Sell From Within Your Banner Ad

from the it's-about-time dept

Tue, Jun 29th 1999 11:41am — Mike Masnick

When banner ads first came out, I used to tell people the main problem with them was they were stupid for sites to use. If you spend all your time trying to bring people to your site, why would you ever want to put an easy out for them to leave and go visit some other site! Of course, banner ads definitely did grow in importance, even if click through rates became pitiful. As they grew in importance I always stuck by the initial problem that I saw, and believed that sooner or later folks would create banner ads that didn't require you to click outside of them to get the info you need, or to buy the product you wanted. Apparently, that is finally happening. If only these companies had hired me three years ago.

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George Leidolf, 30 Jun 1999 @ 9:22am

Banners
Do people actually read banners? I almost have to make a conscious effort to even notice banner ads any more. It's almost second nature to scroll down a couple inches as soon as a web page comes up.

I sometimes try to click-through on some of the sites I like, but the problem with that is the company advertising will look at click-through/purchase ratios and lower the amount of money per click-through.

Are banner ads the equivalent of impulse buying at a checkout counter? I rarely do that either.

- George
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Mike (profile), 30 Jun 1999 @ 3:45pm

Re: Banners
I occasionally will click on banners. It depends on what I'm doing or how busy I am. When my job involved finding e-commerce sites I would often click on banner ads that were for something related to what I was looking for. However, nowadays, I almost never look at banners. The only ones I remember nowadays are the fun ones: I like the interactive ones from IBM and Sun. The new Sun ones where you get to play mini-golf are classics. I know there are some folks who click on banners all the time (Dennis). My guess is most people barely notice them at all. I know most click through rates are well below 1%.
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