Banneralities - An Affiliate’s-Eye View - Size Does Matter!

Many merchants think nothing of spending a small fortune on cardboard advertising material with a lifespan of a few weeks, or days in some cases, to be seen in stores with a few hundred customers and yet appear reluctant to invest in a sensible quantity, quality and variety of link banners that may be seen by millions on their affiliate sites on the Internet! Naturally there are some notable exceptions, including those who bombard affiliates with such a vast array of new links that it would be a full-time job keeping up with them.

Otherwise intelligent and successful merchants have managed to stun me by remarking that there is no point in ‘wasting’ resources on producing graphics for Internet marketing purposes as “the whole thing is just a ‘flash in the pan’! Well, if that is true, it’s one hell of a long flash and the pan is getting larger by the day!

Somewhere between those extremes are the merchants who have arrived at the correct stance and it is their efforts that reap the best rewards. Nobody would dream of asking a shop keeper to promote their products without the aid of point-of-sale material, media advertising campaigns and all the other resources that are brought to bear. These tools are an investment in future profit and this article is about the banners used to advertise merchants and their goods. Various factors merit a mention and here we will consider the size factor.

There are fashions in banner graphics, just as there are in every other field. Today the merchant population’s creative departments might seize upon the 120 x 600 skyscraper - whether it works and is convenient to the affiliate community and site visitors, or not. Tomorrow, it may be that 240 x 60 is ‘in’. This would not, in itself, be a problem were it not for the fact that all other sizes tend to be neglected during any particular fad. If one wants a vertical strip that requires a great deal of scrolling to reveal the message that hot dogs are the best thing since sliced bread,, one can have it in any one of nine sizzling colors. If not, one had better look for someone else’s hot dogs to promote…

It is no good providing a small assortment of huge banners produced by one’s twelve-year-old child, (or a huge assortment of tiny banners that will be overlooked by anyone with less than 20/20 vision) upon joining a network and then doing nothing more until complaining, a year later, that selling on the Internet “doesn’t work”!

Although you might think your gigantic, or miniscule, banner is fabulous and potential affiliates might even agree with you in general, it is unusual for an affiliate to want the advertiser’s material occupying the lion’s share of a page, or so little of it that it may as well not be there.

Both the huge and the tiny have their place, of course, but you should provide as wide a range of sizes as you can if you want to attract affiliates across the board. Most affiliates will be reluctant to use advertising material that does not enhance their layouts and a sensible merchant should not want his, or her, advertising to look out of place or ‘wrong’.

Why, then, do so many merchants seem surprised at getting no result from a handful of unimaginative (and even misspelled) text links and a single unattractive graphic, reproduced in a limited range of sizes and replaced annually if at all?

My shopping malls, to name but one example, are based around 125 x 125 graphics and merchants who provide nothing close to that size range are often simply not included, even though it is with regret that they are left out. Slightly larger or smaller, 120 x 90, for example or 180 x 150 can be handled if the banner is so appealing that space is made for it.

At times I have created my own banners and submitted them for approval because I felt strongly enough about wanting to include a particular merchant but this is time-consuming and requires skills that may not be available to some people. If you want to be presented well by affiliates you need to present yourself well to affiliates.

Online since 1998 as a webmaster,working mainly with small businesses and freelance tradesmen, Linnet Woods is editor of MarineZine, a free online nautical magazine, is active on several internet-related forums and has more than a dozen content sites at http://www.linnetwoods.com.