As I browse and read a large number of blogs, I always wonder why it is that bloggers commonly use a bunch of 125 x 125 size banner advertisements placed in the top right-hand sidebar of their blogs.
I doubt that many of these banners are paid for by the advertisers. Major bloggers have companies paying fixed fee deals to have their banners in the sidebar but majority of bloggers only have affiliate deals or pay-per-click deals to work with.
I understand when bloggers use banners if some company contacts them and wants to pay them a fixed monthly fee to display their banners. If your blog is big enough to attract these offers, it seems like a fairly easy and simple way of earning blog income.
Your readers have banner blindness
If you are monetizing your blog primarily with banner advertisements for affiliate programs, you are missing out on a ton of opportunities to make money online vith your blog. Do you know anyone who clicks on banner ads? When is the last time you clicked on a banner ad?
Traditional banner ads take away from the user experience. They distract users and because of that users tend to ignore ads. Banner blindness is a very known phenomenon which was proven by several different eye-tracking studies and has shown that readers do not fixate on ads at all.
No clicks but increased brand awareness
The most recent study from ComScore shows something even worse for bloggers that try to monetize their blogs with affiliate marketing. Banner advertising, despite a lack of clicks, can have a significant positive impact on the advertiser:
- Visits to the advertiser’s website increased at least 46% over a four week period
- The likelihood of consumers conducting a search query using the advertiser’s branded terms increased at least 38% over a four week period
- Consumers’ likelihood of buying the advertised brand online increased an average 27%
Insight from the report is that banner advertising may not normally result in an immediate click but it results in a increased brand awareness for the advertiser. This means that you as a blogger, you create the brand awareness by displaying banners, but it is the brand itself that gets the credit as users do not click directly on banner ads on your blog.
From banners to recommendations
In recent weeks I have tried to minimize the use of affiliate and pay-per-click banners on my blog by not including Google Adsense on my new blog articles and by limiting the banners in other spots of my blog. Limiting banners also makes your blog look much cleaner and user-friendlier.
People are naturally skeptical of advertisements in general and are much more likely to trust reviews and recommendations. Instead of using banners to promote the affiliate programs, why not:
- Endorse the company by being the customer and telling your readers the benefits
- Endorse the product / service by using it and showing your readers why and how you use it
- Writing review of products / services and showing your audience what it can help them accomplish and achieve
- Creating guide articles explaining your readers how exactly they can use the product to help them achieve what they want
Do banner ads work for you? What do you think about the recent study? What are your thoughts on banners ads compared to alternative ways of promoting affiliate programs? Do you plan to make changes on your blog?
Image by Jeff Coffman
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{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
Marko,
Would you recommend using text ads in place of banner ads in say an article?
Much like say a branded e-book?
Thanks for all comments!
@Joe – Definitely! I prefer using text-links instead of banners.
@george – Yeah, some users are less-prone to banner blindness. The study I linked to has some detailes on that. I would recommend doing some tests. Place some banners, place some text links, track it all. See what works. For me text-links work better.
@Aaron from TechThinker.com – I take it step-by-step and until now I have only avdertised products I use for this blog. So Thesis theme and GoDaddy domain / hosting. I find that I have most to say about stuff I use and love and that comes out very person / trustable to my visitors.
@Chuck – Yeah, there is a fine line between content and ads. I know Chris Brogan got negative publicity on blogs a month ago or so after placing some paid for content as a blog post.
@Hen Asraf – Great point! I never used it personally but many users do have those ad-block plugins installed. Another negative point for using banner ads.
Marko,
I agree with you 100% on the banners ads. Especially when they have over the top flash animation. I know there have been many studies that show people kind of tune out and don’t click on banner ads that much compared to other types of ads.
Marko,
I’m going to predict that you just opened a can of worms.
Let me be dead honest here. I don’t dislike the products in my 125s. Put frankly, I really don’t give a rip about endorsing their products through reviews or any other method. Yes there isn’t very much to be made from them at this point, but they are there for one reason and one reason only: To make me money. Even if it’s a little. I’ll take a little over bupkiss
Until there is a paradigm shift in how to monetize, I’ll stick with them. Also, I think to some extent it legitimizes the blog, as long as there aren’t too many of them.
Understand, I don’t like the system, but I’m not seeing much in the way of alternatives.
This will be an interesting comment feed to watch.
George
Very true. When I see banner ads, I completely ignore them. And if they are tempting enough to make me look, I never click on them. I’ll search for the company in Google instead, as I rarely trust external links… So banner ads are bad.
On websites for which I’ve implemented affiliate advertising, banner ads were the least effective.
The thing is though that most of us that are into affiliate marketing are pretty cautious with banners and affiliate links in general
How about the normal readers of a blog though that don’t know how this thing works?
I would use affiliate banners at the 125×125 spaces until i get enough traffic to draw some advertisers that would pay me a standard fee…I don’t think it is too difficult if you have a nice traffic and a good media kit for your blog…
I totally agree with you Marco, I have never ever clicked a 125 * 125 ad block yet!
If the brand is what drives the Traffic how do you decide on which site to advertise?
I haven’t had much luck with any affiliate banners except Amazon. My thought right now is to more or less ignore advertising except for Amazon affiliate links and Adsense and try to get to a place where I’m accepted by a major blog network and can run their CPM banners.
I should add that my Amazon affiliate success has been more because my regulars know I benefit and do their shopping through the banners and because of affiliate links. I don’t think it would be as successful if I didn’t have a good sized base of regulars who want to make sure I have enough cash to keep the site running.
I don’t have any 125’s up yet, but expect to at some point, only because there are few other alternatives, the ones I put in there will be relevent to my readers.
I am in agreement in that I don’t generally click any advertisements – whether they are on the top of my Google results or in websites. But I have seen people who click on the advertisements at the top of search engine results and I think they would be the same type of people to blindly click the advertisements on any site. It is for those people that I would have the banners up there.
Also the highlighted text that pops up a little ad on some sites is just down right annoying because I have to steer around them with my mouse and I don’t want to put my readers through the same type of maze.
If the review type approach is the only other alternative, then there would be a lot of space devoted to products instead of content. One would really have to try and incorporate the product in with their regular content.
Not only do I not click banners, but I (and I know many other people who) use Adblock Plus or a similar app/extension to completely block those out. I haven’t seen any ads/popups in years, and the more people like me, the less clicks ads will get. I don’t block out reviews and recommendations though… =] great post.
Having only been blogging since the beginning of the year, I’m still finding my feet. I have put a couple of affiliate banner ads on my blog, but have had no clickthroughs yet. I’m not sure affiliate ads are the best way to go, but until I have increased traffic to my blog it’ll have to do. Does anyone think a well designed banner ad by a reputable company adds to the credibility of a blag?
I’m fairly new to blogging and have used Google AdSense, Commision Junction and Amazon. I try to keep them as subtle as I can, but I don’t know how much they work or not since I’m still struggling with getting traffic.
Once I get the traffic coming I’ll see if this is still worth the effort. I think things like Amazon and Commision Junction work better if you’re doing actual recommendations rather than just banners so I need to work that in to the mix more.
Looking forward to hearing any other ideas for increasing cash flow from blogs and other web sites outside of ads. Hopefully your readers can suggest some other alternatives.
Interesting discussion. *Love* your blog, BTW. Just found it today and stumbled several of your pages.
I agree with you that CPC ads (which is what Google AdSense uses) are not good for bloggers. CPC does not pay as much to bloggers as CPM does, and it actually costs more to sponsors (which is why Google uses it).
CPM is a much better model. It addresses the issue you brought up that it allows advertisers to build brand awareness — they need to pay for that. Just because someone doesn’t click doesn’t mean they didn’t see the ad.
I also like affiliate marketing because it works very well with blogs — esp. blogs with a loyal readership.
I think the best model is a combination of CPM ads and affiliate marketing. You get your bread and butter from the CPM ads and then you get a second stream of revenue from affiliate ads. And you’re maximizing more of your revenue potential this way.
I’m in the process of building a highly targeted ad network for my growing blog network. It’s CPM-based and we’re doing affiliate marketing too.
By the way the other thing you said that is smart is that 125×125 ads are not a good choice. Research shows that the bigger the ad, the better the CTR. I am offering 125×125 ads but only below the fold — never at the top of the page or right next to the content. That real estate is just too valuable.
@CHEESESLAVE – Thanks for the nice comment. I agree, CPM is definitely a better way to go than CPC. Doing CPM, and than having affiliate stuff as well seems like the best combination.
I agree that adsense is not going to make you a rich man. Our short term goal is to get to the point where we can remove adsense in favor of a few 125s at a low but profitable monthly rate. I have noticed some modest sized blogs that turn a decent profit this way. Be careful not to overdo it of course.
Any decent enterprise will have more than one source of revenue. The affiliate programs you mention are the perfect suppliment and some well written testimonials will make these pay dividens.
New to blogging but do you have any tips on getting sponsors to send you stuff to review?
Like if I try to pitch them an advertising package on generating hits for them by reviewing their products. How do I go about asking for the products for my reviews? I can’t help but find the idea of asking for stuff rude. Is there a polite way to go about this?
By the way, thank you for making this blog. It’s extremely helpful.
@Pugs @LoneWolf – Check how I contact advertisers directly. You can try something similar in your case. Contact the advertiser and “sell” them why your blog is a perfect opportunity for them to have their product reviewed or to feature their ads on. Thye are running a business and they are always on a look-out for good opportunities, so there is nothing “rude” about it.
How do you go about getting CPM ads when you’re just starting out? I know that AdSense sometimes has some CPM in the mix but the majority is CPC. As for affiliate marketing, are you talking about things like Click Junction or smaller affiliate programs?
I am also interested in the question Pugs raised about getting products to review. I recently looked at Buzz for Stuff and it seems that they want the buzz before they send you any stuff, and the stuff may not even be what they want you to buzz about. It doesn’t look like what I thought it would.
Thanks for that link Marko. It also lead me to the post about creating a media kit which I need to do as well.
Thanks!
This is indeed an interesting article. It’s not clear to me though how the last four pointers at the bottom of the article can help generate income (could you clarify? Thanks). Like some of the bloggers above, I’m fairly new (launched my blog in late December) and I’m still focused on building traffic to my blog. I use a combination of affiliate banners, AdSense and an Amazon bookshop and there have been quite a few clickthroughs. Clicks on AdSense generate a pittance. I’ve discovered that text links are more effective when integrated in the content and that generates more clickthroughs than the banners in the sidebar.
Traffic is steadily increasing and I’m constantly thinking of ways to increase revenue streams in a more effective manner. There are certain aspects of advertising on my blog that I’m still not happy with and I’m continuously tweaking and keeping an eye on the result. Until CPM becomes an option, I’ll just stick with the banner/text link/bookshop combination I guess.
@Keith – For some examples on how I use some of these pointers see article on how I monetize my blog with Thesis affiliate program.
Hey Marco,
Greetings Bro, Tumblemoose has stated that you may have opened up a “can of worms”. For someone like me I think this is absolutely great stuff, because one gets to be knowledgeable about the pros and cons of certain tactics and strategies used in the blogosphere.
I consider myself to be an absolute newby to blogging. My blog has not been monetized as yet because I have been reading that one has to have content and be known, to create relationships, then one can think of monetizing a blog. My blog is hosted at wordpress.com which does not allow advertising, I am thinking of migrating to wordpress.org to have it monetized in the near future.
For the sake of this article, I am thinking of a combination of tactics.
I would greatly appreciate your input in any way, in terms of migrating procedures, your best advice.
Thanking you in advance
@Dean – Thanks for the comment! Absolutely. The best advice always is to be open-minded, try different solutions and see what works best for you and your blog audience.
Definitely a good step that you’re trying to move to self-hosted WordPress. It is a simple process. Get yourself a domain name / hosting, install WordPress on it and use the “Import” tool in WordPress to import your articles / comments etc from WordPress.com to your new WordPress.org blog. See more details in my step-by-step Wordpress install guide. Good luck!
I think you’re right. I have not found banner ads to be very effective at all and from a personal perspective I tune them out myself!
I’m on the plan to make blogs so I can make money online too just like what other people are interested of nowadays. I am constructing how my blog will be look like and design how it will attract visitors and readers. I am thinking to put adsense although I found that most blogs looks cluttered because of so many links (ads by Google) I saw on top, side and bottom of the screen. I didn’t click any of these because I am aware that the blogger will have a commission once I click this wherein some ads are not related on what I am looking for.
When I read your blog, I totally agree on your point of view. It would be better if you will make an article about the website or product you want to endorse coz aside from minimizing the noise in the screen it will give related information and good insights on the readers. A story of the product/ website that will help the reader to decide or compare on the other product they know. Unlike placing more and more links on the page, I think your idea is more effective.
Hope most of the bloggers will read this so they will have an idea on how to improve the (old) ways of making money online. Although it’s harder than the usual but at the end of the day, it will increase the numbers of visitors and readers that will probably proceed to viral marketing for other people who will definitely love the content.