Masters of Marketing - Lifecycle Performance Pros

How To Make Banner Ads That Get Up To 15 Times
(Or Higher) Today’s Average Click-Through Rate
(And Bring Genuine Prospects,
Not Just Curiosity Seekers, To Your Site)
"Throughout May (1998), users clicked on roughly 1 percent of the ads displayed
Webwide, according to NetRatings Inc. (www.netratings.com). By the final week
of October (1998), that click-through rate had declined to one-half of 1 percent,
according to NetRatings."
Now that number is down to .15%, according to a 1999 CBS MarketWatch
article, reported in eMarketer ezine, April 1999 - just one and a half people in
1000 click on any given banner ad whenever it shows up anywhere on the web. I
don’t know what the industry estimates are now.
Look - any "industry average" is not only going to be a rough estimate, it’s also
going to be a number which rolls too many things into one. It’s a combination of
good banners, bad banners, overexposed banners, banners on networks or
specific websites, banners targeted at all types of markets, and in a lot of cases,
banners which are not targeted at all.
I’m going to explain to you how to avoid being banner ad roadkill in the midst of
these falling click rates. When you read about banner advertising in magazines
and on websites, you can get easily confused by arguments about "branding".
Every once in a while you’ll hear "The banner is dead." Sounds like a political
slogan ... emotional, hasty and ... meaningless.
Banner advertising deserves far more respect than it’s getting, but frankly I’m
happy to have the world in general totally misunderstand it. I’m concerned about
making money from banners, and helping my customers and clients make money
from banners. That’s all. Just so long as I can buy targeted banner advertising
and continue to make money from it, the rest of the world can think whatever it
wants to.
And before going any further I want you to know that I’m certainly no workaholic.
I’m not going to describe anything intense here. You’re not going to have to hire
people.
When I wake up in the morning, the first thought in my head is not "Awesome,
another 16 hour workday, I can’t wait. First I’ll spend a few hours trying to track
down reliable information about how all the specific parts of my Internet business
are doing. Then a few hours trying to manage relationships with affiliates and
other website managers and ad departments. Then I’ll force myself to learn just
enough to take care of some massive crisis in one of our perl scripts because I
can’t find any programmers to help me. And finally, every once in a while I’ll
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