Posted on Sunday, 30th November 2008 by Jeff
If you ever tried advertising with Adwords, there’s a good chance you created a text ad since that’s your easiest option. One thing I recently tried using is banner ads to promote my wholesale e-book at WholesaleDistributorSecret.com. I’m actually quite impressed with the results so far. It seems that whenever I get a few clicks, I get a sale. This is despite the fact that I’m not getting as many clicks as I normally get with a text ad. But the “quality” in the traffic seems to be pretty good. Maybe it’s the mindset that the people are in when they click on my ad. Either that or my banner ad clearly describes what my website is about which avoids any confusion as to what my website is about or what its selling. While text ads are always a good option, you might want to run a campaign using banner ads to compare the results.
As I mentioned in my title, I used the Adwords “content network” which is not the same as the search network. These are basically the “Ads By Google” that you see on my site and other websites all over the net. Login to your Adwords account and setup a campaign as you normally would. When creating your ad, click on the link that says “Image Ad” which is right next to “Text Ad”. Upload the banner you want to use for your ad. Google has a clear description of what ad sizes you can use. If your banner is animated GIF or Flash you can use the following “full” sizes:
468 x 60 Banner
728 x 90 Leaderboard
250 x 250 Square
200 x 200 Small Square 336 x 280 Large Rectangle
300 x 250 Medium Rectangle
120 x 600 Skyscraper
160 x 600 Wide Skyscraper
However, if your banner is static or is not animated, you should take off 22 pixels of height off the skyscrapers and 11 pixels of height off all the other banners. When I say “take off”, I mean that you should actually get them designed in these sizes. If you don’t, then your ad will be resized to make room for the “Ads By Google” and web address that appears on the bottom of the ad. Use the following sizes if your ad IS NOT ANIMATED:
468 x 49 Banner
728 x 79 Leaderboard
250 x 239 Square
200 x 189 Small Square 336 x 280 Large Rectangle
300 x 239 Medium Rectangle
120 x 578 Skyscraper
160 x 578 Wide Skyscraper
I would highly recommend you use a well-designed image ad to make a good impression on your visitors. Websites such as BannerMode.com will create an eye-catching animated banner for you for a dirt-cheap price. The fact that the banner is animated will allow your ad to maintain its full size whenever it comes up. But remember, the animation only continues for 30 seconds so you have to make sure that the final frame tells your visitor what your website is about in case they don’t see the ad while the animation is going on.
Another thing I thought I should mention is to use placement-targeted ads as well as keyword-targeted ads. Setup the keyword-targeted ads like you normally would with a text ad. But with the placement-targeted ads, you will only be allowed to advertise on websites that allow the sizes of banners that you have available. Therefore, the more banner sizes you have available, the more placements you will be able to choose from.
As always, don’t get really cheap when bidding on your cost-per-click. The lowest you should bid is $.20 if you want a good amount of traffic. If you bid $.40 or higher you should get enough traffic to keep you happy. If the traffic converts to sales really well, you should bid even higher to “maximize” your sales. Remember, you want to earn as much as possible and sometimes bidding higher is your best option. If you bid higher, chances are you won’t be paying your maximum bid when Google bills you.
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