How to Create Clickable Banner Ads Guide

Build the Ad Creative’s Visuals & Eye-Catching Images

The next step is to build the visual assets necessary to develop your banner ads. Banners are a visual medium, making building these assets one of the most critical steps in the whole ad design and creation of banner designs process.

Although the creative process of designing banner ads depends on your objectives and needs, following these best practices is essential to ensure your banner ads are as efficient as possible.

• Include a value proposition in the creative: Regardless of what you want to promote with your ad, ensuring the ad communicates an offer to the viewer as clearly as possible is crucial. For instance, statements such as “limited time offer” or “25% off” should be visible and easy to read.
• Build a call to action (CTA): While CTAs are typically buttons or plain text, they must all invite the user to click with a short, two- or three-word sentence asking the user to complete the desired action. Examples of efficient CTAs include phrases like “Buy now,” “Get started today,” or “Click here.”
• Use the right colors: Color theory is crucial when building visual assets representing your brand, product, or service in a banner ad. Many brands are associated with specific colors; color theory shows each color is associated with particular feelings or emotions the advertiser wants to convey to the viewer. Below are examples of emotions related to commonly utilized brand colors:

• Red: Passion, activity, excitement, boldness, confidence, ambition, power
• Blue: Trust, reliability, strength, dependability
• Green: Nature, healing, growth, safety, balance
• Cyan: Openness, modernity, ambition, spiritedness
• Pink: Sensitivity, femininity, love, nurturing, possibilities
• Orange: Instinct, optimism, freedom, sociability, motivation
• Purple: Creativity, originality, individualism, unconventional
• Gray / Silver: Balance, moderation, technology, authority, refinement

• Select quality image assets: Regardless of the creative content you create for your banner ads, ensuring the image assets you use to build them are of the highest possible quality is critical. If your ad network imposes limitations on file formats, ensure your image assets have as high a resolution as the file size limits allow. Using low-quality assets harms your brand’s image, as it may appear unprofessional or cause viewers to assume the banner ad isn’t functioning correctly.
• Consider using animation or rich media: You can build banner ads using various types and formats that can help you better convey your message. Most ad networks support standard banner ads that can support animated GIF images. While animated GIFs are limited in color depth and quality, they function everywhere and can help your banner stand out. You may also opt for rich media banner ads, allowing you to benefit from video playback, audio content, interactivity, and other more advanced technologies, provided your ad network supports them.

Create the Ad’s Copy Text 

While banner ads are predominantly a visual medium, most banner ads feature written copy. Text-based copy is necessary to communicate your offers, calls to action, and value propositions more efficiently, even in image-based ads. Without copy, your banner ads would contain no text and likely confuse viewers, almost guaranteeing they will never click on the most captivating banner ads.

The best practices when writing copy for your banner ads revolve around the same principle: keep the copy short, easy to read, and to the point. Even if you take advantage of rich media and use video or interactive visual elements to convey your offer, the ad’s copy should not force the user to read large quantities of text, even if it is well-written.

Regardless of what your web banner design is intended to convey, ensure your copy adheres to the following recommendations:

• Keep it short. While banner ads do not have a maximum word count or character limits as text ads do, you still have limited space to display text, even when using animated or rich media banners. Avoid overloading the user with text and get to the point of your offer in as few words as possible.
• The spelling and grammar must be perfect. If the average user can spot a typo or a grammatical mistake, they are less likely to click or pay attention to your offer.
• Use the right fonts and colors. Choosing the right fonts or text colors for your banner is only partly about its visual appeal. The right combination can help your text become easier to read and attract the viewer’s eye more efficiently, increasing the chances of clicks and conversions.
• Include statistics. Giving users numbers, percentages, and comparisons can motivate them to click on your banner and complete the conversion process. Statistics also increase the brand’s credibility and improve its image by appearing more professional.
• Use search keywords. Even the copy text in banner ads can be picked up by search engines. Consequently, you can use search engine optimization (SEO) techniques and include relevant keywords to ensure users find their way to your ads from a search engine.
• Offer the user a solution. The most successful ads usually convey a relatable message to the user and offer a way to solve their problems. Your banner ad must address their needs and present a product or a service in a way that conveys that your brand can help them satisfy those needs. Including terms such as “you” or “your” is commonly used to address the audience personally and build rapport with your customers.

Use the Correct File Formats and Sizes

Depending on whether your campaign uses traditional banner ads or rich media ads, your assets may include files of many different sizes and formats. Image assets may also be subject to resolution limits, requiring you to ensure your assets fit into one of the pre-approved image sizes or within a range of allowable resolutions.

If you’re using an animated banner or rich media ads, your banner ads may need to follow additional limits and conditions. For example, animated GIF creatives may need to fit within maximum animation length durations and framerates.

The best way to ensure your assets use the correct sizes and formats is to check your ad or Google display network and its guidelines and recommendations. For instance, image ads for Google Ads display ad campaigns must be in JPG, PNG, or GIF format, with a maximum file size of 150 kb. These ads must also belong to one of the allowed ad sizes per display network. Examples include the 200 x 200 small square, 300 x 250 inline rectangle, 160 x 600 wide skyscraper, 468 x 60 banner, or 320 x 50 mobile banner.

Test Your Banners

After deploying your web banners and launching your ad campaign for the first time, you should test and optimize them regularly.

The best testing tool for banner ads is the A/B testing process. Under this testing process, your banner ad design campaign can be divided into two versions: A and B. A is the original version featuring your current banners, whereas B features an updated version showcasing small changes or modifications you intend to test.

With A/B testing, a set percentage of your viewers will see Version B, whereas the others will see Version A. The objective of A/B testing is to compare each version’s differences and determine whether the changes implemented in Version B are more effective.

It is crucial to make only a few changes at a time when conducting A/B testing on your banner ads. One of the best solutions to accurately measure the performance of your changes is to ensure Version B is identical to Version A save for just a few clicks or a single, critical element.

Commonly tested and optimized elements include the following:

• Calls-to-actions (CTAs): Your banner’s CTA is one of the most important elements of your banner ad, as it is designed to incite users to click with a short, concise phrase. Regularly testing and modifying your CTA can bring the most changes to your banner ad campaign’s performance, making it a critical part of your testing and optimization process.
• Colors: Even changing a simple element, such as the color of your CTA button or copy text, can affect your ad’s performance. Test different combinations of colors to find the most efficient configurations.
• Background elements: Banner ads may feature different background elements, such as photographs, detailed designs, simple patterns, or single flat colors. There is no single best answer as to which of these choices is the best for your banners.
  One ad may perform better with a simple textured background overlaid with ad copy, while another may benefit from a photograph or artwork used as a background element. Don’t hesitate to test different assets and measure your banner ad’s performance with each to find what works best for your campaign.
• Value propositions: Besides the CTA, most of the copy in a typical banner ad will be spent on the value proposition due to the limited space for text. Regularly updating the wording without modifying the core message or intent can bring positive results if your banner ad campaign primarily focuses on showcasing value propositions to potential customers.

Common Banner Ad Sizes

Below is a breakdown of the most commonly used image resolutions in banner advertising. Each size has a specific name, helping advertisers and publishers identify banner types. Publishers can place ad spaces for specific banner sizes on their digital properties, and advertisers can adapt their creatives to each banner ad size used.

• 468 x 60 – Banner
• 300 x 50 – Mobile banner
• 320 x 100 – Large mobile banner
• 200 x 200 – Small square
• 250 x 250 – Square
• 300 x 250 – Inline rectangle, also called medium rectangle
• 336 x 280 – Large rectangle
• 728 x 90 – Leaderboard
• 970 x 90 – Large leaderboard
• 320 x 50 – Mobile leaderboard
• 120 x 600 – Skyscraper
• 300 x 600 – Mobile skyscraper, also called a half-page ad

How Much Do Banner Ads Cost?

Depending on the ad network, after an advertiser has developed their ad creatives and is ready to launch the campaign, they may have the option to choose from multiple monetization models.

Each model has its own uses and represents different methods of paying publishers to display ads on their digital properties. The most common monetization models for banner ad campaigns are CPM, CPC, CPA, and CPV.