Different types of online advertising

There are different types of online advertisements that try to grab our attention on the internet. While some prove to be effective, the others tend to annoy visitors. What form of advertising should you pursue to drive more traffic to your website or increase sales?

1. Text Ads:

Text ads are ads that are displayed in the form of simple text-based hyperlinks. According to Business 2.0, text ads are the best form of online advertising. People tend to click on text ads more than banner ads. Since no graphics are used, text ads use catchy phrases to grab the attention of visitors. The ad does not exceed 5 sentences, which arouses the curiosity of the visitors and the clicks are more because they want to read more. Pay per click ads are usually text ads.

2. Banner Ads:

Banner ads have been around for a long time. Banners are typically 468 x 60 pixel linked (link to your website) animated graphics that highlight your product/service/offer that appear at the top of commercial websites. Banner ads are usually sold by CPM (cost per thousand views) or by click, that is, you pay only when you have clicked on it. There are different ways to post banner ads. One way is banner trading, where you can display someone’s banner in exchange for them displaying yours. You can also pay a publisher to display your banner or you can pay a banner network to post your banner on multiple sites. With banner ads being so popular and commonplace these days, people are trying out different methods to grab the attention of visitors. The more creative you are, the higher the chances of your banner being clicked.

3. Pop-up Ads:

This could be the most annoying and avoided form of online advertising. It works when a certain website opens a new browser window that displays the ad. Pop-up ads don’t get much of a preference with so many pop-up blockers out there. Therefore, they are not highly favored by vendors or visitors.

4. Sidebar Ads:

Sidebar ads are also known as skyscraper ads and are similar to banner ads but are placed vertically instead of horizontally. The height of a sidebar ad can be up to 600 pixels or more and is typically 160 pixels wide. Sidebar ads have advantages over banner ads in that they are larger and you can’t scroll a sidebar ad like a banner ad. A sidebar ad has a 1 percent click-through rate (10 clicks per 1,000 impressions), or about two to three times that of a banner ad.

5. Floating Ads:

Hover ads are ads that appear when you first visit a web page and fly or float on the page for 5 to 30 seconds. When they appear on the screen, they usually obscure the view of the page. Floating ads appear every time the page is refreshed. One of the main reasons for the popularity of floating ads is their ability to grab attention. The other reason is that they are unavoidable and prove to be more powerful than banner ads or sidebar ads. Floating ads have a high click-through rate that averages around 3 percent (that is, 30 people will click for every 1,000 floating ad impressions). However, the downside of floating ads is that they can really annoy visitors. The thing is, the more you get used to it, the more common it will be.

6. Unicast Ads:

Unicast advertisements are popular and widely adopted these days. A Unicast ad is a television commercial that runs in a pop-up window. Enriched with audio/video content, they can last between 10 and 30 seconds. Unicast ads have a 5% click-through rate (50 clicks per 1,000 impressions). The ability to click on the ad for more information makes this form of advertising so much better than TV commercials.

7. Interstitial Ads:

The interstitial ad (which means “in the middle”) is a page that is inserted between the current page and the landing page. These are also known as transition announcements. The reaction of the visitors usually depends on how entertaining the message is. An interstitial ad is usually designed to automatically move to the page the user requested after allowing enough time for the message to be registered or the ads to be read.

The type of ad to follow generally depends on the type of business and your marketing budget. The goal is to capture the attention of visitors and drive more traffic to your website.