the promises you set up in the message on your banner.
Now the two main things you are interested in achieving with your banner ad marketing have to do with click-throughs and brand awareness, but there are several other measurements that you may be looking at that are related.
Impressions or views
This is how many times your ad is served up on the page where it resides. It doesn’t mean someone actually saw your ad (particularly if it’s placed below the fold), but it does indicate the possibility. Impressions are a measure of exposure, and sometimes ad networks will sell space based on cost-per-impression, or CPM. Impressions are one of the easiest things to measure, but they don’t always give you a good read on the success of your banner ad.
Click-throughs
Click-throughs mean that your banner has successfully enticed a viewer to take a deeper look at what you’re offering and has clicked on your ad. Space on some ad networks is sold on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis rather than CPM.
Click-through rate
The click-through rate or CTR is a percentage of total visitors to a page to the number of people who clicked on the ad. Typically this rate is fairly low, and may not be more than one percent.
Cost per sale (CPS)
You will want to track what percentage of your click-throughs lead to a sale. This is a more complex number to get sometimes because it can encompass so many different factors, but it’s important to make an effort at organizing this information so that you know how much money your business is spending in order to make a sale.
Brand awareness
Most of your marketing efforts will bring you brand exposure, but of all the different stats you might measure, this one can be the most difficult to quantify and celebrate. For banner ads, you might simply count the impressions, but if your banner ad is being served in a location where you don’t have much of your target audience represented, you might not be getting anywhere with brand awareness, even with a high CMP.
Always take the time to test, measure, and evaluate your marketing efforts so that you can continue to refine your strategy. Need help getting started? Contact Calvert Creative today and see how we can help your business grow.
