Even if you think that most users don’t check banner ads and use ad blockers to hide this outdated ad format, they are still an effective communication and marketing tool. Despite a rather bad reputation and relatively low CTR, banner ads are still a very efficient tool for increasing brand awareness and audience expansion. And you can achieve all this at a fairly low price.
Why to Make Web Banners a Part of Your Marketing Campaign?
You should definitely play around with visual ads. The advantages of using online banner ads are as follows:
- Large selection of ad targeting – you can choose impressions according to the message context, placement, and location;
- Cost – this type of ad is much cheaper than others, and the competition in this niche is not that tough;
- Many retargeting options – banners can be shown to those who have already visited your website;
- Straightforward communication – banners provide the ability to maintain and enhance the brand message;
- Maintaining interaction with the brand – using animation, java scripts, or other technologies that can initiate interaction with the banner, thus, enticing the user to go to the site;
- Retrieving statistics – a webmaster can easily measure the performance of a banner campaign and tweak it to get even better results.
Please note that banner ads are getting more and more creative. Banner ads appear on the page, immediately attract the attention of a target audience, and make people click on them. In addition to text and pictures, visual ads can have beautiful illustrations, animations, even videos, and sounds. All of these media elements allow advertisers to better communicate their message and easily grab the attention of site visitors. In this post, we are going to talk about trends in web banner design so that you know how to boost the effectiveness of your online advertising campaigns.
#1 – Hand-Drawn Illustrations
Everyone loves handicrafts. For this reason, hand-drawn pictures and illustrations are becoming increasingly popular in web design. By and large, such banners can contain almost nothing but simple hand-drawn illustrations, a short message, and a call to action (CTA).
#2 – Flat Design
Flat design was first introduced in Microsoft’s ZUNE MP Player. But until 2103, few people knew about it – until Apple released its iOS 7. Then, in 2015, Google completely updated the concept of Flat design, presenting the world with Material design. Nowadays, this style has become even brighter, has found light and shadows, depth of color, and even animation. Besides that, this style is characterized by crisp vector graphics, bright contrasting colors, and noticeable typography. Web banner ads created in this style look minimalist, informative, and attractive. To implement a flat design in your online banner, you need to use an eraser from Retoucher Online and remove unnecessary elements from the visual.
#3 – New Retro
Fashion is cyclic, and everything old becomes new again. The return to retro style began back in 2014. First, it has become a trend in logo design. But with time, this style spread across all areas of web design. When we talk about retro style in web design, we are not referring to a specific time period. Inspiration can also come from simplistic hand-drawn illustrations from the early ’30s or from bright, fun polka dot pictures, and backgrounds in the late 50s. Pixelated imagery, conspicuous, fun typography, geometric designs, and patterns blend with modern imagery to create stunning designs that are impossible to miss.
#4 – Simplification
To be heard, you sometimes need to create a simple and clear message. The funny thing is that this can be achieved by showing only the company logo, slogan, or detailed product image. Everything is easy. Just remember one thing – this type of banner should still look like a banner. Website visitors should not perceive simplified banners as simple non-clickable pictures or partner logos. To draw the attention of visitors to such a banner, you can add borders, shadows, contrasting backgrounds, and even buttons to it.
#5 – Pastel Colors & Prominent Typography
According to the report from Pantone, the colors of this season take us to a happy, sunny place where we feel free to express ourselves. Pastel colors, crisp contours, and lines, unexpected color combinations are popular this year among web designers.
When it comes to typography for banner ads, we are seeing the return of large, asymmetrical fonts, the use of large letters, bold and oblique styles. Also, as we have mentioned earlier, hand-drawn fonts are becoming more and more popular today.
#6 – Interactive Banners and Storytelling
Online advertising has made great strides in recent years with interactive ads of all shapes and sizes. Banner advertising is no exception. Interactivity and storytelling are the two effective ways to draw more attention to your banners. In addition, you can find inspiration in the famous Internet memes, make references to trending events, pop culture phenomena, etc. Anything that is trendy and relevant is a great attention grabber – so use it.
#7 – Negative Space
Along with material design and minimalism, negative space is also heavily used in web banner design. This is not a new trend according to the best web design company; this year, it is just starting to pick up steam again. In simple terms, a design that uses negative space contains a “hidden message” and can be embedded in a company logo.
Final Say!
Online banner advertising trends are constantly evolving. Therefore, in order to get the most out of your banner ads, you must show all your creativity, make them original and unique.
