There are different types of online advertisements that try to grab our attention on the Internet. While some prove to be effective, the others tend to annoy visitors. What form of advertising should you follow to drive more traffic to your website or increase sales?
1. Text Ads:
Text ads are ads that are displayed in the form of simple text-based hyperlinks. According to Business 2.0, text ads are the best form of online advertising. People tend to click more on text ads than banner ads. Since no graphics are used, text ads use catchy phrases to grab the attention of visitors. The ad does not exceed 5 sentences, which arouses the curiosity of the visitors and the clicks are more because they want to read more. Pay-per-click ads are usually text ads.
2. Advertisements:
Advertisements have been around for a long time. Banners are typically 468 x 60 pixel animated and linked (link to your website) graphics that highlight your product/service/offer that appears at the top of commercial websites. Banner ads are usually sold by CPM (cost per thousand views) or per click, meaning you pay only when clicked. There are different ways to post banner ads. One way is banner trading, where you can show someone else’s banner in exchange for them showing yours. You can also pay a publisher to display your banner, or you can pay a banner network to display your banner on multiple sites. With banner ads so popular and common these days, people are trying different methods to grab the attention of visitors. The more creative you are, the higher the chances that your banner will be clicked.
3. Pop-up Ads:
This might be the most annoying and avoided form of online advertising. It works when a certain website opens a new browser window that displays the ad. Popup ads don’t have much preference with so many popup blockers available. Therefore, they are not highly favored by sellers or visitors.
4. Sidebar Ads:
Sidebar ads are also known as skyscraper ads and are similar to banner ads, but they are placed vertically instead of horizontally. The height of a sidebar ad can be up to 600px or more and is typically 160px wide. Sidebar ads have advantages over banner ads in that they are larger and you cannot scroll a sidebar ad like a banner ad. A sidebar ad has a click-through rate of 1 percent (10 clicks per 1,000 impressions), or about two to three times more than a banner ad.
5. Floating Ads:
Floating ads are ads that appear when you first visit a web page and fly or float on the page for 5 to 30 seconds. When they appear on the screen, they usually obscure the view of the page. Floating ads appear every time the page is refreshed. One of the main reasons for the popularity of floating ads is their ability to grab attention. The other reason is that they are unavoidable and prove to be more powerful than banner ads or sidebar ads. Floating ads have a high click-through rate that averages around 3 percent (meaning 30 people will click for every 1,000 impressions of a floating ad). However, the downside of floating ads is that they can really annoy your visitors. The thing is, the more they get used to it, the more common it will be.
6. Unicast Announcements:
Unicast ads are popular and widely adopted these days. A Unicast ad is a television commercial that runs in a popup window. Enriched with audio/video content, they can last between 10 and 30 seconds. Unicast ads have a 5% click-through rate (50 clicks per 1,000 impressions). The ability to click on the ad for more information makes this form of advertising much better than TV commercials.
7. Interstitial Ads:
The interstitial ad (which means “in the middle”) is a page that is inserted between the current page and the landing page. These are also known as transition announcements. The reaction of visitors often depends on how entertaining the message is. An interstitial ad is generally designed to automatically move to the page the user requested after allowing sufficient time for the message to register or the ads to be read.
The type of ad to follow generally depends on the type of business and your marketing budget. The goal is to grab the attention of visitors and drive more traffic to your website.