The Evolution of the Banner

According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, Online display advertising began as a way to fund websites without asking users to pay for access to the site. Many online publishers opted for display advertising as it was the best way to fund a website without restricting the flow of traffic.

Ten years ago online advertising mainly consisted of a simple GIF or JPG banner on a webpage. Today, rich media display can include video, audio, animation, games and much more. An increasing number of advertisers are now using rich media to not only engage users but to entertain, educate and encourage online sales through such savvy advertising campaigns.

Although ads still fund websites, display advertising has developed as a crucial part of many businesses budgets.  With the cost of computer dropping massively over the years, more homes and businesses became active online. The internet was set to change and gain momentum as savvy marketers watched online interest grow.

The first banner ad

October 25^th 1994 saw the birth of online display advertising with the first ever online banner being hosted on Hotwired by AT&T. It was called the ‘You Will’ campaign and consisted purely of a banner asking ‘Have you ever clicked your mouse right here?’ and an arrow pointing to the right saying ‘ You Will.’ Although today, that banner would be considered spam as it was a gauging their success through how many users visited their site and actually did click on the banner.

The development of the banner ad

After the success of AT&T’s banner ad on Hotwired, an increasing number of websites made the decision to offer advertising space in order to fund their website. In 1996, the interactive display ad was introduced with HP’s shockwave banner in which you could play the game ‘Pong’ against the banner. Arguably, this was the webs first example of a rich media advert. This was the development of industry changes that are yet to come; the interactive banner was a massive success!

According to Chris Hurwitz, the original guy behind this banner, back in 1997 ‘the normal click through rate on an ad banner is 1.5-2%. The Pong banner is getting 4-8%’.

From this advert, rich media was born and it had been clearly established that is was a success! Within months the internet was becoming flooded with pop-ups, flash, interactive, java, 3d and many more banner ads.

Experimenting with rich media

Despite the growth in banner ads, in the early days, rich media was still very much an experiment.

In an attempt to gain more revenue, publisher increase advertising space on their sites. However, advertisers understandably preferred single ad slots where competition was not rife. Consumers also did not approve of pages that were splashed in irrelevant banners rather than the content they required. This led to websites reducing the number of banner adverts but keeping the spaces for multiple ads on their site.

Creating these ads required a development team with in-depth knowledge of programming. This was also a concern and websites became cautious about hosting many banners in case the below industry standard programming would affect the overall performance of their sites.

There was also the issue with many users still having a slow dial-up internet and experiencing a poor online experience as the large file sizes struggled to load.

Technology developments fuelled the boom

As the web grew, so did technology. Dreary dial-up internet turned into super speed Broadband and computers were built with more ability to handle media loading when a user goes online. By the end of 2004, more than 50% of Internet users were connected online via Broadband; rich media ads became a part of every user’s online experience.

Advertisers now have the ability to track user interactions with their ads including display time, interaction rate, interaction time, expansion time, views and completions, average view time, exit links and much more.

While banners were once used for branding as opposed to direct response or search advertising, they are now becoming much more targeted with the options to refine your audience through demographics, interests and even retarget people who have already visited your site.

What does the future hold?

Many would agree that the web is now a consumer friendly entity. Although it is far more sophisticated that it was in the 90’s, it also offers far more to consumers as well as advertisers with the most effective form of online advertising. With increasing numbers of marketers devoting large budgets to online display advertising, rich Media has developed into an essential part of a marketer’s budget and now represents 25% of on online media consumption.

Now that most industries are also devoting 25-50% of their web display ad impressions to Rich Media, I wonder exactly what is going to be the next development in the future of Display Advertising?

Stay tuned for the latest developments in the world of online advertising!