Goal:  Design banner ad with the highest clickthrough rate (468 x 60
pixels).

I would like some information on effective banner design.

It seems to me that banners have the following elements:

1. Color
2. Graphics
3. Verbiage
4. Attributes (animated, flash, still, pop up/under, etc.)

I would like to locate articles or studies discussing all of the
aforementioned.

These links should be based on a) some kind of logical testing (i.e.
changing color only and not the other elements) so that one could
arrive at a reasonable conclusion for each of the elements and b)
measure clickthrough rates both before and after changes.

For Example:  Color testing results
Purple - +45%
Green - +25%
Blue - +10%
Baseline = White

As long as the cumulative links supplied address/test all 4 elements
mentioned (as opposed to one article), that will be satisfactory.

Please ask for clarification is request in unclear.

Will tip up to 100% based on quality of answer given (i.e.
satisfactory answer = fee only; way, way beyond the call of duty =
100%).

Thanks for your help.

---

Clarification of Question by respree-ga on 31 Oct 2002 10:53 PST

I can see I'm getting no takers at $10.

I'll make it easier and more attractive.  Have increased fee to $20
and will eliminate one of the criteria.

Please see if you can supply "three" out of the "four" criteria
outlined in my question.

Would love to go through 100 gyrations of banner ads to see which one
works the best, but life is too short.

All comments are welcome.

Hello there

I have a personal input into this, having been testing a banner
campaign for myself over the past year.

I have run 900,000 banners, over five different banner exchange
networks, on a variety of banner types. For what it’s worth, here are
my results in click-thru-rate. All ads had at least 100,000 showings
each:

- Static text ad, two lines of text, black and white: 1.0 %
- Static text ad, one line of text, black and white: 1.0 %
- text ad one line text, colour : 1.2 %
- text ad, one line text, animated, black and white:  1.4%
- graphic ad, mainly white+ 1 line text, 16 color: 1.5%
- graphic ad, mainly red + 1 line text, 16 color: 1.5 %
- graphic ad, mainly black + 1 line text, 16 color: 2%
- graphic ad mainly blue + click here button: 2.8%

As you can imagine, I’m now using the last graphic ad and click here
button for all my ads

Heres a run down on what I found on survey of banner ads:

Text
____

One survey of Text banners used some lateral thinking and copied how
the big boys do it. It covers text tuning, keyword tuning and
geographic tuning concluding:
"Search engine ads are one type of Web advertising that can actually
work. To create the best ads, do quick experiments and redesign ads
based on usability principles for online writing. Doing so helped us
increase ad click-through by 55% to 310%. "
Designing Web Ads Using Click-Through Data
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20010902.html


A Jupiter Media Metrix survey found users pay more attention to ads
offering discounts or good information: Types of online ads most
likely to receive attention and the percentage of people wqho rated
them highest are:

Ads that feature discounts or coupons : 65% 
Ads that are informative : 42 %
Ads that feature sweepstakes/contests : 29 %
Ads that are related to content/channel : 17 %
Ads that are animated :  16 %
Ads that have sound  :13 %
Ads that feature a game : 6 %
Sourced from: Iconocast Rich media review
(http://www.iconocast.com/issue/20000921.html#macroview )


Colour
_____

I was hard pushed to find hard and fast surveys about the
effectiveness of color on banners, but there are many simple design
rules formulated over the years in traditional advertising that apply
just as well to banners. The following links point to some of the best
of them.

About Graphic Design: Banner Design
http://graphicdesign.about.com/library/weekly/aa092597.htm

Banner design tips: Colors and banner designs
http://www.grantasticdesigns.com/bannercolors.html

Banner Design: Shades of Success: Color Theory
http://www.banner-design-banner-design.com/banner-articles/logo-articles/shadesofsuccess.htm


Animation, Sound etc.
__________________

Nathan Roe and Nick Brennan, for Massey in New Zealand, ran two
studies, one after the other. The purpose of the first was to test the
relative effectiveness of four versions of a banner ad incorporating
sound and/or animation. The second study was to extend the experiment
further with the same population who took part in the first. Their
results can be summarised as follows:

"The use of sound and the use of a "click here" message did tend to
improve the effectiveness of the ad, whereas the animation did not."

"The Relative Effectiveness of Sound and Animation in Web Banner
Design
http:marketing-bulletin.massey.ac.nz/article9/article7.pdf


General Banner Design principles studies
__________________________________

A recent survey "Banners Being Used as Branding Tools "  looked at how
most ads are now linked to "brands".
"Within the branding category, ads generating awareness garner the
most impressions (33 percent of all impressions), followed by ads
positioning the brand (20 percent), and ads promoting a feature or
benefit of a brand (1 percent). Among direct marketing ads, those
driving traffic (28 percent of all impressions) are more prevalent
than ads driving sales (17 percent). "
(http://cyberatlas.internet.com/markets/advertising/article/0,,5941_508951,00.html
)


In a recent report, when Yogesh Tadwalker was asked to create a banner
campaign that would get loads of clicks from India's teens, he was
worried a banner wouldn't work. So he decided to try something new --
a banner that appeared to be an actual live instant messaging
conversation between two teens. He found his "Live" Instant
Message-Style Banner Gets 5% Click Throughs and Unusually High
Conversions. ( The report costs $9 , but you can see a summary here:
Marketing Sherpa
(http://www.marketingsherpa.com/barrier.cfm?currentID=1984 )

There have been several studies on Banner Placement on the page and
most conclude the same as this one:

Why Are Users Banner-Blind? The Impact of Navigation Style on the
Perception of Web Banners by Magnus Pagendarm and Heike Schaumburg ,
Center for Media Research, Freie Universität Berlin
( http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/Articles/v02/i01/Pagendarm/ )

Abstract
"It has been observed that contradictory results have been found
regarding the perception of banner advertisements on the Internet.
While some studies found that recall and recognition scores for
banners were at a satisfactory level, others observed that banners are
almost generally overlooked. In this study, it is argued that the
opposing results might be explained by differences in navigation style
(aimless browsing versus goal directed searching). To test this
hypothesis, 32 subjects were presented with a Web site containing a
number of banners ads. Half the subjects were asked to search for
specific information, while the other half was instructed just to
explore the site as they wished. In a subsequent recall and
recognition test, subjects from the aimless browsing group performed
significantly better than subjects from the information search group.
Results are discussed with regard to the supposed underlying processes
of perception and information processing."
Hope that's enough for you to be going on with :)
Anything else, just ask.

willie-ga

A nice article on "Color and Psychology" from an interior designer.
http://www.catherinemcgivern.com/interiors/color_and_psychology.htm

A nice article on writing banner ads effectively:
Surprise! Badly Written Banner Ads Yield Bad Results
http://www.clickz.com/ad/online_ad/article.php/841811

A nice articler on banner ad design inb general:
Design Banner ads like a pro
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/ad-design.htm

---

Clarification of Answer by willie-ga on 01 Nov 2002 10:49 PST

I'm with you on the animation - they annoy the hell out of me :)

There are conflicting studies about it

This survey
"The Relative Effectiveness of Sound and Animation in Web BannerDesign
http:marketing-bulletin.massey.ac.nz/article9/article7.pdf  

says that animation gets ignored, but classic advertising theory
always said that moving pictures were better. Maybe classic
advertising theory will have to change due to the web.

The other thing I forgot to mention was size - I've found that most
animated banners take far too long to load, and I've taken to stopping
the load when I encounter one of them. I suspect the above survey has
it right - web browsers find animated ads annoying. As a tech author
myself, I go for the "simplest is best" approach.

And I also forgot to say, if you want to see some of my banners, you
can have a look at (
http://www.willie.meikle.btinternet.co.uk/bannerexchange.html ) -
they're not quite up to date, but the blue "Win Books!" one is very
effective.

willie-ga

Thank you.  Haven't read all the links yet, but at a glance, it looks
like a lot of useful information that will help me to get started. 
Out of curiosity, did you have an opinion on static versus animated. 
I have read animated results in a better clickthru.  Personally, I
find them very irritating and intentionally try make my eyes avoid
them.