Banner advertising has become increasingly less effective over the years, however many of the online advertisers in South Africa continue to spend a considerable amount of time concentrating on Banner advertising as a medium.

By world standards banner advertising produces at best a 0, 5% click through rate, whilst other forms of contextual advertising such as product reviews, editorials, article trading and the likes, is likely to return click through rate of 2.5% and upwards.

Additionally with the advent of Web 2.0 and other emerging online trends there is no doubt that contextual advertising is here to stay. Unfortunately this indicates a slow death for Banner advertising.

This is not to say that banner advertising will never be relevant in the online marketplace, in fact they are very good examples of where banner advertising continues to work well to this day.

Banner advertising as a branding medium is still an excellent proposition, however if the online advertisers objective is to drive traffic to a website, then banner advertising is a highly ineffective medium.

There are a few simple rules to creating effective banner adverts:

1. Make a noise.
2. Be loud and obnoxious.
3. Grab attention.

It is for this reason that banner advertising has become such an unpopular medium to people surfing the web.

In South Africa the common trend amongst the big online publishers is to sell advertisers banner space as opposed to contextual placements.

In addition to which the banner advertising opportunities on offer by these publishers more often than not includes a fixed rate per month, or a set rate for an agreed one number of impressions.

Whether these publishers are aware that banner advertising has an extremely low click through rate, or whether they are just capitalising on the inexperience of many online South African advertisers is a point of contention.

However one thing remains true, if these publishers had to be paid on a click through rate as opposed to the above two standards, there is no doubt that they would earn very little.

This is by no means a call for online advertisers to ditch their banner advertising; however like all business investments one must always make a calculated assessment towards the return on investment.

Let it be said in my own words, Banner advertising should be seen as nothing other than a branding exercise, and if you can’t afford branding, stick to contextual advertising.