Creating Effective Ad Graphics
Tamara Kendall
tam@ad-designer.com

Ad-Designer
http://www.ad-designer.com/


People always want to know how we create banners that consistently get good click through ratios - or more accurately why the banner that they created, isn't bringing in the hits - so we decided to create this primer.

The most important thing:

You have to grab the viewer's attention and grab it fast, in less than 20 seconds by most accounts. The viewer has to notice the banner. How many times have you clicked on a banner? How many times have you surfed and been oblivious to banners. Why did you click on the banners that you have clicked on?

To get the banner to load in the aforementioned 20 seconds you'll need to optimize the banner. Optimizing your banner means creating a banner that is small (not physical size but small kilobyte size) so that it downloads quickly. To due this you have to alter a Gif's (Graphics Interchange Format) color depth and color palette using dithering. A Gif file includes all the colors that make up the image, so using less colors means a smaller Gif. If you are interested in making sure your banner looks the same to everyone you will want to check out the 216 "browser-safe palette" that look the same on both PC and Mac operating systems.

We recommend Macromedia's Fireworks for banner creation as it is a capable image editing program with excellent optimization functions.


Animation:

Animated banners get noticed more often than static banners and stand better chances of getting clicked. An animated GIF is a GIF89a file that contains multiple images that are displayed in a specified order within a single file . By adding frames your are adding to the file size - try only animating sections of your banner and keeping other regions static to help keep the file size down. Pay careful attention to the speed of your animated Gif, if it's too fast your viewer won't be able to get the message, too slow and this viewer may loose interest before you present the whole message.

Textural Component :

The Job of the text or copy on a banner is to make the best possible statement about the company or product that the banner is advertising. While you can use the visual element to grab attention and in some cases induce a click through, but more often than not the text on the banner is what make or break a click through. The main thing to keep in mind is to use the text to convey a clear communication to the viewer about the advantages of clicking on your banner.

To color on not to color:

The color choices that you make for your ad graphic is very important as it can work for you or against you. You'll have to limit your palette to keep the file size low and stay away from dark text on a dark background.

Colors mean different things to people in different regions in the world. While you might like purple, to parts of Europe it signifies death - Pink in India has negative connotations. While you can overthink this blue and green are very safe bets.

Try to use bright colors they seem to catch the eye better, and result in better CTR's.

Don't keep beating a dead banner:

Most sites have at least some repeat visitors and the more times a viewer see's a particular banner the less likely they are to click on it. One way to combat this is to generate three or four different banners and rotate them at the same time so that you have more that one shot at each surfer. Additionally you should consider changing your creatives every so often.

The Bottom Line :

The bottom line is that making effective ad graphics can be very involved process. If you don't have hours to invest we suggest you hire a professional. If you want to learn to create banners experiment , keep good performance stats, enjoy the creative process.


Tamara Poole is one of the ad designers at http://www.ad-designer.com and has been creating effective graphical ads since 1995.