Most Companies have ample opportunities to add banners throughout their sites. This can be a blessing and a curse. It does in fact give you a place to place information you want your customer to see, use, or call out. Sadly customers are being bombarded with information from all directions and they get banner blindness.

Banner n is not a new issue, it has been around as long as there has been web sites.  One of the reasons that people seem immune to the banners on your site could be that you expect them to “see” the banner as content for the site.  Recently I had a conversation with a client that wanted to put product information in the banner space on the side of the page. The reason was because they didn’t want to overwhelm the customer with information in the content area on the page and lose a sale.  (thankful, after many conversations we did NOT do this)

Many different researchers have concluded that the users eye will go to the content area of the page first even before they look at navigation.  No matter what colors, fonts or how large the banners are, customers equate banners as promotions and they get ignored.  Customers are tired of being burned with pop up banners that are unnecessarily distrating and not having the information they are interested in.

While this is a common issue that you can run into on your site, you should by no means discount banner ads all together. Well placed and  well worded banners will still attract the people you would like. Tips you should keep in mind:

1. Dont use the same banner on every page, this really will increase banner blindness.

2. Using links within your banners will give the banner the feel that the information is important.

3. Dont put content in the banner that is critical or and extension to the content on the page. (While you can use this area for complimentary information or for the logical next step you want a user to take, you dont want to have this be the only place for key info on the page)

4. Think about what the real goal of the banner is and design and distribute appropriately.

While we aren’t going to remove banner blindness anytime soon, there are ways to increase the usefulness of the banner location and how you display reasonable next steps for your customers.

With big boosts from search and mobile, combined with continuing shifts in spending away from traditional ad channels by marketers, WPP’s GroupM, the largest buyer of media in the world, is projecting that global Internet spending will increase 11 percent next year to almost $65 billion and account for nearly 15 percent of all measured media.

More specifically, interactive media will represent nearly one of every five dollars spent by marketers on media in the U.S. next year, according to the report release yesterday.   GroupM predicts that interactive media, primarily online, will represent 17% of the U.S. advertising marketplace in 2010, up from 15.4% in 2009.

That makes interactive the third largest medium in the U.S., behind television’s 44.2% share, and magazine’s 18.4% share of 2010 advertising budgets.*  According to GroupM’s estimates, interactive media will overtake newspaper’s U.S. advertising share this year.   Newspapers, which had a 14.8% share of U.S. ad spending in 2008, will fall to a 13.6% share this year, and a 12.4% share next year. Interactive media had a 13.9% share in 2008.**

We have talked about the shift in advertising dollars from newspapers to the web in previous blog posts.  Even the most widely read newspaper in the US, USA Today, wrote about this trend last March.

You can see a Google Maps listing list of newspapers that have closed here. I think for the majority of the newspapers, although their online ad revenue has grown, it is too late to fix their core business models to make it through the era of real time, mashed up, and twitter size news.

*Courtesy of AdWeek
**Courtsey of GroupM Release

When developing an online media plan, don’t overlook value-added ad placements, such as text-based newsletter ads and advertorials. These placements aren’t always popular ideas, but they represent an opportunity to add performance juice to a proposal full of expensive premium ad placements.

So when negotiating a media buy, check out these seven value-added placements I  advocate for clients:

• Fixed-placement text links. These can be effective.   Frequently at the bottom or side bar of every page on the site and in e-mail newsletters, they often include a quick little sentence or offer and deliver tons of impressions and clicks.

• Text-based newsletter ads. This is another under-appreciated gem. Text-based newsletter insertions often outperform banners, as they are integrated into the newsletter’s content and drive traffic very often for weeks after they are sent. In fact, I’ve seen clicks and actions trickle in for months after a good newsletter text insertion.

• Buttons. Buttons often have fixed placements and sometimes come with a little text (if they don’t, try to do more than a logo). They can deliver a huge number of impressions and enough clicks to bring down a campaign’s average CPC and CPA.

• Advertorial. This is a rarely offered tactic that can drive performance if done properly. If an advertorial is promoted the same way articles are featured and promoted on a site (and even get a little home page play or headline listing), this placement will really deliver. Just like in a print magazine, an online advertorial should be labeled as a “special promotion” article.

Sample Advertorial

• ROS banners. Of course, we gun for those high-profile premium placements or the section-specific placements. However, having more banners running all over the site should help your client reach an audience that’s similar to the one in specific sections that you’re trying to dominate. This approach can drive up your click and action numbers because the volume of inventory that can be thrown at ROS banners is often vast.

• Run of network (RON)/other properties. If your media rep is out of value adds on the site you’re buying on, ask what other sites he owns. Very often a site you buy on owns other sites that are similar enough that they are a relevant place to run your ads. Many may not be as popular as the site you are targeting and the publisher may want to populate it with high-profile ads.

• Cobranded contest. While it may cost money to come up with a contest prize, both publisher and advertiser can still benefit. They can share the list of contestants and offer participants the opportunity to opt in to receive newsletters.

When a publisher underperforms, you should also push for value-added placements. Many properties would rather salvage the buy than lose the contract altogether.