Banner Advertising: Can It Generate A Sudden Upswing In Traffic?

One of the current top choices for response-driven marketing on the Internet these days is banner advertising. Many advertisers who use PPC advertising also rely on placing banners on relevant sites, blogs and forums to get targeted traffic to their websites. Even though there are a lot of other things you can do to drive traffic to your sites, banner ads have proven to be one of the most well used kinds of advertising out there.

Banner ads are certainly nothing new. Tons of companies have used banner ads in assisting them in making millions of dollars in profits. Banner ads are a great way to tell people positive things about your business through the use of pictures. This form of advertising has been used widely with great results. Anything from sales and events to tips and techniques can be advertised and expressed with a banner ad. Your site will get more traffic the more people view your ads. This article is going to cover the many ways you can use banner advertising as an effective way to reach your target market.

Savvy webmasters and experienced bloggers must always stay alert to their banner ads, ensuring these ads complement their website and reflect it in a favorable manner. Just as you strive to make your site impressive, so must you create an ad that is compelling. If you make the design of your banner ad easy to work with so that you don’t have to change the basic look of the ad every time, you need to set up a fresh banner. All you should need to do is create new text, and you should have a fresh new banner ad. Also, make sure there is a flow to your ad. When you are designing an effective ad, it is crucial you take the time to proofread it before you post it. Proofing your ad before you post it can mean the difference between a banner that will achieve a high number of response to one that’s ignored due to typos and errors. In addition, you don’t want your ad to be too busy and overwhelming. This is when you want to go with more of a minimalist approach. The best banner ads are elegantly simple because it’s a fact that less is more. The more straightforward the ad, the less time it will take for you to create it. You’ll also get more of a response to an ad that is simple and direct.

When looking at available websites for your banner ad be sure to read the terms and conditions set out by them before you run your banner ad. Having this information ahead of time will help you find out what will be acceptable before you make any final decisions. While certain websites will not allow banners that use Flash, others will. This is something that you need to find out during the design phase. However, you will notice that almost all such companies will have a restriction on the “file size” of your ads. All these steps need to be taken before you create your banners. It’s also important to put in the effort and time required when working with graphics during the banner ad creation process. You’ll want the ad to be dynamic as well as soothing for the viewer’s eyes, and that it gives the best overall impressions of your company or products. Of course, different rules apply if your ads are entirely text-based. When you focus on text oriented banner advertising, you need to pen interesting tag lines that get the viewer’s attention.

Apart from that, you have to choose the specific areas where you will be placing banner ads carefully. If you are promoting a dietary product, and your banner ad is on a web page dealing with junk food, no one may click on your link. Sure this does not sound like a real example but it gets the point across, you need to advertise in the right place; location, location, location works for the Internet as well.

If you’re serious about hitting it big with banner advertising and achieving superb results, then implement the tips given here to achieve and enjoy the long term success that’s available when you use this terrific promotional tool.

Maybe you decide you want to promote Synnd Review. The developer has already probably created some banners for you to use to promote the product. Definitely visit Synnd for more details.

Liveblogging: Twitter CEO Evan Williams Keynote at SXSW

We’re here at SXSW Interactive waiting for the keynote with Twitter CEO Evan Williams who will discuss "The Next Generation of Social Media." There has been some speculation that an announcement of Twitter’s ad platform could occur at this event, but that may or may not happen. We’ll see.

Either way, I’ll be liveblogging the keynote below. Please forgive the inevitable typos.

Williams will be interviewed by Umair Haque of the Havas Media Lab."

Liveblogging starts

02:00:  Still waiting…

02:01: Introduction beginning…

02:03: Here we go…

Evan Williams announces…A new platform for integrating twitter into websites: it’s called @anywhere

Signin using twitter id, your own publications can be followed starting with amazon,huffpost youtube yahoo,….a bunch of others.

Umair asks – if i’m at newspaper and i want to read one of fav columnits

 

ev: @anywhere reduces friction – not strict rules lleaves alot of innovation up to devs and third parties…a lot to be done with it

easily tweet from column itself. you may just want to follow the columlnist….straight from byline

"one of the things we’ve found with twitter is discovery is one of the hardest challenges…"

twitter is very easy way to keep in touch.

 

Umair: what are key benefits to site?

ev: give you connection back to users that you didn’t hav before – twitter drives tons of traffic, so should reslt in more followers for a site than just sending out links…

 

hopefully result in more people who are your fans using twitter, talking about you content…

you can bring in users’ tweets into your site, and create a sub community with it

Umair: people and organizations build stronger relationships?

about lowering barrier to that according to Ev.

03:13: Ev: We’re still focused pretty much on how do we create the best experience for users and businesses…

How do we create a business out of this? There’s tons of business users on twitter today..

We just want to make that better, easier, and faster.

What is Twitter? Maybe the right question is what is twitter evolving to?

It’s always been a difficult question to answer. We think of it as an information network to help people discover what they care about (in the world)

You can follow the flaming lips if that’s what you care about….you can be smarter and make better choices…that’s valuable…

its like saying "what’s the internet?" it’s about who you are. what you need at the time.

02:16. As we grow, one of the things that becomes painful is having a lot of centralized decision making and forcing poeple through slow processes, so we have teams and try to give them the resources they need…

Role for interacting with teams?

I don’t get into the nuts and bolts of code…I personally like to get inovled in product and strategy…what we should be doing…the nitty gritty, work wth product teams. half my time. the other half think about company and right culture internally…

been thinking a lot lately about how to scale the company and adopt the characteristics we want…how to define these characteristics..paralllel between service and the company we want to create – openness big value of twitter . transparency. a company that behaves by that as well. easy to say and harder to do as you grow…

02:19 Openness means a lot of things. we debated whether openness or transparency is the right word. you can let people see what you’re doing, but a door lets people come in and mess with what you’re doing ..users have taken twitter and morphed it into what they want it to be. ….we’ve encouraged and supported that. a core part of being open.

Your basic assumptions are usually wrong. "Openness is a survival technique."

We talk about nine assumptions you should have one of them is assume there are more smart people outside the compay than inside. it’s a key thing to remember as you get bigger…

  02:21:   Deals with Bing/Google first guys we shared full stream of public twitter data with. a lot of debate…people inside twitter…if there’s all this data that could be highly moentizable., does it make sense to give this data away? We came to the decision by going to the principle by how do we create the most value for the user….the reason google/bing could help that – ther’es valuable knowledge within the twitter network. there’s a lot of valuable tweeting that people don’t necessarily see…it’s a way to bring more valuable to the tweets.

02:24: It was a tough decision to come to….big partners aren’t who they want to limit it too..announced a couple weeks ago that they would license the data to other partners…

One of the exciting next things to happen with the ecosystem …creating core experiences that fill holes in user expereince…sharing photos, shortening links, apps, etc.

Real businesses built off twitter – cotweet,etc. we know twitter can be used for customer support, but twitter.com interface isn’t built for that. cotweet recently got acquired who wants to focus on that more.

We’d love to see much more focus on creating those deep experiences.
 
"We’re pretty open." THere is some control we need to employ. if we were completly open, it could hur the users in time….it has to be managed a lot – being open and having an open api makes it much easier to build apps to spam twiter. sending cease and desists every day to spammers – using the twitter brand…

One reason third parties are so important – a lot of people falling for these guys’ tricks…we have to assert some kind of control.

02:29: An email i recently got…to support – someone in chile thanking twitter for helping communication…this is very gratifying for us because we’ve always held it important to make twitter reach the weakest signals in the world…because twitter’s so simple….sms still really important to us…

We’re really happy we’ve been able to get sms coverage…not as easy as just providing a service on the internet.

02:21: To me it comes back to is someone getting value out of twitter. if they’re search google and they come upon a tweet and get value out of a tweet, we consider them a user…ther is a curve for adoption. "we have a pretty wide definition of user." we’re trying to lower the barrier…at the beginning a lot of focus was on telling the world what you’re doing…now we’re getting to the point where there’s something interesting on twitter for almost everybody…mentions flaming lips again…critical that it’s a two way medium, but this could be as simple as a retweet or a reply…

02:35 Press secretary of the white house started using twitter in an authentic way from inside the white house in a way that you wouldn’t usually see things….official channel, but they’re using it in a new way. "very fun" to see.  It’s about reducing the walls beween people who have a lot of influence and the people they influence. That’s the most profound promise of the Internet, and we’re riding the wave I started on ten years ago with blogging…"

02:41: There’s more and more stuff every day you may want to follow and search for…our goal is not just to maximize that. We understand that people have limited time/attetion. We have no interest in increasing just the amount of time you spend on the Twitter site. "If anything, we’d like to decease it."

The open exchange of info has a positive impact on the world…

02:46: The obvious stuff will be just signing in and tweeting more stuff, but there’s another level of value created by lowering frition (@ platform)

If the channel helps the business get better, that tha’s very powerful.

02:49: If you live on the web, you’re used to having a relationship with companies/services you use..

A lot of people walked out of this keynote. I’m pretty sure the guy next to me fell asleep. No joke.

 

Liveblogging: Danah Boyd (Micosoft Research) SXSW Keynote

I’m sitting here in the exhibit hall at SXSW getting ready for the opening remarks keynote, which is getting ready to get underway. It will be delivered by Danah Boyd of Microsoft Research

Her SXSW Bio: One of the world’s foremost authorities on social networks, boyd works at Microsoft Research New England and also serves as a Fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Note: Please forgive he typos that are sure to occur in this liveblog. Also keep in mind that this is paraphrased.

Liveblogging starts:

02: 08 She takes the stage.

2:09 Humbled to be here.

SXSW first and foremost about the people…passionate about what they’re doing. there’s a lot of trouble that goes on but that’s part of the joy.

2:10: Have a good time, but avoid the tequila….

I’m a social media researcher….spend most of my time trying to understand how people use social media in their daily lives. reflecting how to make that material public. blogging for 13 years. believe in being an activist.

What keeps me up at night is how social media transforms society.

Goal: sit back and think about a specfic set of puzzles. All of you are seeing how these tools are shaping society….

Intersection of privacy and publicity.

2:12:  privacy isn’t dead. people very much care about it online and off. what privacy means may not be what you think. it’s about control…understanding a social setting. and context. how to behave. understanding what the architecture will let you do….

people feel they don’thave control and they feel violated.

Recent privacy fail: Google Buzz

A lot of people will lvoe buzz and use it, but it doesn’t mean that google didn’t mess up in terms of privacy.

They’re aking a hit.

2:14: Gives background of how buzz works….

2:15: NOthing the buzz team was technologically wrong. there were all sorts of opt outs….shows a slide referencing "F— you Google" …

Deconstruct what acutally happened:

2:19: Talking about engineers looking at "ASL" in chat rooms…there’s something radically different than responding than going into their profile and looking.

Ask users to share with their friends….It’s not the idea of getting that info. it’s the ritual of letting them know how the info will be acquired.

Google managed to find the social equivalent of the uncanny valley…

Personal networks are when you talk to people about what they spend time with

Personal – listing contacts, etc.

Behavioral – networks with people in the same room.

What Google did was collapsed these…

Just because people put material in public doesnt mean it was all meant to come together and be aggregated.

 

What they did wrong:

1. Google got in trouble by integrating a public facing system inside of one of the most intimate (gmail)….juxtaposing private with public…a lot of users believed google was exposing their private email..this was never technically the case, but it created confusion. people flipped out. google had to spend a lot of time and pr…

2. GOogle assumed that people would opt out if they didnt’ want to participate. gives google benefit of the doubt, but cant help but notice that more companies think its ok to expose tremendously and then back pedal…

Easier for users to flip out rather than to actually go and undo things…

I kept meeting users who thtought if they opted out, it would cancel their gmail account.

You need to ease them in. give them a way to understand…

THey "foolishly" told users what they wanted to hear rather than asking them what they wanted to hear.

Just because people want something publicly accessible doesn’t mean they want it publicized.

Shows slide of Onion article mocking Google

2:23: We see gossip being spread in all sorts of ways. We don’t always navigate privacy with people so well…we hold the architcture around us accountable. The Walls have ears. there is always the possiblity of eavesdroppers.

Talks about being in a cafe…public place, but you expect certain types of people to show up. you expect people from the community but not your high school cheerleading team. When people asses a situation, they develop menal models…they need to know so they know how to "best behave".

online environments are not nearly as stablized…we’re still trying to work through what we can trust in terms of architecture and people.

02:27: Digital architecture doesn’t just have ears. also has a mouth. people aren’t good at managing when the system changes the rules on them.

Recent privacy fail number 2: facebook’s privacy changes in december

Gives a rundown of all of that.

02:28: Asking non techy users: tell me what you privacy settings are? I have yet to find a single person who actually knows. That’s not Good knows. Facebook is known for privacy.

Tells story of teen with abusive father…set up facebook account…found out that her content was made public. is her fear of what might have gone wrong acceptable? 

Big difference between publicly available data and publicized data. I worry about this and who will get caught in the crossfire.

PII vs. PEI PII - personally identifiable information vs. personally embarassing information

02:32: When tech comes along and changes rules, it’s a huge fail

Conversations that happen in social media are public by default, private by effort.

What we see with teens is that they’re thiking through this. THey make conscious decisions.

Critical to realize effected by age, life role, etc.

People make material publicly accesssible, but they dont’ want the world to see it. there are poeple that they specifically don’t want to see it.

02:36 "Making something that is public more public is a violation of privacy."

People can adjust to change, but you have to think about those who get in trouble during the process.

Compares to paparazzi. Shows slides of britney, lindsay lohan and Princess Diana.

Publicity: Twitter has become a space for celebs, micro-celebs, fans of all sorts. 

FB is about communicating with the people you already know, Twitter started out this way, but it’s evolved to follow people who have audiences…

02:39: Issues of intimacy good and bad…cause of trouble for some  celebs. Talks about Miley Cyrus quitting Twitter. Quotes from her rap about it.

Twitter isn’t just for celebs and followers. People all over the globe engage with it as specific kind of public space.

two kinds of trending topics: those that start because of external factors, and those that are generated on the site.

02:41: Trending topics also highlight that not all users are who you think they are. Shows Justin Bieber…in trending topics for 18 solid days. For all the conversations of teens not tweeting….all of his followers not all that old.

Lot of racism and classism on Twitter. Shows slides of white people using the N word…

Many have benefited from speaking in public on social media. It’s easy to take things for granted: the right to challenge authority, the right to be heard, seen, the right to go into public without losing my rights, etc. seek pub of own accord…not what everybody gets. Imagine you just left an abusive relationship, but you’re biggest fear is that you ex will find you….how public are you willing to be?

People kicked out of jobs, military…

Your kid’s teacher: how public is she allowed to be online? Religious? Drinking? ALlowed to be a lover and a friend in a public setting? What we see over and over agin is that we expect the teacher to always be the teacher, but that’s a lot to ask from people.

02:46: Public by default: not the great democratizer. 

Seeking attention, part of what makes engaging online fun. Quotes Jon Stewart The internet’s like Meixcan food. every sites’ got the same ingredients, just different combinations…talks about chat roulette.

02:49: Why do people engage on this site? What you’ll find is heartwarming and heartbreaking. Many there for entertainment, boredom, find pesonal connections, etc. THere are others hoping they might find a celeb.

It’s an odd combo of privacy and publicity…situated in private spaces (bedrooms, offices), but becomes publc. People are having fun geo-locating people who are participating.

CR may be a fad, but the idea of pub andprivacy getting mixed up is not. New rules will complicate the boundaries…

Tech will continue to make a mess of both.

You need to know that there is now magical formula for understanding privacy and publicity.

If you expose people, you may lose you reputation…

For marketers, its an exciting time of publicility, but just because you can see somebody, doesn’t mean they want to be seen by you. And just because you think you’ve interpreted something, doesn’t mean you’ve done it right.

Wants to see more policy grounded in what’s going on. A lot of numbers can be misinterpreted. What we’re measuring isn’t peoples’ sense of privacy. Wanting privacy isn’t about having something to hide. It’s about wanting control…

There are good reasons to engage in privacy and good ones to engage in publicity.

A lot of people are sharing more publicly to maintain other stuff privately.

Think about people’s intentions and what it means to invade their privacy. Make sure you’re creating the future that you want to live in.