Web banner

Last updated

A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web delivered by an ad server. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser. In many cases, banners are delivered by a central ad server. This payback system is often how the content provider is able to pay for the Internet access to supply the content in the first place. Usually though, advertisers use ad networks to serve their advertisements, resulting in a revshare system and higher quality ad placement.

Contents

Web banners function the same way as traditional advertisements are intended to function: notifying consumers of the product or service and presenting reasons why the consumer should choose the product in question, a fact first documented on HotWired in 1996 by researchers Rex Briggs and Nigel Hollis. [1] Web banners differ in that the results for advertisement campaigns may be monitored real-time and may be targeted to the viewer's interests.

Behavior is often tracked through the use of a click tag.

Many web surfers regard web advertisements as annoying because they distract from a web page's actual content or waste bandwidth. In some cases, web banners cover screen content that the user wishes to see. Newer web browsers often include software "adblocker" options to disable pop-ups or block images from selected websites. Another way of avoiding banners is to use a proxy server that blocks them, such as Privoxy. Web browsers may also have extensions available that block banners, for example Adblock Plus for Mozilla Firefox, or AdThwart for Google Chrome and ie7pro for Internet Explorer.

History

The banner ad played a significant role in enabling the rapid development of paid advertising on the Internet. [2]

The pioneer of online advertising was Prodigy, a company owned by IBM and Sears at the time. Prodigy used online advertising first to promote Sears products in the 1980s, and then other advertisers, including AOL, one of Prodigy's direct competitors. Prodigy was unable to capitalize on any of its first mover advantage in online advertising. The first clickable web ad (which later came to be known by the term "banner ad") was sold by Global Network Navigator (GNN) in 1993 to Heller, Ehrman, White, & McAuliffe, a now defunct law firm with a Silicon Valley office. [3] [4] GNN was the first commercially supported web publication and one of the first commercial websites. [5]

For many years, HotWired was regarded as the inventor of the digital banner ad, [6] [7] and the first web site to sell banner ads in large quantities to a wide range of major corporate advertisers. Andrew Anker was HotWired's first CEO. Rick Boyce, a former media buyer with San Francisco advertising agency Hal Riney & Partners, spearheaded the sales effort for the company. [8] HotWired coined the term "banner ad" and was the first company to provide click through rate reports to its customers. The first web banner sold by HotWired was paid for by AT&T Corp. and was put online on October 27, 1994. [9] Another source also credits HotWired and October 1994, but has Coors' "Zima" campaign as the first web banner. [10] In May 1994, Ken McCarthy mentored Boyce in his transition from traditional to online advertising and first introduced the concept of a clickable/trackable ad. He stated that he believed that only a direct response model—in which the return on investment of individual ads was measured—would prove sustainable over the long run for online advertising. In spite of this prediction, banner ads were valued and sold based on the number of impressions they generated.

However, Time Warner's Pathfinder (website), which launched on October 24, 1994, [11] the same week as HotWired, but three days earlier included banner ads. [12] Walter Isaacson, then President of Time Inc. New Media, [12] and the Columbia Journalism Review, [13] both credit Bruce Judson, then General Manager of Time Inc. New Media, with inventing the concept of the banner ad. In an interview for Harvard's Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics and Public Policy, on the history of the Internet, Isaacson discussed Judson's contribution, saying, "It really transformed everything. Immediately, Madison Avenue decided, 'Oh my God, we’ve got to understand this. We have to hire a lot of young people.' They would send us money. It was almost like you could look out of the Time-Life Building to Madison Avenue, and watch people walking with bags of money, to dump it on our desk, or Bruce Judson’s desk, to buy banner ads." [12]

The first central ad server was released in July 1995 by Focalink Communications, [14] which enabled the management, targeting, and tracking of online ads. A local ad server quickly followed from NetGravity in January 1996. [15] The technology innovation of the ad server, together with the sale of online ads on an impression basis, fueled a dramatic rise in the proliferation of web advertising and provided the economic foundation for the web industry from the period of 1994 to 2000. The new online advertising model that emerged in the early years of the 21st century, introduced by GoTo.com (later Overture, then Yahoo! and mass marketed by Google's AdWords program), relies heavily on tracking ad response rather than impressions.

Standard sizes

IAB standard ad sizes. This illustration has been reduced in size. See actual sizes. Standard web banner ad sizes.svg
IAB standard ad sizes. This illustration has been reduced in size. See actual sizes.

Ad sizes have been standardized to some extent by the IAB. Prior to the IAB standardization, banner ads appeared in over 250 different sizes. [16] However, some websites and advertising networks (outside the Eurosphere or North America) may not use any or all of the IAB base ad sizes. The IAB ad sizes as of 2007 are : [17]

Standard web banner sizes, highlighted entries are part of the IAB's original Universal Ad Package. [18] entries with a dagger suffix† were delisted after the update in 2011 [19]
NameWidth / px Height / px Aspect ratio
Rectangles and Pop-Ups [lower-alpha 1]
Medium Rectangle3002506∶5
Square Pop-Up†2502501∶1
Vertical Rectangle†2404003∶5
Large Rectangle†3362806∶5
Rectangle1801506∶5
3:1 Rectangle† [lower-alpha 2] 3001003∶1
Pop-Under† [lower-alpha 2] 72030024∶10
Banners and Buttons
Full banner†4686039∶5
Half banner†2346039∶10
Micro button883188∶31
Button 1†120904∶3
Button 2120602∶1
Vertical banner†1202401∶2
Square button†1251251∶1
Leaderboard [lower-alpha 3] 72890364∶45
Skyscrapers [lower-alpha 1]
Wide skyscraper1606004∶15
Skyscraper†1206001∶5
Half page ad [lower-alpha 4] 3006001∶2

Notes

  1. 1 2 This group was added around the beginning of 2000.
  2. 1 2 Added in 2007 update. [17]
  3. ↑ Added in 2003 update. [20] [21]
  4. ↑ Added in 2004 update. [21] [22]

In 2015, IAB announced advertising creative guidelines for display & mobile, considering HTML5. [23]

In 2017, IAB also introduced the new guidelines, featuring adjustable ad formats, as well as the guidelines for new digital content experiences such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), social media, mobile video, emoji ad messaging, and 360-degree video ads. [24] [25] [26]

Fixed size ad specification [27]
Ad Unit NameSize (px)Aspect ratioPixels
Billboard970×25097:25242,500
Smartphone Banner300×506∶115,000
Smartphone Banner320×5032:516,000
Leaderboard728×90364∶4565,520
Super Leaderboard/Pushdown970×9097:987,300
Portrait3:300×10502:7315,000
Skyscraper160×6004:1596,000
Medium Rectangle300×2506∶575,000
—120×1603:419,200
Mobile Phone InterstitialS:640×1136≈9:16727,040
Mobile Phone InterstitialM:750×13349:161,000,500
Mobile Phone InterstitialL:1080×19209:162,073,600
Feature Phone Small Banner120×206∶12,400
Feature Phone Medium Banner168×286∶14,704
Feature Phone Large Banner216×366∶17,776

Standard web banners included into the IAB's Universal Package and Ad Units Guidelines [28] are supported by major ad serving companies. [29] This is particularly relevant for IAB members such as Adform, AppNexus, Chitika, Conversant, Epom, HIRO, Mixpo, SpotXchange, ZEDO, and many others. [30] Additionally, ad serving providers may offer other, non-standard banner sizes and technologies, as well as the support of different online advertising formats (e.g. native ads).

However, standard banner ad sizes are constantly evolving due to consumer creative fatigue and banner blindness. Ad companies consistently test performance of ad units to ensure maximum performance for their clients. IAB has updated its guideline bi-annually. Some publishers that are known for their unique, custom executions include BuzzFeed, CraveOnline, Quartz (publication), Thought Catalog, Elite Daily, Vice Media, Inc., Mic (media company), and many others. According to media research firm eMarketer, such types of custom executions through publisher direct buys are on the rise, with Native advertising spending to hit over $4.3 Billion by the end of 2015. [31]

Other types

Banner on Wikivoyage

The use of web banners is not restricted to online advertising. Website designs often use non-advertising banners, also known as "hero images" or "hero headers" [32] for aesthetic reasons. Hero images are represented by large photos, graphics, or videos that are placed in the prominent sections of a website. [33] [34]

A "live banner" is a banner ad which is created dynamically at the time of display, instead of being pre-programmed with fixed content. Live banners usually employ animation together with text, images, graphics, sounds and video to catch the viewer's attention. Depending on the banner design, any of these multimedia elements may be defined as dynamic and therefore variable. Formerly, they were built using technologies such as Adobe Flash, Java, or Microsoft Silverlight.

See also

Related Research Articles

Advertising in video games is the integration of advertising into video games to promote products, organizations, or viewpoints.

Digital display advertising is online graphic advertising through banners, text, images, video, and audio. The main purpose of digital display advertising is to post company ads on third-party websites. A display ad is usually interactive, which allows brands and advertisers to engage deeper with the users. A display ad can also be a companion ad for a non-clickable video ad.

Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. They can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Google beta-tested a cost-per-action service, but discontinued it in October 2008 in favor of a DoubleClick offering. In Q1 2014, Google earned US$3.4 billion, or 22% of total revenue, through Google AdSense. In 2021, more than 38 million websites used AdSense. It is a participant in the AdChoices program, so AdSense ads typically include the triangle-shaped AdChoices icon. This program also operates on HTTP cookies.

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher when the ad is clicked.

Ad blocking or ad filtering is a software capability for blocking or altering online advertising in a web browser, an application or a network. This may be done using browser extensions or other methods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Banner blindness</span> Tendency to ignore banner-size notices

Banner blindness is a phenomenon in web usability where visitors to a website consciously or unconsciously ignore banner-like information. A broader term covering all forms of advertising is ad blindness, and the mass of banners that people ignore is called banner noise.

An online advertising network or ad network is a company that connects advertisers to websites that want to host advertisements. The key function of an ad network is an aggregation of ad supply from publishers and matching it with the advertiser's demand. The phrase "ad network" by itself is media-neutral in the sense that there can be a "Television Ad Network" or a "Print Ad Network", but is increasingly used to mean "online ad network" as the effect of aggregation of publisher ad space and sale to advertisers is most commonly seen in the online space. The fundamental difference between traditional media ad networks and online ad networks is that online ad networks use a central ad server to deliver advertisements to consumers, which enables targeting, tracking and reporting of impressions in ways not possible with analog media alternatives.

Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising that uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. Online advertising includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising, and mobile advertising. Advertisements are increasingly being delivered via automated software systems operating across multiple websites, media services and platforms, known as programmatic advertising.

The Global Network Navigator (GNN) was the first commercial web publication and the first web site to offer clickable advertisements. It was designed by Jennifer N. Robbins. GNN was launched in May 1993, as a project of the technical publishing company O'Reilly Media, then known as O'Reilly & Associates. In June 1995, GNN was sold to AOL, which continued its editorial functions while converting it to a dial-up Internet Service Provider. AOL closed GNN in December 1996, moving all GNN subscribers to the AOL dial-up service.

<i>HotWired</i> First commercial online magazine

Hotwired (1994–1999) was the first commercial online magazine, launched on October 27, 1994. Although it was part of the print magazine Wired, Hotwired carried original content.

Click-through rate (CTR) is the ratio of clicks on a specific link to the number of times a page, email, or advertisement is shown. It is commonly used to measure the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website, as well as the effectiveness of email campaigns.

On the web, an interstitial webpage is a web page displayed before or after an expected content page, often to display advertising or for regulatory reasons, such as to confirm the user's age or obtain consent to store cookies. Most interstitial advertisements are delivered by an ad server.

In Internet marketing, search advertising is a method of placing online advertisements on web pages that show results from search engine queries. Through the same search-engine advertising services, ads can also be placed on Web pages with other published content.

Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via mobile (wireless) phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing, mobile advertising can take place as text ads via SMS, or banner advertisements that appear embedded in a mobile web site.

Website monetization is the process of converting existing traffic being sent to a particular website into revenue. The most popular ways of monetizing a website are by implementing pay per click (PPC) and cost per impression (CPI/CPM) advertising. Various ad networks facilitate a webmaster in placing advertisements on pages of the website to benefit from the traffic the site is experiencing.

Behavioral retargeting is a form of online targeted advertising by which online advertising is targeted to consumers based on their previous internet behaviour. Retargeting tags online users by including a pixel within the target webpage or email, which sets a cookie in the user's browser. Once the cookie is set, the advertiser is able to show ads to that user elsewhere on the internet via an ad exchange.

Video advertising encompasses online display advertisements that have video within them, but it is generally accepted that it refers to advertising that occurs before, during and/or after a video stream on the internet, as well as within programmatic placements on publisher sites.

In the online advertising industry, a viewable impression is a measure of whether a given advert was actually seen by a human being, as opposed to being out of view or served as the result of automated activity. The viewable impression guidelines are administered by the Media Rating Council and require that a minimum of 50% of the pixels in the advertisement were in an in-focus tab on the viewable space of the browser page for at least one continuous second.

Native advertising, also called sponsored content, partner content, and branded journalism, is a type of paid advertising that appears in the style and format of the content near the advertisement's placement. It manifests as a post, image, video, article or editorial piece of content. In some cases, it functions like an advertorial. The word native refers to the coherence of the content with the other media that appear on the platform.

Rex Briggs is an author, award winning marketing ROI researcher. He began his career at Yankelovich Partners, where he was noted for his work in Generation X Minority marketing. While at Yankelovich, he is noted for developing a theory called “The Psychology of disenfranchisement.” Briggs was among the first to research the Internet.

References

  1. ↑ Briggs, Rex; Hollis, Nigel, Advertising on the Web: Is there Response Before Clickthrough? Journal of Advertising Research, March–April 1997, pg 33-45
  2. ↑ Khattab, Lina; Mahrous, Abeer A. (2016-11-01). "Revisiting online banner advertising recall: An experimental study of the factors affecting banner recall in an Arab context". Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research. 9 (2): 237–249. doi:10.1386/jammr.9.2.237_1.
  3. ↑ O'Reilly, Tim (Nov 26, 2001). "O'Reilly Network Weblogs: SLAC Symposium on the Early Web". O'Reilly Media. Archived from the original on 2001-12-22.
  4. ↑ Abate, Tom; Ross, Andrew S. (26 September 2008). "Heller Ehrman law firm to dissolve Friday". SFGate. Archived from the original on 2011-07-07.
  5. ↑ Erwin, Brian (19 Aug 1993). "The Global Network Navigator (GNN)". NewJour. Georgetown University Library. Archived from the original on 2012-03-22. Retrieved 2012-05-18.
  6. ↑ Singel, Ryan (27 October 2010). "Oct. 27, 1994: Web Gives Birth to Banner Ads". Wired. Archived from the original on 20 January 2022. Retrieved 8 April 2022. 1994: Wired.com, then known as HotWired, invents the web banner ad. Go ahead, blame us ... the first HotWired banner ad was from AT&T, prophetically asking 'Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.'
  7. ↑ LaFrance, Adrienne (20 April 2017). "The First-Ever Banner Ad on the Web: It was an advertisement for AT&T in 1994, and people clicked on it like crazy". The Atlantic. Retrieved 8 April 2022. The banner ad that's widely described as the first ever was a little rectangle purchased by AT&T on HotWired.com in 1994. About 44 percent of the people who saw it actually clicked on it.
  8. ↑ Reid, Robert H. (1997). Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of Business. John Wiley & Sons. Chapter Seven: 'Hotwired - Publishing on the Web' (pp 300-308) ISBN   0-471-17187-5
  9. ↑ "Happy Birthday, Digital Advertising! - Advertising Age - DigitalNext". Archived from the original on 2011-07-07. Retrieved 2011-01-19. Happy Birthday, Digital Advertising!
  10. ↑ Chapman, Merrill R., In search of stupidity: over 20 years of high-tech marketing disasters (2nd Edition), Apress, ISBN   1-59059-721-4
  11. ↑ Carmody, Deirdre (October 24, 1994). "THE MEDIA BUSINESS; Time Inc. Raises Its Multimedia Profile With an Internet Test". The New York Times– via NYTimes.com.
  12. 1 2 3 "Riptide". Riptide.
  13. ↑ Gold, Howard R. "Who killed Time Inc.?". Columbia Journalism Review.
  14. ↑ Hyperlink Advertising Explodes on the World Wide Web Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine , company press release
  15. ↑ "5 Tips To Reduce And Tackle HTML5 Banner Size". digitaland. Archived from the original on 13 July 2016. Retrieved 16 July 2016.
  16. ↑ Gehl, Robert (2014). Reverse Engineering Social Media. Philadelphia, PA: Temple. ISBN   978-1439910351.
  17. 1 2 "Ad Unit Guidelines". Interactive Advertising Bureau. Archived from the original on 2007-10-15. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  18. ↑ "Universal Ad Package". iab.net. Archived from the original on July 5, 2014. Retrieved July 28, 2014.
  19. ↑ "Ad Unit Guidelines". Interactive Advertising Bureau. Archived from the original on 2011-06-13. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  20. ↑ "Ad Unit Guidelines". Interactive Advertising Bureau. Archived from the original on 2002-12-04. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  21. 1 2 "Ad Unit Guidelines". Interactive Advertising Bureau. Archived from the original on 2003-10-02. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  22. ↑ "Ad Unit Guidelines". Interactive Advertising Bureau. Archived from the original on 2004-07-15. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  23. ↑ "INTERACTIVE ADVERTISING BUREAU – DISPLAY & MOBILE ADVERTISING CREATIVE FORMAT GUIDELINES: 2015 ADVERTISING CREATIVE GUIDELINES FOR DISPLAY & MOBILE – UPDATED FOR HTML5" (PDF). IAB. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  24. ↑ "IAB New Ad Portfolio". IAB. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  25. ↑ "IAB New Standard Ad Unit Portfolio July 2017" (PDF). IAB. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  26. ↑ "IAB New Standard Ad Unit Portfolio Transition Guide July 2017" (PDF). IAB. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  27. ↑ "IAB New Ad Portfolio Fixed Size Ad Specifications" (PDF). IAB. Retrieved 2021-03-21.
  28. ↑ "Ad Unit Guidelines". iab.net. Archived from the original on July 29, 2014. Retrieved July 28, 2014.
  29. ↑ "IAB Rolls Out 'Universal Ad Package'". clickz.com. 11 December 2002. Archived from the original on April 10, 2014. Retrieved July 28, 2014.
  30. ↑ "IAB General Members". Archived from the original on 2015-07-27.
  31. ↑ "Marketers Expect Healthy Native Ad Spend Growth". eMarketer. Archived from the original on 25 November 2014. Retrieved 24 November 2014.
  32. ↑ "Optimization Glossary: Hero image". Optimizely . 7 July 2021. Retrieved 9 May 2023.
  33. ↑ "Exploring the Hero Image Trend in Web Design". marketblog.envato.com. Archived from the original on January 18, 2015. Retrieved July 28, 2014.
  34. ↑ "12 Outdated Web Features That Need to Disappear in 2014". mashable.com. 14 January 2014. Archived from the original on July 27, 2014. Retrieved July 28, 2014.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.