Are horizontal banners useless?

[jmk909er]

I have been experimenting with horizontal banners at the top of my site and tracking them to see how many clicks I get. The amount of clicks are zero! Maybe I just haven't given it enough time?

Has anyone done any research on this? Are banner ads even worth having or just a distraction?

Appreciate any input thanks.

[queenbearn]

I think it would depend on your ad and how nice it looks. Ive done affiliate marketing and bought all kinds of sizes and shapes ads and in end, the money is in the list. hahahah Just sending traffic to the affiliate doesn't really work!!!

[scottfanello]

jmk909er,

Perhaps it's just the banner ads you're using. I use banner ads on my site but I have to agree that I get more clicks through emails I send out than through my banners. But to be honest, my blog is new and not getting much traffic.

[Myron92]

Banner ads are not useless, I have placed banners on all sorts of websites.

It all depends what banner your using, try and mix it up.

What are you promoting, is your banner a stock banner that ever one is using. try and maybe create your own

A lot of people say the money is in the list and this is true, but I have sent thousands of clicks in a day just from banner advertising.

Just test your banners and try to get a 0.3 ctr on your banners, this is actually a good ctr when it comes to banners

[VRS]

I've found the best banner ads are the ones which are included within a post, much like you would create an image to go along with your text. Also, you can create links within the body of your post or article using anchor text and those do well at getting clicks.

That being said, of course it depends on your offer, quality of post, quality of product advertised and graphic, etc. I'd avoid animated banners as they can really get annoying - especially if you put several on a page.

Oh yeah, your original question ... in my experience horizontal banners are the lowest converting. Square ones are much better.

[zerocool7]

I have had no luck with horizontal banners either. Seems like most people get there clicks from kind of fooling the user and making the ad look like part of the page or putting the ad next to something they need to click.

[minstrel]

I disagree. I still earn a regular income from horizontal banners placed strategically on the page and they outperform vertical banners or square ads on my sites.

The key is relevance to the page content and sufficient rotation so they don't get stale.

[VRS]

Just curious minstrel -is that in the IM niche?

[minstrel]

Just curious minstrel -is that in the IM niche?

Some of it is. I use a banner rotator and mix affiliate banners with AdSense banners, with the affiliate hand picked to match the content (Google of course takes care of the AdSense matching).

[VRS]

Makes sense. Content match and rotation that is.