let's talk banners...

i have a banner i made, and i use it on toplists. on two of the toplists, this banner gets less hits compared to hits in than any other site on the lists. on two other toplists, it gets the most hits out compared to hits in. and on the others, it goes from low normal to pretty high. i had another banner made for the two sites where my banner is doing terribly, and the new one has raised my percentage of hits out much higher.

and these toplists are the same niche.

a lot of webmasters i know feel a good banner is a good banner no matter where you put it, but that isn't apparently the case for this site.

Hmmm... Interesting... :gossip: Maybe it matches better...

I disagree that a good banner is a good banner. There's just too many other factors.

An example: A few years back I was promoting some software they had two banners that were the same except for the color. One was green and one was kind of a yellowy orange. I thought that the green one would get the most clicks -- it didn't and in this particular case it didn't matter which sites I placed it on. The yellowy orange banner got about 4X the clicks.

so that makes the yellowy orange one a good banner.

a good banner is a banner that works - color is very important. green has never been a good clicking color for me in any niche, in or outside of adult.

Exactly -- a good banner is a banner that works.

Which brings me to a little minor greivence I have with some affiliate programs -- I wish they'd take a look at the banners that they offer and see if they really are working. And offer more variety.

Granted there are some programs out there where I can do that myself either through precission tracking or by guestimate....

a lot of affiliate programs have beautiful, artistic, interesting banners... that no one clicks.

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Originally Posted by basschick

a lot of affiliate programs have beautiful, artistic, interesting banners... that no one clicks.

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Or they used to get clicks but became stale.

Thats one thing im always telling our sponsors on GWW, send me as many different banners as possible, after a while, we start tuning out some banners which is why its always helpfull to have one to switch it out with, to keep the campaign fresh :thumbsup:

Regards,

Lee

That brings up a good question, I hope. Which is how do you know when the banner is stale? At what point do you turf the current one & move on to another, rather than it simply being an off month or something?

For us, we swap banners out if they drop below 10% of the overall click throughs in a month during any consecutive 2 weeks.

For example, lets say last month we got 1000 clicks on a specific banner every week.

Last week we got 1000 clicks
This week we got 900 clicks
Next week we got 900 clicks
Week four gets a new banner.

Thats a very simplified version that we use but, it works, for us.

Sometimes after a month or two we put the original banners back up and start the process over again, it ultimately depends on what kind of ad system you have in place to track clicks and impressions etc etc.

Other variables i use on a regular basis are, how much the program itself has grown in the last month, how exposed the site we're promoting has become and, how many other banners are available for a specific site, if there is only one available for example, its not the banner that gets swapped out ;)

Regards,

Lee

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Originally Posted by basschick

a lot of affiliate programs have beautiful, artistic, interesting banners... that no one clicks.

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This is the thing that's been the hardest for me to swallow... but you're absolutely right. Anyone into direct mail marketing might remember the name Rene Gnam... he was the genius behind some of the most visible and successful direct mail campaigns ever. He wrote an excellent book based on his 30+ years and excruciatingly precise analysis of the success of various pieces.

The amazing and totally counterintuitive thing was that the best performing campaigns were usually hideously ugly letters/envelopes with boring-looking text and few graphics or pictures. He gave some direct comparisions in which a "pretty" envelope often got as much as 60-70% *less* response than one that was more busy, crowded, and frankly ugly looking.

And I've found that as well with magazine ads. Often it's the insanely busy, crowded one that outperforms the nice artsy one with lots of whitespace.

I haven't done enough with banner ads to be able to say, but your experience seems to match conventional wisdom in direct marketing.

Great.

Now I have to go back and make all the Fratcash banners ugly.

Hi, i'd like some banners, leaderboards, skyscraper ads and buttons, er uh, can you make them kind of ugly for me?

I can think of a few graphic designers I know that would cringe at the thought of making an ugly banner.

But i agree with the philosophy, too slick is just that.

more amateurish does work.

anything that breaks out of the template mold of supposed colors, design concepts and type faces and font styles in my opinion is a good thing. Porn banners all tend to start looking the same after a while..

And I also agreee, green does not click well at all.

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Originally Posted by Jasun

Great.

Now I have to go back and make all the Fratcash banners ugly.

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Heehee! I like your banners because of the interesting grahics, and text on many of them. I also think it's kind of neat that on some of them they have names of specific models.