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It is no secret that in recent years banner ads have become less effective than text links. The
term for this phenomenon is "banner blindness". Banner ads were so ubiquitous in the early years
of the Internet that users simply began ignoring them.
So what did advertisers do? They made the banners harder to ignore by making them flash, rotate,
jiggle, and all kinds of other tricks. This of course led users to like banners even less!
So does this mean that banner advertising is useless? Not at all!
There are several things you can do to combat banner blindness. First of all, make sure that each
of your banners is easy on the eye and blends in well with the site it's displayed on. Match up
the color scheme and design to those of the site.
Yes, this means you'll need a customized banner for every site you advertise on, but the results will make the effort and expense worth it, trust
me!
You also need to make sure your banners are placed on relevant pages (not just relevant
websites). For example, a banner ad for web hosting plans will convert much better on an article
page about web hosting than on a page about Search Engine Optimization.
You can also make your banners look just like regular text links! Here's how:
- Create a regular text link for your ad that is designed to fill the space used by a normal
468x60 banner.
- Upload a blank page with the link on it to your website.
- View the page in your web browser.
- Press the Print Screen button (Prt Scr).
- Load the Windows Paint program and click
"Edit", then "Paste". You will see a screenshot of
the web page with nothing but the text link on it.
- Click "File", then "Save
As" and save the image as a JPEG.
- Load the new JPEG image into your favorite photo editing application, then crop it to
468x60 pixels. You now have a standard 468x60 banner that looks just like a text link!
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