Banner ads tend to be a favorite with smaller businesses and start-ups, because they are cheaper than most other forms of advertising such as TV commercials, magazine spreads or billboards. Additionally, a banner ad can be tailored to a certain audience, as it will be featured only on certain types of websites.

Unfortunately, in this case cheaper doesn’t mean better, and in the long run, banner advertising may actually hinder your success.

The main problem with banner ads is something that has been dubbed banner blindness. Most web surfers have simply trained themselves to ignore the ads that are placed strategically around on many websites.

If you don’t believe that this is true, go to your web history and think about some of the pages you just closed. Try to remember whether any of them had banner ads, what the banners were advertising and where they were placed. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to remember any one of these things, yet if you go back and look at the websites, there are probably banner ads all over the place.

You have simply become accustomed to blocking out the unwanted ads and reading only what you were actually looking for.

Another problem with banner ads is that they are often placed on a certain page, with a certain news article or story. This means that in the first few days of it being posted, a few people might actually notice it.

However, once the story is old news and no one is reading it anymore, there is basically a zero percent chance that anyone is going to look at it. And all the while, the business will be paying an ad company or website to have their ad placed on that page, where no one is even going to see it.

Many businesses know that banner ads aren’t very effective, yet they continue to buy them, because they feel that it is their only option on their current budget. To prevent you from wasting your time and hard-earned money with banner advertising, here are a few effective alternatives:

Search ads

Search ads are an extremely effective way to advertise your business as people are actually searching for something related to what you are selling. With a search ad, when someone searches for certain keywords or phrases that are related to your business or website, your link and a quick description of your website will appear either at the top of the page or on the side.

This type of advertising tends to get better results, because you’re actually helping someone find what they want, rather than bombarding unsuspecting web users with your ads.

Text links

This form of advertising is becoming more popular these days and gets much better results than ad banners, if you do it correctly.

With text links, a business will write (or hire someone to write) an informational article about something related to the services or products they are offering. Within this article, the business will place a number of links that direct the reader to the main website.

So for example, a law firm could write an article about something law related and put in links throughout the article in places where they would fit. So if the article is about tort law, the law firm could place links that direct a reader to their website where they are given further information and a call to action.

The reason that this works is because once again, you are targeting people who are actually looking for information about a certain product, service or subject. So instead of annoying them, you are helping them.

Informational sidebars, widgets or images

Using informational widgets, images or sidebars is again a way of giving the reader something instead of trying to force them to view your website (i.e. flashing, colorful banners or pop ups that just won’t go away) or sell them something outright.

Widgets can be sections on a website that go very well with what that website is all about, so they don’t look out of place and won’t be blocked out or ignored by visitors. Informational widgets can include things like “Top 10…” or “Did you know…” etc. These types of ads make the reader curious enough to click on the widget.

Of course, if you want the clicks to have any effect, you need to ensure that they actually lead the reader to a page that reflects what the widget said, or they will be annoyed that they were led astray, and probably won’t bother to read any further.

The same goes for images and sidebars. Images in particular are a powerful tool, because everyone looks at a well-placed image. If you have a good image, you can then add some text below it, offering some piece of advice or information and inviting the reader to click on it to find out more.

{Featured image via Moat.com}