Why Banner Ad Prices Are Dropping

Mention banner advertising to most online marketers and they immediately think of low response and high costs.

Why is this so?

Maybe they're looking at industry averages and paying attention to what journalists and the inexperienced have to say about banner ads.

But there's another reason too ...

Banner Ads Are The "Madison Avenue" Of The Internet.

Madison Avenue in New York has for decades been known as the place to go for expensive advertising.

Direct marketers tend to think this about Madison Avenue ad agencies ...

- they're overpriced

- they're clueless about direct selling

- they're clueless about scientific ad tracking

- they talk about "branding" which is a word we direct marketers don't like to hear

- big companies with more money than brains will always throw away millions of dollars on Madison Avenue ad agencies

I know first-hand that banner advertising can work, even for "the little guy", the ultra-small online business owner with 3 employees or less and a start-up ad budget of $5000 or less. As long as their market can be targeted online for a reasonable cost, banner advertising can do the trick.

But look at how MOST banner advertising campaigns go ...

- banners are designed on artistic excellence (this isn't always a bad thing, but it shouldn't be your #1 criterion)

- banners are designed for "branding" 1st, direct sales 2nd

- banners are created by ad agencies

- spending money on banners is the quickest way to throw money away when a company gets a sudden influx of venture capital and suddenly has an ad budget in the millions

So right now it's mostly large corporations spending money on banner ads. That's not the case with other forms of Internet advertising. Look at ezine ads, email list rentals, link swaps and so on and you'll find a lot of smaller entrepreneurs.

Over the last few years venture capitalists have gotten fed up...

"The show must NOT go on! Quit wasting our money! Losing money on every sale is NOT a viable long-term business model! Bring us more traffic, for less money, and for God's sake SELL something!"

The big players with money are no longer betting on winning a dot com lottery - they want to see revenue. Less red ink, more black. And they're not seeing results with banner ads. Not the way they're doing it. Certainly not with low click-rate banners dumping people on their home page.

Add to this the fact that more and more people are surfing the Internet, generating more and more page views which can be sold.

More supply and less demand = a buyer's market. That's you; you're the buyer. Prices fall. This is a good thing for you.

Ad managers are scrambling to deliver more functionality than ever before. Some places haven't caught up, but they will. You can buy banner advertising for specific sites of your choice on networks, specific web pages, with geographic targeting, time-of-day targeting, demographic targeting ... you name it.

So there's all this banner ad space for sale, on web sites that target YOUR market (unless you've got some really weird and obscure market). The ad managers WANT to sell the impressions to you, and believe me, it's easier than you probably think it is to get a discount and do a small initial test. If the ad manager at one site or network is stubborn, forget him and try somewhere else.

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Dealing with ad managers is dealt with in more depth in Scott's book, "The Banner Advertising Traffic Machine" -- it teaches you how to create an entire Internet business model around banner advertising. Scott is also available for private one-on-one banner advertising consultation and complete design services. Phone 1-705-749-2225 or email scott@banneradmagic.com