Banners, Impression, Clicks, Results

[nashville]

Is there any rules of thumb regarding results for banner advertising?

we have banner ads on our site and generally the click through rates are like

136,000 impressions with 643 clicks for a .50 click rate.

The lowest click rate is .37 and highest is 1.54.

The highest click through rate of 1.54 produced 441 clicks and only 6 sales. So 28,000 impressions might cost my customer $500...this is not a very good return.

The problems (if any) could be anyone of the following of course.

Banner Design
Nature of site traffic
Landing page copy

How do I know what is the problem, or is this normal?

[jhilgeman]

Well, you gave a worst and best click-through rate (CTR). What are the differences involved there? For example, is the same banner shown for the worst CTR and the best CTR, or are there different banners? And if there are different banners, is the CTR measured separately for each banner?

The logical approach is to first identify what pieces of the page remained the same during both the worst and best periods for CTRs. That way you can determine which pieces could potentially be affecting the rate. Once you've established which pieces change, try controlling/fixing those pieces to see how it affects the rate.

It's a long process, and sometimes multivariate testing can help by automating the whole process of figuring out the best combinations, but it's often an expensive way to go.

[gobuy]

You need to remember that banner advertising is not only about CTR! Text ads are only about CTR but banner if designed right is also about creating a long term branding campaign. The more people see it the more people will remember the ad message. So it's very important that the ad also include the URL clearly. I have may times not clicked on the banner but have entered the URL on my browser and gone to the website.

So my click did not count! but the ad still worked and got me to go to the website. I have not had many text ads do the same.

[deepsand]

Text ads are only about CTR?

All advertising is about ROI.

And, text ads can be a very powerful tool for building branding.

[Peter]

I posted a similar query on adwords expected CTR, my campaigns range from 0.8% to 12%. The lowest CTR has amongst the highest impressions, and is in the most comptetive keyword category. Despite trying multiple adwords the results are the same.
If your banner is for a competitive area then the CTR may be low, or the site it is on has a poor placement, either way that is one particular problem.

Conversions are down to tieing the banner to the landing page. Say your banner is for red beans, and the landing page is for blue beans, then you automatically loose a number of people. Maybe the banner could contain something else about the offer so that even if the CTR goes down, the sales per click goes up. Once they are on the site you need to make it as easy as possible to obtain whatever the banner advertised.

[nickoran]

Google do have a free tool that you can use for testing different layouts of your page with adsense, have you looked into trying something like this?

[gwhite]

Originally Posted by nashville

Is there any rules of thumb regarding results for banner advertising?

So 28,000 impressions might cost my customer $500...this is not a very good return.

That breaks out to a cpm of almost $20.00 per 1000 impressions. If you can get that, more power to you. But what I am seeing across most of the ad networks right now is a cpm around $1.50 - $3.00. So if your customer was spending $50 to get 6 sales that might be effective. Also, from your description you didn't say what they were selling, if it is a $10.00 ebook, they are in trouble (especially if they don't have a backend), if it is a $3000.00 product or service, your rate is fine.

Originally Posted by deepsand

All advertising is about ROI.

And, text ads can be a very powerful tool for building branding.

Which is it? It can't be both? I can name all kinds of branding campaigns that had nothing to do with ROI.

[Veikoh]

If you are talking about Google Adsense banners so getting something over 0.1% is good result. When I changed those to some affiliate banners, my click thru rate went over 2%. My mobile pages are still doing much better having over 6% click thru rate.
So my advice would be to target better your ads. Even loosing impressions (branding value) you could have better sales (cash flow value). And forget Google.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by gwhite

Which is it? It can't be both? I can name all kinds of branding campaigns that had nothing to do with ROI.

The purpose of establishing a brand has nothing to do with ROI? If that's the case, then why bother?

[williamc]

Originally Posted by gwhite

I can name all kinds of branding campaigns that had nothing to do with ROI.

Please do, heck, name just a single one that did not want the branding to make future sales easier. Sales equate to positive ROI after all.