Made-to-Order Banners
Web Marketing Today, Issue 50, November 1, 1998
If you advertise with banners, you'll need a banner made. The non-standard LinkExchange size is 400 X 40 pixels, while the standard size for the "real world" is 468 x 60 pixels. I don't recommend you doing this yourself, since experience goes a long way here. Anyone can animate a banner using ULead's GIF Animator (http://www.webutilities.com/frwu_ga.htm). But it requires experience to create a compelling banner that people actually want to click on -- and that's the whole point (unless you're focusing only on branding).
The top firms in the country, such as Eyescream Interactive (http://www.eyescream.com/propaganda/), charge in the range of $1,000 to $1,500 for animated GIF banners. This puts all their creative juices and years of marketing expertise to work for you to help develop a concept and communicate it with excellence. Adam Boettiger (ab@eyescream.com), Eyescream's Vice President of Business Development, and moderator of the I-Advertising Discussion List says, "Businesses that are shopping for website and banner ad design at the cheapest rate are doing things backwards. You're resting thousands of advertising dollars on (1) whether someone will click on the banner, and (2) when they get to your site, whether they will purchase your product. If you are buying millions of impressions, the difference of one percentage point of click-through rate could be as many as 60,000 visitors to your site."
On the other hand, small business people who can't afford those prices can have a banner made by graphic artists who specialize in banner ads. Gabriele Winckler (info@gwwebdesign.com) of GW WebDesign in Clarksville, Tennessee (http://www.gwwebdesign.com), focuses on developing banner ads for small businesses. She charges $50 for a static banner and $75 for an animated banner, and will work with a client to develop a catchy phrase for their banner. She has done a lot of work for LinkExchange clients.
You can find more resources on banner preparation at the Banner Design section of our Web Marketing Info Center (http://www.wilsonweb.com/webmarket/banner-design.htm).
Read additional articles from Web Marketing Today, Issue 50, November 1, 1998
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