On Measuring and Increasing the Effectiveness of Banner Advertising

Despite impressive growth in banner advertising budgets, doubts persist amongst practitioners about the effectiveness of banner advertising and the techniques used to measure it. A number of approaches such as click-throughs, mouse rollovers and eyetracker studies have been developed to measure the banner ad effectiveness. We argue that banner ad effectiveness can also be determined by measuring the change in perceptions of consumers who have been exposed to a banner ad. We further argue that the effectiveness of a banner ad can be increased by identifying the issues that are salient to the target consumers and then aligning the message in the banner ad with these issues. A case study is presented where the technique is demonstrated on an advertising campaign launched by the travel department of an Asian country. Consumers who were exposed to the banner ads were shown to be more likely to visit the advertised country.