By Samantha Gluck
You have decided to try time-based banner ads. Now, you need to determine the best times to display the ad, what types of companies offer time-based banner ads and how long and often you want to run the ad.
How Do I Determine the Best Time?
Determine the best time of day to run your banner ads by analyzing when people are most active in looking for the products or services you offer. For example, fast food restaurants may run banner ads for hour or so before lunchtime when people are hungry. If your business is fitness oriented, you may run banner ads on relevant sites during December, when people consider their health and make their New Year’s resolutions or in early spring when people hope to be in shape for the summer swimsuit season.
How Do I Determine Where to Run My Ads?
Pick sites that have relevance to your business to get the most for your money. Choosing to run your ad on a site with high traffic, but no relevance to your products or services may get few results. A motorcycle banner ad probably will not generate much business running on a high-end clothing store site even if the site enjoys very high traffic. Run motorcycle ads on home pages featuring upcoming events involving motorcycles and during the time when enthusiasts are purchasing tickets.
Which Media Outlets Offer Time-Based Banner Advertising?
Many media outlets sell time-based ads, including Google, traditional advertising firms and Web hosting companies. These companies help determine the best places to display the ad, often with input from the advertiser and charge based on their individual pricing structures. Companies such as NicheBanners.com offer time-based ads for specific niche businesses. Once designed and ready to go, placing the ad on the various pages involves cutting and pasting some code.
How Do I Know If It’s Working?
Most outlets that offer these ads also generate reports for advertisers that include various statistics about the types of people who visited the host site, the times they visited and whether they clicked on the ad. You can adjust ad size, timing and design based on these analytics to tweak its effectiveness. It may take a few rotations of running the ad for visitors to trust your brand and click on it. Time-based banner ads help build brand awareness and authority through repetition.
About the Author
Samantha Gluck has had over a decade of experience helping businesses better focus their websites to enhance ecommerce and Internet presence by utilizing Web analytics, relevant design elements and marketing campaigns.