Some advice about banner design (II).
Survival
Climbing and Mountaineering
Extreme and Conventional Sports
Travel Services
Photo and Video
Friends
Motivation and Self-Help
Leadership
Natural Health
Courses
Ecology and Gardening
Related Auctions
Vehicles
Play and plant a tree
Branding seems also more cost-effective when it is run in a 'run-of-the-site' context, also known as 'untargeted environment'. In this fashion, banners get exposed in different parts of a website with loose precision, but with a lower overall cost. Remember: the idea is not to produce clicks but memories, and so, most places would be fine.
Indeed, as untargeted as you want your advertising environment to be, it should have at least some degree of connection to what you intend to sell. It wouldn't be wise to promote airline banners in online groceries, but travel and tourism sites of all kinds would probably do.
2)- Selling: banners don't sell directly but in a few cases. In order to make a direct sale, the banner should be very informative regarding a particular public, and there has to be a very strong impulse in the surfer that finally produces the sale just by seeing the banner.
This happens a few times, but for most cases, the mechanism by which a banner helps to make a sale is indirect. First, the surfer sees a banner that catches his or her attention, and then, the person in question makes a click on it, thus arriving to the originating website.
There, the site's design and copy should start making their part of the work, and if everything is ok. Then the sale is made.
In this regard, banners are just a part of a bigger mechanism which also comprises the associated website, its ad copy and the seller company itself.
