How to make your own animation banner online

Hey guys, I just discovered pretty funny online service for generating banners:

http://www.animationonline.com/S/banner_templates.html


You only need to select banner of your choice, type some words and... voila! Save your own banner and enjoy :-)

A Powerful Method To Internet Advertise Locally!

The Internet is a globally connected community.

At the touch of a submit or send button you can reach out and touch people in the far corners of the world in countries you will probably never even have the opportunity to travel to in this life.

Because of this ability to be exposed to such a huge community of people, the Internet is an excellent place to think in terms of doing business.

But what if your business is defined and restricted by the city or local area in which you live?

Can you advertise on the global Internet to benefit you locally?

Absolutely, Yes!

Let us suppose that you have a carpet repair business in beautiful Van Nuys, California.

You must start by doing your homework. Research, research and more research that is done by using the Top 10 Search Engines and Directories.

For example, you start by visiting Google: http://www.google.com/

You enter in your search words, Van Nuys, CA. A whopping 126,000 results come up for you to explore in greater detail.

On the first page of results you find access to area maps, weather info, details on the local airport and a few local businesses begin to pop up.

The second page of results shows more info on airports, dinner coupons, discount hotels and other assorted local businesses.

Page three is more of the same and you start to think that with so many hotels and motels listed, you might be able to touch base with them via email.

After all, such businesses have carpeting so they are all potential clients.

Page four brings up a result at Yahoo that is focused further by a quick visit to that site.

You will go from : Home > Regional > U.S. States > California > Cities > Van Nuys > Business and Shopping > Shopping and Services > Home and Garden

Now you have yourself a good section to suggest for having your web site included in their directory.

Visiting page five makes you feel like you hit a winner by finding a site that is focused on your local area: http://vannuys.areaconnect.com/

These folks offer you a FREE AreaConnect Listing in return for linking them on your web site and you will find other items of interest that may be of help.

Keep searching the Google results for at least 20 to 30 pages of results. More would be better.

Do the same with Yahoo, Altavista and each of the other Search Engines and Directories that comprise the top 10.

Bookmark all the relevant sites and you will establish a foundation of targeted area community web sites with which you can link, advertise and utilize to make new local contacts.

Local area carpet repair benefits individual homeowners, real estate agencies, building contractors, hotels and motels, restaurants and most other types of businesses.

There are literally 1000's of local area businesses that are connected to the Internet and thus open for you to tap into contacting them with personal e-mail messages.

Personal e-mail messages will eliminate the problem of getting accused of SPAM, especially if you include info in the message about the web site of theirs that you actually took the time to visit.

Certainly, you could always contact those businesses the old fashioned way by sending out mailings via the post office.

But you can accomplish the same task online for pennies and the investment of your personal time and effort.

And, this is just the tip of the Internet iceberg.

Remember the search term used in the above example was for Van Nuys, CA but that was meant just for starters.

You can focus in even tighter by doing additional searches with terms like, "chat Van Nuys, CA", "email Van Nuys, CA", "guestbook Van Nuys, CA", "discussion list Van Nuys, CA".

Each additional search term can open new doors of contacts, members lists and organizations with which you can network.

Invest just a few hours a day and you can reap great benefits by allowing yourself to obtain an ever-growing database of potential clients that you can contact via the Internet.

By A.T.Rendon

Yahoo uses humor to sell online advertising­no fooling

Yahoo Inc. may be growing up, but it's keeping its sense of humor.

When the time came to add some high-profile financial material to its On The Money site on the World Wide Web, it teamed with a pair of fools.

The Santa Clara company last week introduced Motley Fool, an often humorous look at the financial world written by brothers Tom and David Gardner from their offices in Alexandria, Va.

But while the Fool site contains features ranging from football trivia to "Dogs of the Dow," its humor conceals a deeper purpose: battling for advertising dollars in an exploding Internet market.

Rather than exchanging money for services rendered, Yahoo and the Motley Fool Inc., whose sites are now linked, are cooperating to market themselves to consumers and advertisers.

Both make revenues primarily by selling online advertising.

Motley Fool debuted on America Online in August 1994. It quickly became one of the service's most popular features, registering 300,000 visitors a month. It also appears in USA Today's Money section.

The company has a list of stock portfolio tips that has performed almost four times better than Nasdaq.

Motley Fool employs 130 people across the country.

Yahoo has enjoyed a hip image during its short life. It started by providing one of the highest-volume search engines--software for finding Web sites.

But in recent months, it has added an MTV site and other popular venues aimed at a younger audience.

Motley Fool represents Yahoo's effort to appeal to high-income consumers.

"One thing that we were missing was some really good financial editorial," said Yahoo senior producer John Briggs.

On The Money has had double-digit growth over the past several months.

However, competition has remained stiff. Dow Jones has extensive offerings on the Web, as do investment houses such as Merrill Lynch. Also, many other publications (and even Internet service providers) offer their own financial sites and links.

It is especially important to keep traffic to On The Money growing because advertisers pay on a "per-impression" basis: All ads on the site link visitors to the advertiser's home page, and Yahoo is paid a small fee when someone follows one of those links.

The process is typical of commercial Web sites.

Financial information and services is one of the fastest-growing Internet markets, said Laird Foshay, president of Tabula Interactive Inc., the Menlo Park-based company that runs the InvesTools Web site.

That site contains 25 high-profile financial newsletters and sells financial reports for $2 to $10.

InvesTools' ad revenues are growing 20 percent per month, Mr. Foshay said.

Advertisers include the Charles Schwab Corp. and Scudder Mutual Funds.

Mr. Foshay credits E-Trade Securities Inc. with helping popularize the Net as a financial medium.

E-Trade is a Palo Alto company that allows registered users to trade stock on the Internet. It is adding 10,000 accounts a month, Mr. Foshay said.

The growing interest in getting financial information on the Net is the product of several converging trends.

More people are handling their own investments than ever before, Mr. Foshay said. And because such people generally are educated and fairly young, it is only natural that they turn to the Internet.

First publication: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/1997/01/27/story8.html

How to win AdSense battle?

Adsense is getting ever more popular with many online business owners and Internet marketers. And who can blame them? We have heard many stories of some people earning 5 figures per month from this Adsense program. And with the many rewards that can be gained from this pay-per-click program, it is really difficult not to join in the fun.

The Adsense program may sound simple enough: put the Adsense ads on your website, drive traffic to your site, and hope that many of the visitors will click on the ads. No selling, no inventories, and no need for customer service either. Sounds like a dream online business. Or is it?

In this Internet marketing guide, I will discuss the truth about Adsense, and let you see for yourself whether this is reality, or just a fantasy.

This is a numbers game

Just like any other business, the Adsense program is purely a numbers game. The more the merrier, as they say. So don't expect extraordinary results if you are playing this game with only one website. Sure, there are some gurus out there who claim that they are earning thousands of dollars per month from just one website. But in order for you to achieve that, you have got to drive an enormous volume of visitors to your website to start earning the sort of income you dream of.

You see, the Adsense program works in this way: If you have just one website which is earning you a paltry $20 per day, you would have earned a grand total of $600 per month. So what do you need to do if you want to earn more? Simple. Just churn out more websites.

Using the above example, if you are earning $600 per month from one website, how much would you earned if you set up 5 more websites? That's right, you would have earned $3000 for the month.

So Adsense is really a matter of playing the numbers game. The more websites you build, the more you will earn.

The 3 Vital factors in the Adsense game

There are basically 3 vital factors which will determine whether you can succeed or fail in your Adsense venture. Let us take a look at these 3 very important ingredients.

1. Choosing the right keywords

This is perhaps the most important factor. You must be able to choose the right keywords with high costs per click (CPC). The CPC determines how much you will receive every time a visitor to your site clicks on the Adsense ad. Get this part wrong, and you can kiss your Adsense venture goodbye.

You would need to do some homework to find out about the rates of certain keywords, and also gather some information on how much your competition are bidding for the keywords.

You can do a search on Google to find some free tools and helpful resources for you to accomplish the two tasks listed above.

2. Volume of ad impressions

The second vital factor is ad impressions. You really do need to have a very high volume of these impressions. For this to happen, there is only one way to go: drive lots and lots of traffic to your website. You would need to implement some Internet marketing strategies, and other search engine optimization tactics. There are also some black hat tactics which some Internet marketers are using right now. You can choose to be a nice guy, or you can choose to irritate some players in the game, it is all up to you.

3. High click through rate

The last vital factor is the click through rate (CTR). CTR is the ratio of successful clicks per number of visitors. You must achieve a high CTR for your websites in order to make it in the Adsense program. The higher your CTR, the more you will earn.

You can improve the CTR in a number of ways. One of the ways is to choose the right kind of ad display that will blend into the background of your website, so that your ads will not scream 'advertisement', and lower your CTR. Another way is through clever and effective ad positioning. For this to happen, you have got to test, and re-test for the best results. Remember, patience is a virtue.

Content Is King

This is an undisputed fact in the world of Internet marketing: Content is King. And this fact will hold true for as long as the Internet exists.

Websites are driven by content, and more content, so you would need to constantly add lots of high quality content furnished with fresh and valuable information for your visitors. Take note that only high quality content will do. If you have nothing more than just gibberish content, then your website will fail miserably, because your visitors would not want to visit some junkie stuff which is just plain wasting their time.

Also, good content will make sure that your website will get indexed by the major search engine spiders. This is critical, because 85% of your website traffic will come from the search engines. Constantly updating your website with fresh and original content will ensure that the search engine spiders constantly monitor your pages and this will give your site a better page ranking.

Originally published by Wyatt Lee "The Truth About Adsense: Reality, Or Just A Fantasy?"

Video banners become very popular

With video becoming a feature on so many web sites, one would think that video advertising would skyrocket over the next five years.

But it’s not expected to, according to JupiterResearch in its latest forecast. While the amount spent on video advertising is expected to grow at 27 percent per year on average between 2006 and 2011, that’s far shy of some of the heady growth rates internet advertising has experienced.

What’s more, even by the end of the forecast period, video advertising will still be the smallest component of display internet advertising.

This insight comes as part of a forecast that predicts internet advertising will grow at 11 percent per year on average between 2006 and 2011, hitting $25.9 billion in 2011. At this rate of growth, Jupiter forecasts that the internet will account for almost 9 percent of all advertising spending by the end of the forecast period.

“Large spending increases for paid search, online classifieds and rich media have continued to fuel the market, which will continue to grow at a brisk pace during the next five years,” writes Emily Riley, analyst at JupiterResearch, in the report.

This growth comes after several years of better than expected performance for online advertising. In 2005, the category grew 40 percent, and this year growth is forecast to pace at 21 percent. Next year should usher in slightly slower growth, according to the forecast, of 12.7 percent.

During the forecast period, classified, search and display advertising are predicted to see strong growth.

Search advertising, which overtook display advertising in 2005, will continue to gain share from display advertising. This is despite the growth of some components of display advertising, particularly video and rich media.

Though from a small base, video will be the fastest-growing area of display advertising, with growth accelerating toward the end of the forecast period, rising to $1.3 billion from $0.4 billion this year.

The reason that it is not growing faster is, according to the report, that currently “much of the video inventory online is haphazardly placed and users have not developed predictable viewing habits.”

However, as broadband penetration increases and more sites sort out distribution channels, advertisers will boost spending on video.

Rich media, another category of display advertising, will also grow smartly. The forecast is for growth of 21 percent per year on average over the five-year period and hitting $3.6 billion in 2011.

In fact, as these two areas grow, Jupiter forecasts that they will cannibalize static display online advertising. Static advertising is expected to slump by 7 percent, to $1.5 billion by 2011.

There are several reasons for the increase in rich media advertising. Technological advances and increased broadband uptake are two factors. But also significant is increased spending from consumer packaged goods and automotive categories, which are using online as an alternative to TV. These advertisers will pay for more expensive rich media and video advertising.

Perhaps in part because of the arrival of these traditional advertisers, JupiterResearch predicts that the growth during the next five years will come both from direct-response advertisers, who were the early adopters of the internet, and brand advertisers.

via Media Life

How Banner Ads Work

I'm just discovered interesting article for newbies on How Stuff Works: How Banner Ads Work

You'll see how banners work, how advertisers rate their effectiveness, and how you can use them to advertise your site or bring in revenue. You'll also examine the technology behind them and look at some of the different forms they can take. By the end of this article, you will be a banner ad expert!

Six Banner Design Tips

Objective and Target
The most important aspect of an effective Banner advertising campaign is initial planning. What are you trying to accomplish with Banner advertising? How will you measure success for this Banner advertising campaign? Will you be happy with increased awareness (name branding) or are we only interested in the number of leads generated, sales made or hits to the site? Who is the target market? Who is most likely to be interested in your product or message? Thoughtful planning is the foundation of any Banner advertising campaign. If you are trying to build name recognition, then you will want to fill your Advertising banners with your name and logo. If you're looking for click through volume, your logo will probably get in the way. Site category and geographic location are equally important in target marketing. Targeting the audience effects the direction of the campaign. If your target audience is teenagers then, targeting Banner advertising at conservative sites might be useless. Equally, if your key prospect is the no-nonsense business type, you might want to allow quick access to decision-making data avoid things like large animation graphics and humor. You must also consider the limitation on file size and the physical size of ads.

Good Design
Creativity can easily make the difference between a 0.5% click through rate and a 10% click through rate. Even if you only achieve a growth from 0.5% to 1% you are doubling the effectiveness of your campaign. Whether you are a well established business that can purchase regular ads from your Banner advertising budget, or a teenager creating a business with only free banner swap ads to use, you cannot ignore the critical difference that creativity can bring. Creative design does not have to mean flashy animations, but often just a few minutes careful consideration. Effective design can easily mean two words on a plain background. A good ad campaign typically involves a series of new ideas and designs. Even good designs get stale because they become commonplace. So have a range of different approaches to increase your ability to get your message to a variety of targets.

Aspects of Colour
Colours can be a most important part of the design. Many studies have indicated that people respond better to bright colors, such as green, blue, and yellow, or certain color combinations, like a rich yellow on dark blue. Also, some audiences respond better to certain colors. For example, dark rich colors might appeal to the sophisticated while bright and trendy colors can grab the attention of the rest. White and Colors such as red and black, whilst they might seem a bit basic, can be useful to provide a level of contrast or distinction in the context of the ad. So always think about the colors and the combinations of colors in conjunction with the target market. Ask your partners for feedback on color choices.

The Message
Words sell...graphic design only displays the words in a visually appealing way. Don't confuse the two. No amount of trendy design will make a poorly written ad sell for you. Your message must have the best chance of being read the first time, by using easy to read fonts like Arial, Futura, Swiss, and Helvetica. There are occasions when the more unique fonts will suit a particular situation, however the text must then be simple and uncluttered. The words need to quickly get the visitor's attention; this usually means the fewer words the better. Common strategies include posing questions, using cryptic messages and using directives. For example, a request to "Click here " on you banner can often instigate action. Questions and statements that arouse curiosity are often most effective. Most surfers value the invitation to be curious, but equally don't respond to blatant sales hype. If possible your message should compel your recipient to respond. If you don't know how to write and design a short, clever, compelling message, look around the net and find someone who does, or who already has. You can be creative with words but don't deceive. Deception and lies may get people to click on a banner, but you'll get a mailbox full of rude E-mails, and nobody will buy your product. Potential prospects can be turned off if you are too clever, so leave out the pun. Remember that the ad reflects you and your business. If they think your message is strange, then thats how they see your business. If they think the words and the images are creative then that will be their impression of you and your company. So use the spellchecker. If the banner is for a new product or service of an existing brand, don't mention the brand or your customers will think they already know everything about it.

Pointing your Banner
Which page? Internet ads don't always have to point to the home page. Often you do not want the viewer to navigate through a series of pages before they get to where you really want them to go. If you want to create leads, then point the banner directly to your forms. If you want to promote a new product, then point the ad to the product specs page or to a download page. If you're promoting content, then direct surfers directly there. Surfers will appreciate the more direct approach and that helps increase customer loyalty.

Animation & Size
Animation is certainly one of the most important ways to get attention. However poor animation is a signal to a potential visitor that your site isn't worth going to. Animation also increases the file size of a banner ad. and the risk that it will not load fast enough to have any impact at all. The total file size for GIF animations should be optimized by reducing the number of colours in the ad or by employing inter-frame transparency. You can now buy good gif animation and optimisation software cheaply for immediate download from secure servers. Examples are: Giffy98 Animagic Gif Animator and most recommended is Ulead GIF Animator 3.0. Looping must be used with caution, because it can be annoying to surfers. Having the first or last frame delayed for an extended time can minimise the annoyance. You can have it loop only a few times and stop it on the key frame. The most popular banner Ad sizes remain 400x40 and 468x60. Continue to test the results. Don't ever rest on your laurels. An internet Banner advertising campaign is always under review. You don't do a small test and then a big rollout. With internet Banner advertising you should always be testing. The most measurable form of advertising you can do is internet Banner advertising. The very nature of the system allows you to easily monitor the performance of every banner. Create a range of ads- some static; some animated; some upbeat; some plain. Test them all separately under the same circumstances. Choose the best and then work on creating a better one to beat it. Whatever else you do, spend a little time getting your banners right.

Source: http://www.advertiseireland.com/amain/tips.htm

Small Internet Advertising Tips from Media Colledge

Small tips from Media Colledge:

Target Your Banners
Make sure they are on websites which fit your market. Banners which are linked to keywords in searches perform much better than random placements.

Get Attention
Conventional wisdom says you should try to grab attention through animation, bright colours, etc. The idea is sound, but be careful. Gaudy is not always good and visitors may be put off by "in your face" ads. Sometimes understatement can work wonders - a subtle ad might actually be what sets you apart.

Try Different Banners
Use a variety of banners and track their click-though statistics (the number of people who click on them). Be systematic - find out which ones work best and concentrate on them.

Call to Action
Banners allow visitors to take immediate action and you should take advantage of this. Use words like "Click here".

Make it Obvious
Although intrigue can sometimes work, the general rule is to make it obvious. Make sure the viewer knows exactly what the ad is for and what they can expect to happen when they click on it.

Be Honest
If you try to deceive people into clicking your ad, there are two things which will happen:
(1) The viewer's first impression of your business/product will be that you deceived them, i.e. you can't be trusted.
(2) The viewer's pointless visit to your site will have cost you in click-through rates, bandwidth and/or other resources.
Unless you're running a grossly unethical business the only useful visitors to your site are those which are genuine. The others are just slowing you down.

Be Specific
It may help to limit your message to a particular area of your business. Instead of advertising your business name, advertise a direct link to a particular product or special offer.

Involve the Audience
Interactive banners have been shown to work well. Again, be careful not to overdo it.

Change Your Banners
If they are going to be seen by the same people many times, keep them fresh.

Sex Sells
Like it or not, it's a fact.

Keep the File Size Down
Most banners should be under 15KB.

Source: http://www.mediacollege.com/internet/promotion/advertising-tips.html

Microsoft Banner Ads :-)

What a beautiful collection of "Miscrosoft joke banners"! See it here: http://j-walk.com/ss/jokes/msbanner.htm

Few titles right now:

We're not a government. Yet.

Microsoft. Keeping the world safe from competition.

Hotmail. Now with FREE Microsoft spam!

Enjoy!

Yet Another Banner Blog

From Australia, a blog to showcase and review online advertising coming out of the country. Banner Blog is edited by Ashley Ringrose. You find a lot of interesting and inspiring stuffs there!

Terminology. Lesson One

Terminology... I know, it's boring. But by the end of these lessons, you will be a banner ad expert!

* Clicks/Click-throughs: The number of visitors who click on the banner ad linking to the advertiser's Web site. Publisher sites often sell banner ad space on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis.

* Page views: Also called page impressions, this is the number of times a particular Web page has been requested from the server. Advertisers are interested in page views because they indicate the number of visitors who could have seen the banner ad. Although they don't measure the effectiveness of a branding campaign, they do measure how many visitors were exposed to it. The most common way to sell banner ad space is cost per thousand impressions, or CPM (In roman numerals, M equals a thousand).

* Click-through rate (CTR): This describes the ratio of page views to clicks. It is expressed as the percentage of total visitors to a particular page who actually clicked on the banner ad. The typical click-through-rate is something under 1 percent, and click-through rates significantly higher than that are very rare.

* Cost per sale: This is the measure of how much advertising money is spent on making one sale. Advertisers use different means to calculate this, depending on the ad and the product or service. Many advertisers keep track of visitor activity using Internet cookies. This technology allows the site to combine shopping history with information about how the visitor originally came to the site.

Small Trivia - Who and When Sold the First Banner?!

The first banner sold by HotWired, an pioneer in commercial web publishing started by Wired Magazine, was paid for by AT&T, and was put online on October 25, 1994.

HotWired was the first web site to sell banner ads in large quanities to a wide range of major corporate advertisers. Andrew Anker was HotWired's first CEO. Rick Boyce, a former media buyer with San Francisco advertising agency Hal Riney & Parnters, spearheaded the sales effort for the company. When HotWired was sold to Lycos, Boyce became its Vice President of Sales.

HotWired coined the term "banner ad" and was the first company to provide click through rate reports to its customers.

The world's first banner was quite the ugly thing and clicking it will not take you to the AT&T website, but just may take you somewhere else.

But back in the day, this would have been clicked on a lot, probably because nobody had seen anything like it. Today of course, we’ve got Flash, video and interactive banner advertising. And banner ads are now seen as an integral branding tool in the marketing mix.

What is Banner?

Web banner is simply the image.

The web banner is displayed when a web page that references the banner is loaded into a web browser. This event is known as an "impression". When the viewer clicks on the banner, the viewer is directed to the website advertised in the banner. This event is known as a "click through". In many cases, banners are delivered by a central ad server.

Web banners function the same way as traditional advertisements are intended to function: notifying consumers of the product or service and presenting reasons why the consumer should choose the product in question, although web banners differ in that the results for advertisement campaigns may be monitored real-time and may be targeted to the viewer's interests.

Did you know this? Of course :-)

What is Advertising?

Do you know? Lets just ask Wikipedia!

Advertising is the commercial promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas, usually performed by an identified sponsor, and performed through a variety of media. Marketers see advertising as part of an overall promotional strategy. Other components of the promotional mix include publicity, public relations, personal selling, and sales promotion.

John Wanamaker, father of modern advertising, says: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half." LOL

But... each year, greater sums are paid to obtain a commercial spot during the Super Bowl! Why?

With the dawn of the Internet have come many new advertising opportunities. Popup, Flash, banner, advergaming, and email advertisements (the last often being a form of spam) abound. Smart people use them.

Let's go!

OK, it's my first post. Smile :-)