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  Online Marketing Whitepaper
 

Online Marketing Whitepaper

Introduction

The Imperfect World of Quantifying Website Traffic

Online Advertising Lingo

Necessities for Every Company with a Website

Paid Advertising

Leveraging the True Power of the Internet

Bootstrap Marketing Online

 

A Dated Introduction to Online Marketing*

*Note: This is the original version of a whitepaper that was authored in 2001 by iCondotta's founder and principal consultant, Stephan Aarstol. It's a useful primer, but dated - pre-Wikipedia (2001), pre-Google AdWords PPC (2002), way pre-YouTube (2005), you get the picture...

Banner Advertising

When you ask most people about marketing on the web, they usually assume you are speaking about banner advertising. While banner ads are really only one small aspect of the much broader online marketing picture, they are one of the only truly standardized ad vehicles that you are likely to run across. Most media owners, at a minimum, offer some form of 468x60 pixel banner ad placements according to one of the four ad pricing models: CPM, Sponsorship, CPC, or CPA (see the “Online Advertising Lingo” section for descriptions of these pricing models). Because banners ad placements are everywhere, it means that:

1) Comparison shopping different media channels is much easier with banner ads than with other advertising formats

2) An advertiser can utilize one piece of creative for placements in many different online media channels

3) Web users immediately recognize them as ad placements and thus tend to tune them out unless they are genuinely interested in the advertisers associated with a particular site.

The overwhelming majority of banner ads are sold on a CPM basis. CPM rates vary dramatically from site to site, and depending on the type of audience and the degree of targeting that is afforded, an advertiser can pay as little as a $2-$3 CPM rate all the way up to a $150 or higher CPM rate. Going with the cheaper rate is not always better. On the web, a placement on a site with highly targeted, quality traffic is usually more responsive than one on a site with less targeted traffic. What constitutes a good deal really depends on your available alternatives.

Another common question in regard to banner ad placements is “What is the typical click-thru rate?” The layman’s answer is that the average click-thru rate is between 0.25% and 0.5% for a somewhat targeted banner ad. Without targeting, you’re probably lucky to get a 0.25% click-thru rate. Of course, the success of any single banner ad campaign is affected by a number of different elements, which include:

  • Relevancy of message to the audience
  • Positioning of banner ad on the page
  • Creative elements such as color, copy, animation, etc.
  • Competing Ads - Number of other ads occupying same web page

For an example of an award winning and likely very effective banner ad, go here.

>> Paid Text Ads

Authored in 2001 by Stephan Aarstol
while Director of Business Development
at AuntMinnie.com