First of all, let me make one thing clear that banners are not dead. They still exist in the web world and they will remain around in the near future too.
They are doing good primarily thanks to their new home – Google AdWords. If you or your client is using Content Network for advertisement purpose and not embracing banner ads, then you are certainly overlooking the big elephant in the room.
In short, banner ads are still an inevitable part of your advertising campaign.

What makes it a good banner?

A good banner isn’t the one that looks appealing, but it is the one that results in business for its owner. No matter if it is the poorest banner design in the world, if it works, it is a good banner.
Now, how will you decide whether your banner ad is working or not? All of the ads over the web have just one goal – to get clicks. So, if your ad has more than average CTR that means it is working, which in turn says it is a good banner ad.
You need not to bother about the admiration of the creativity or design of the ad. Instead all you seek is the measurable results in form of clicks.

Some most fundamental rules of creating a good banner design

You can go and visit the soon-to-be-placement of your banner ad, just scan the page and take the essential notes such as how many ads are there, which style other ads have followed, and how will your placement looks. The deeper you will go studying this, the better results you will harvest.

• • Check out the placement before you place – In case you are using an automatic placement facility of AdWords then it’s not possible for you to check out where your ad will be placed over the internet. However, if you are keen to design a good banner ad, you must at least try to know where it is going to be displayed.

• • Use content that sells – Of course, I know it’s a banner not a text ad, but still you need to make sure your ad contains outstanding, unique and interesting text. Focus mainly on the headline (as it accounts for 80% success). Don’t forget to address the What, Why, How questions of the users, and embrace the powerful call to action.

• • Meaningful and Alluring graphics – This point is applicable if you are creating a graphical banner. By meaningful, I want to convey that your ad should draw in some useful information besides its attractive graphics.

• • Easily Readable font – You will find numerous banners over the internet that publishes fonts that are totally unreadable. Disaster contrast, blurred letters, or too-big or too-small letters can ruin your ad. The golden rule is, the font should be simple and sophisticated.

• • The Right Selection of Colors – Do you know every color has its own story to tell? Different cultures have different interpretation for colors. So, here it wise to first knows your targeted audience before you finalize the colors in your banner design. While it has been seen that mostly orange and blue works well, in flash banner design, which is mainly used for promotional stuff, you need to be careful on making selection from the color palettes.

• • Frame it simple! – We, humans, are used to see a great variety of frames in our real life, with paintings and pictures. So, whenever we see an ad with a frame, thanks to our subconscious mind’s perception toward frame we overlook the frame and directly focus on what is inside the frame. Simply put, you can add a thin line around your banner ad and it will do!

To survive in the cut-throat competition over the internet, professional banner services need to stay tuned with the latest trends, techniques and technologies. On top of all, the ad owners need to know what their targeted audience is actually looking for.
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