The Growth of Internet Advertising: Videoclips, Animation, click-through, Clickstream etc.

“Banners are popular in Internet advertising because by clicking on them users are transferred to an advertiser’s site, and frequently directly to the shopping page of that site. Banner ads are important because of the ability to customize some of them to the targeted individual surfer or market segment of surfers.

Many observers say that banners are sometimes thrown onto their face. For example, customers are forced to see banner ads while waiting for a page to load or before they can get the free information. Banners usually include attention-grabbing multimedia such as sound, playful graphics and videoclips. Also, because of their popularity, users tend to not pay attention to them any longer. The click ration of banners is declining at the same time. That’s why the University of Michigan found that the average click ratio, which was 3 percent in the mid-1990s, to be less than 1 percent today. The university also added that it is declining with time (Doyle et al. 1997; Meskaukas 2001).

In view of these drawbacks, it’s crucial to know where to place the banners. According to a study of Web ads conducted by the University of Michigan showed that ads placed in the lower-right hand corner of the screen, next to the scrollbar, generate 228 percent higher click-through than ads at the top of the page (Doyle et al. 1997). The same study found that ads placed one-third of the way down the page and centered increased click-through 77 percent over ads at the top of the page, where ads are frequently positioned. (King, Lee, Wiehland, p. 187.)

We must also say that banner ads can be analyzed and measured. They can be personalized and customized. Towards the end of the Internet bust, most online businesses relied only on selling ad space. Since then, things have changed. Banner advertising enhanced with video clips, music, animation and catchy graphics will continue to play an important role. Other types of banners will help out. Keyword banners appear when a predetermined word is queried from a search engine. And Random banners appear randomly. Static banners are always on the web page. Pop banners, in the form of pop up ads and pop under ads, continue to use datamining to serve customers’ needs or bother them based on personal information collected through their profile” (Discussion group 2005)