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If you've spent any time surfing the Web, you will have seen plenty of banner ads. These small rectangular advertisements appear on many Web pages and differ considerably in topic matter, but they all share a basic purpose: if you click on them, your Web browser will take you to the advertiser's Website. But how do they work and why are they there?
Banner ads are usually relatively simple graphic images backed up by pieces of HTML code, but their value to business online is huge.
Because of its graphic element, a banner ad is to some extent similar to the traditional ad you would see in a printed publication such as a newspaper or magazine, but it has the added ability to bring a possible customer straight to the advertiser's Web site. This is something like touching a printed ad and being immediately taken to the advertiser's shop! A banner ad also differs from a print ad in its dynamic capability. More often than not, the banner ad stays in one place on a page, like a magazine ad, but it can present multiple images, include animation and change appearance in a number of other ways.
Like print ads, banner ads come in a variety of shapes and sizes. There are eight popular banner sizes, according to pixel dimensions. A pixel is the smallest unit of colour used to make up images on a computer screen. The full banner (468 x 60) is by far the most popular, but you will see variations all over the Web (You can view the most commonly used banner ads here). There is no universal file size constraint for banner ads, but most Web sites impose their own limits on file size, usually something like 15K. This is because banner ads add to the total file size of the page they appear on, therefore increasing the time it takes for a browser to load that page.
As you've probably noticed while surfing the Web, actual graphic content varies among the banner ads that you see. The simplest banner ads feature only one, static GIF or JPEG image, which is typically linked to the advertiser's home page. Much more common is the animated GIF banner ad, which displays several different images in succession, sometimes to create the effect of animated motion, such as some the banner ads on this page. Then there are so called rich media banner ads -- ads that use Flash, audio, video or Java. These banner ads, which usually have larger file sizes, are often interactive beyond their simple linking function.
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