Ensuring Success by Understanding Banner Ad Objectives   Online advertising has basically the same objectives as its traditional, offline counterpart: to increase familiarity and awareness of a company or product, to drive traffic to that place of business, and ultimately, to lead to purchases there. These objectives are best accomplished through a multi-faceted approach explained below.     First, it is crucial that the business-owner understands who it is exactly she wishes to target with her advertising. Who would want to buy what it is she would like to sell? Is it pre-teen girls who love horses? Is it senior-citizen men who want to improve their golf swing? As in any communication, it is very important to customize your style of expression to best suit the intended audience, and this is especially so online. Online consumers are constantly ducking and avoiding the attention-seeking antics of flashy ads and have decided most are just white noise trying to pull their focus off of the page content they came there to read in the first place.     If the ad does not immediately seem appropriate, timely, and relevant to the consumer, they will likely dismiss it without a second glance. It is vital to know your customer, understanding their interests and preferences through their online behavior over time, and use this information to target them with messages and offers that get inside their heads. To learn more about getting to know your customer, visit Coremetrics.com.

Second, the ads should be strategically located in places where the target audience will likely visit. The pre-teen student mentioned above, for example, may be inclined to click on an ad featuring a calendar with photos of horses if she happened across the ad while doing research online for a school report. In this example, the ad has been successful in accomplishing the first two of the three objectives. But Advertising of any kind is not an exact science, and its success is not always overtly measurable. Even if the viewer doesn’t click on the ad during their first encounter with it, they may mentally note the content of it and decide to visit the advertiser's site at some time in the future, or it might mean that the visitor only peripherally picks up on the ad but each view of it inceases their awareness of the advertiser's product or service. This latter result of advertising is known as developing a “brand identity”. If done right, a brand is much more than just a combination of logos, slogans and color schemes. It can conjure up a human-like personality in the mind of the consumer and build life-long affinities. A company you know well and trust can feel like a friendly face in a sea of strangers.  Or, if the consumer's experiences tend to be unpleasant when encountering a particular company's advertisements, a negative brand identity develops, causing the consumer to avoid that company's ads when possible. Here’s a brief analogy to explain what exactly is meant by “negative brand identity”. Say your coworker shows you a wallet-sized photo of her cousin whom you’ve never met or spoken with. You see that the young man has longish hair, glasses, pale skin, and is wearing a yellow button-down. He could benefit from a trim, but other than that, you feel no emotion or opinion about him whatsoever.

Then, let’s say, he gets hired at your company and works closely enough to your department that you run into him now and then at the copier and breakroom. During each of these encounters, you spend some time chatting with him and gradually learn that he’s the sax player in a local jazz band, and tends to come to work disheveled and smelling faintly of alcohol a couple of times a month. Each exposure to him contributes to an overall opinion and “feeling” you have about the young man. Now, if your co-worker were to flash the photo of him in the yellow shirt, you'd feel something. On some level, you think you know who he is, what he’s about, and you have an opinion about him even if you'd never share it with your co-worker. In advertising terms, this “feeling” evoked by the image is known as brand identity - negative in this case.   Third is the content of the ad itself. Is the key message clearly stated and attention-grabbing? Is it instantly understandable? If appropriate, is it clever or humorous? Is your company clearly identified in the ad so the consumer understands where a click will take them? Consumers want to be in control of their navigation and tend to lose the desire to shop once they feel tricked or "played".  So there are several ways a banner ad can be successful and several things to consider to ensure that success. We recommend that, before completing a Request for an Ad Design, you consider these questions to help you develop a concept upon which we should base the design, and ultimately, meet your expectations.     Who do you want to speak to? What is the main idea or theme you wish to convey? Is there supporting information to help the viewer understand the key idea? Is the key idea promotional or brand-developing? Does it reflect the essence of the offer, service or product?