6 Factors That Affect Click Through Rates (CTR) for Display Banner Ads

Banner advertising works. Despite a drop in click through rates (CTR) over the years, they are still popular with advertisers and web browsers too. In fact, banners have a wider reach than most forms of online advertising and they can be cost effective compared to search ads.

Some common banner sizes accepted on the Google Display Network (GDN) are:
• Banner: 468 x 60
• Leaderboard: 728 x 90
• Square: 250 x 250
• Small square: 200 x 200
• Large rectangle: 336 x 280
• Inline rectangle: 300 x 250
• Skyscraper: 120 x 600
• Wide skyscraper: 160 x 600
Here are 6 factors that affect click through rates for your banners:

1. Banner Size

Banner size will affect CTR on most placements. A larger banner like 970 x 90 may not be accepted on many placements, but it is likely to have higher CTRs than 250 x 250 and other smaller sizes. That’s mainly because of the amount of text and images you can include with a larger size and the impact it makes especially when there is animation and other effects.

2. Message Length

It’s important to ensure that banners are not cluttered because adding too much text and images makes it difficult for people to understand what benefits they get by clicking. So they are likely to ignore any banners that are hard to understand and this reduces the CTR. Try to keep your messages as short as possible and include bullet points to break up text and to make it easier to read. And include a lot of white space too – or another colour that matches your brand.

3. Promotional incentive

Promotions like money-off coupons, vouchers, discounts and sales help to increase CTR. Many people who click may not purchase, but they will want to see how they can benefit from the offer that’s in the banner ad and if it’s a strong enough incentive, they will go out of their way to acquire your products or services – or they could recommend it to friends, family or colleagues.

4. Animation

Animation is able to grab attention and demonstrate concepts and features that are difficult to achieve with plain text and image banners. It also creates awareness and helps to build interest which leads to click through to the website.

5. Action Phrase or Call-to-action

A call to action is a must for all types of advertising including banner and text ads. It can be a button or text link that states what you want the viewer or prospect to do when they’ve read or viewed a display ad. The call to action you choose can make the difference between a click or not and if you are not sure which one to add to your banners, then it’s best to test multiple calls to action.

6. Company brand/logo

Including your logo and other brand identity elements is one of the most important things to do because target customers who recognise it are likely to click and it also helps to raise awareness with new prospects.