Designing Winning Ad Banners

Charlie Morris

June 7, 1999

For your online ad campaign to be succesful, you need attractive, appropriate, attention-getting banners. In this tutorial, I'll explain how to design banners using graphic tools like Photoshop or Paintshop Pro. We'll spice things up by using animated GIFs, and rich media like Java, Shockwave and HTML banners. Whatever tools you use to design your banner, start by defining what you want the banner to accomplish. Many advertisers see the banner's sole function as enticing the Web surfer to click on it, but building brand awareness is also an important function of banners.

Attractive, appropriate, attention-getting banners are one of the keys to a successful online campaign. In this tutorial, I'll explain how to design banners using graphic tools like Photoshop or Paintshop Pro. We'll spice things up by using animated GIFs, and rich media like Java, Shockwave and HTML banners.

An ad banner can be a graphic image, a snippet of HTML, or a file created with an interactive technology such as Java, Shockwave or Flash. Whatever tools you use to design your banner, start by defining what you want the banner to accomplish. Many advertisers see the banner's sole function as enticing the Web surfer to click on it. In that sense, a banner is like a résumé, the sole purpose of which is to get interviews. Creating banners with the sole intent of generating clickthroughs, however, is short-sighted and could be counter-productive. You could create a banner that offers free beer, and you would probably get phenomenal clickthrough. Unless you really are giving away free beer, however, this isn't going to generate any business. So it isn't good enough to make a banner that makes people want to click - you need a banner that makes the right kind of people click.

Media buyers hate to admit it, but banners also serve another important purpose - building brand awareness. Joe Surfer may not click on your banner, but if he sees it enough times that your company name is drilled into his head, and thinks of you at some later time when he's in a shopping mode, then your banner is a success. Designing a banner to build awareness, however, is different than designing for maximum clickthroughs. A branding banner will obviously display the brand name and logo prominently, while a click-me banner might be coy about what's being sold, to entice people to click and find out. Many good banners, of course, have elements of both approaches.

Designing Winning Ad Banners

Contents: