Research helps identify how to make banner ads more effective.

Dynamic Logic measured ad effectiveness for 4800 web banner campaigns and found that size is not an important factor in whether a banner ad was effective.  In Abbey Klaassen’s article in Ad Age, she offers a few tips from Dynamite Logic’s research for making online banner ads more effective.

1. Simple flash is overused.  Better choices are rich media with video.  For every branding goal Dynamic Logic studied, simple Flash performed the weakest.

2. Try to avoid ads that border content. Those are the banner ads that are most easily ignored.

3. Publishers should consider mixing up ad placement from page to page.  By placing the same ad formats in the same place on every page, consumers become trained to avoid the ads.

4. Not all attention is positive. Avoid flashing, blinking or annoying ads

5. Ads that cover content and don’t have a “skip” or “close” button are by far, the most annoying formats.

These tips are helpful in trying to maximize a hospital’s effectiveness using web banner ads.  The internet is where people are.  Hospital marketers should be there too. But they must pay special attention to the research to learn best practices.