Banner advertising pioneered the world of Internet marketing. The first banner ad appeared in 1994. Presently, online users are becoming more and more skilled online and more aware of online advertisements. Many view these advertisements as nuisances and are almost always ignored by average users. This has been proven by the figures showing that banner advertisements have a low CTR or click-through rate, an average of less than 0.5 percent of the number of hits the website receives.
However, the CTR of banner advertising continues to decrease
Together with the cost of putting a banner advertisement on your website. Before, only the larger companies that had substantial advertising budgets could afford to have banner advertising. Presently, virtually anyone can advertise through numerous websites that are selling bundles of 1,000 views or better known as “impressions”. However, with 1,000 impressions with an average cost of $4 and a 0.5 percent CTR, this would translate to only 5 clicks – which is hardly worth the amount being paid.
These insignificant results have forced advertisers to rethink their advertising techniques and find new ones.
A more popular technique today would be contextual advertising, which is a system that Google has developed initially through the AdSense program, which displays advertisements on the relevant websites through their search engine, as well as their partner websites on the Internet. This technique ensures that the advertisers can reach their target market and that they would just pay per click of the online user.
With this, has banner advertising lost its appeal?
Though it is no longer as popular, it could still be somehow effective if you would be creating a unique advertisement and would be advertising on the most suitable and relevant websites.
