If you've only previously advertised your company by going to Printing Toronto for flyers or by purchasing ad space on the radio, the internet represents a whole new paradigm of advertising for you. With your own website and a few designs for ads, you can drastically increase your exposure with a relatively small outlay in terms of cost. One of the most popular forms of web advertising is the banner ad. This article will give you some background and advice on using banner ads.
Banner ads are long, thin advertisements that are often displayed at the top of a web page before the page's content. The standard size for a banner ad is 468 pixels wide and 60 pixels tall, however, some advertisers also like to employ "half banners" which are only 234 pixels wide and can fit into smaller spaces. The banner will usually contain a photo or graphic touting the benefits of cloth diaper covers or whatever the company wishes to promote.
In order for banner ads to be effective, they should be eye catching. Some banner ads which contain only text in black and white that lists aquarium gravel retailers in a certain area may be confused with the site's content or even passed over completely by the site's visitors. Therefore most companies employ color graphics or photos in their banner ads and some even employ animations or video as a way of standing out from the content. The gaudier the content of the page, the harder it is to stand out.
Unlike bus ads or newspaper ads, which merely plant the idea of hiring a certain catering company in Toronto in the mind of a viewer, banner ads actually link back to your website which helps redirect traffic to your site. Because of this, you can easily track how many times your banner is loaded (or seen by a user) as well as how many times users have clicked on the ad to be taken to your site. Many web advertising companies build their fee schedules on number of clicks, so you only have to pay when your ad is effective.
There are two different ways that banner ads can help your business. The first way is to create a design for a banner ad for your Toronto gym and then join an advertiser like Google AdSense and have them post it on other people's websites to redirect traffic to your page. The second way is to join AdSense and have other company's ads displayed on your site in exchange for a fee per click.
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