Re: Creative Approach to Banners

From: Tod Foley <info_at_whatyouget.com>
Date: Fri 29 Dec 2000 13:34:34 -0500

PAUL TITZE <info_at_wizlab.com> WROTE:
> Although I agree with Tod that new creative approaches
> should always be tested out to improve banner ad
> CTRs, these banner borders seem to me are too big and
> take too much space in the page. There's also an extra
> waiting time to download the extra graphics for the
> borders. I wonder how webmasters would feel having
> this in their websites?

The experiment is on; we'll wait for the results to see
how participant webmasters feel about them.
BannerBorders add 40 vertical pixels to the page - 20
above the banner and 20 below. They add about 65
pixels on either side of the banner, but in a
vertically-oriented page, that space is rarely used
for anything anyway (and even for 640*480 monitors,
they don't go beyond the boundaries of the standard
width <TABLE> tag. I think they'll work best for
single-column vertically-oriented pages with a good
theme. In my tests so far, they seem to have the most
dramatic effect on centered banners which sit in the
middle or at the bottom of the page. I'm excited
about mixing them with other technologies such as the
java-based audio streams mentioned by Ronni Rhodes
<Ronni_at_wbcimaging.com> (yes, we are putting together a
test of that particular combination - one or both of us
will let you know how it goes!)

However, Paul's point is taken - this is a relative
thing. This is an art, not a science. A beautiful
BannerBorder will never compensate for a
poorly-designed page, or absolve you of creative
responsibility. Also, bear in mind that no *one*
solution is going to be the magic one for everybody
here. In fact I believe that if we all used the same
approach, it would become ineffective much quicker
(that's part of what's going wrong with traditional
468*60 banners in the first place!)

But there's a saying in the UNIX developers' community:
"Tools, not rules." And I don't claim to have a
panacea here. My goal with BannerBorders is to
provide more creative options for webmasters, expanding
the variety of tools in the toolkit. What one does
with such a tool (or combination of tools) - is still
highly variable, and up to the individual webmaster.

LVX
TF

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Received on Fri Dec 29 2000 - 12:34:34 CST