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How to Improve Banner Ad Click Thru Rates

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Three tips to Boost Banner Ad Performance

So you’ve been running a display ad campaign and you’re click thru rate is lower than you’d like it to be. What to do? Here are three tips for boosting click thru rates on display ad banners:

  1. Add animation
  2. Add a clear call to action button
  3. Split test different creative variations

Regarding 1 and 2, if you have a designer on staff, I highly recommend using either bannersnack.com or canva.com. Both are super easy to use. Bannersnack will allow you to create fully animated html5 banners with solid call to action buttons that are (this is very important) fully compliant with ad serving platforms like the one we use to allow proper click tracking.

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Bannersnack recently introduced a super nifty “Magic Animator” that makes the process of animating your banners incredibly easy.

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As for Tip #3, it’s always a good idea to create slightly different variations of your ad concept because ads servers where your display ads run typically have the ability to automatically allocate more impressions to the ad version that is getting the best click thru rate. (Be sure to ask the ad sales rep of the publisher if they can enable CTR performance optimization).

So, for example, you might split test
  • a call to action button where the wording is “Learn More” vs. “Click here”
  • a photo where the people are looking at each other vs. a photo where the people are looking at the person viewing the ad
  • video in the ad, instead of a photo (this is referred to as an in banner video ad)

Canva is somewhat similar to bannersnack but does not allow you to create fully animated html5 banner ads. Instead, canva allows you to create more simple gif animations. The main issue you will run into when using Canva is that the file size of the gif animations you create will be larger than the recommended 100 – 150 KB file weight for display ads. This file weight issue is the main reason, advertisers have moved toward html5 animations which are able to pack Flash-like animation into very small file sizes. As for Flash, it is no longer an option for display ads since modern browsers no longer support the display of flash ads.

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If you need help with design and development, VMR can definitely do it very quickly and effectively. Or we can provide banner design consulting to give you feedback and suggestions to improve your designs in accordance with your brand guidelines.

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