A banner advertisement is typically a rectangular-shaped ad on a web site that’s placed above, below, or on the sides of the site’s main content and is hyperlinked to the advertiser’s web site. Banner ads are usually JPEG or GIF file formats, but can also be Macromedia Flash or other “Rich Media" formats.

Does this sound Greek to you? If so, you’re definitely not alone - learning about different forms of advertising for your web site can seem overwhelming – you might feel like the learning process never ends. But in this series of articles about banner advertising for beginners, you’ll learn as much as possible so you too can use banners for your local business.

Banner ads are a great way to promote your web site on various other web sites. If you frequent the Internet, you most likely come across banners everyday but probably don’t realize how easy it is to use them for your own web site promotion.

Banner ads can be static or animated images. A static banner ad consists of a picture or words that do not move or change, and an animated banner consists of text and images that can change or move; typically animated “GIF"s – a type of image file.

Both types of banner ads contain a link that, once clicked on, allows the end user to visit a web site or a “landing page" – a stand-alone page that usually asks the user for some personal or contact information or encourages them to purchase a good or a service (I’ll discuss the best ways to direct internet traffic from banner ads in later articles).

For example, if you own a pet store and you have a static image of puppies or fish with some text that encourages an end user to click on it – for a discount, coupon, or other motivating reason – someone surfing the internet will be directed to your web site once they do. Banner ads are pretty simple in nature, but let’s take a closer look at some different examples and then we’ll touch on their functionality.

When a banner ad changes or “moves" it’s usually more eye-catching and arguably more appealing to an end user.

There are several different sizes of banner ads, and they’re measured in pixels (width by height). Some common examples of sizes include; 120 x 600, 300 x 250, and 180 x 50 pixels. When having banners created, you’ll need to specify what sizes you’d like.

It’s important that sizes of banners vary so that they can be placed on different areas of web pages. Some sites might have space along the side, in which case a “skyscraper" banner might fit. As its name would suggest, a skyscraper banner is tall and narrow.

Banners are a great tool for creating brand awareness and driving traffic to your web site whether you’re marketing on national level or in a local market. They’re much more cost effective than newspaper, radio, or television advertising, and the best part is their performance can be accurately measured. For example, say a local pizza joint wants to buy one week of advertising in a local newspaper. Even for most smaller, local papers, advertisers are going to pay anywhere between $150.00 - $200.00 per ad per day, depending on the size of the ad and the day(s) it runs.

Since there’s no completely reliable way to know how many people are actually going to look at the print ad and take the action – patronize the restaurant – there’s no way of knowing what the return on investment (ROI) is. Business owners simply don’t know how many people are taking action as a direct result of those ads – there’s no accurate way to track their effectiveness.

With banner advertising, business owners can literally see the exact number of people who are looking at their ads and coming to their website via those ads. It’s possible – and quite easy – to calculate what each one of those people are worth as customers by looking at the average dollar amount they spend. By comparing those numbers with the amount spent on the banners, it’s easy to determine the medium’s effectiveness.

Banner ads are also relatively inexpensive. For example, let’s say you wanted to purchase local banner advertising through an ad network (typically companies that broker space for banner ads have agreements with a lot of web sites on which they advertise – that group of sites is called a network).

Most companies will charge you on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis – meaning there’s a set cost per every one thousand views – or impressions – of your banner(s). If the CPM is $10.00 and you have $1000.00 to spend on your banners, then your ads will be viewed by 100,000 people.

This information can be a lot to take in at first, but don’t get discouraged. Marketing your business online in this day and age is imperative, and with just a little studying on your part, your online marketing strategies can really take off. Don’t miss the next installment of this series when I’ll discuss where to advertise with banners, what kind of creative you should consider using, and how ad networks play into the equation.