Yesterday after I wrote about creating effective landing pages for coupons campaigns, a merchant wrote to me:
I am working on banners for my affiliate program. Read your article on the mistakes to avoid. Could you please provide examples of banners done correctly? [bold font mine]
The above question gave me the idea for this post. Just as it was with my yesterday’s topic, “it is better to see once than hear a hundred times” /Russian proverb/, and I have therefore decided to make this another visual post.
Here are the banners that I believe to be well-suited for affiliate campaigns:
88×31 px Apple button
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120×60 LowerMyBills.com banner
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120×90 Expedia banner
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120×400 Overstock.com banner
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125×125 JC Penney banner
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180×150 Expedia banner
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250×250 Adobe banner
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468×60 Priceline banner
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500×200 LendingTree banner
I hope the above examples give you a good idea of how to put together your affiliate banners.
Best of luck, and do not hesitate to post your questions below.
Geno, Great idea to show merchants and affiliates what a ‘good banner’ should look like. I would take exception however to the Overstock and Lowermybills banners. Both of these show the direct url of the site. While in many cases a visitor will already know the address of a merchant, I don’t think it appropriate to use the banners as further branding for the merchants website. In some cases a visitor may think to themselves “oh, merchant X has a sale, I’ll open another tab and go there.” As stated for well branded, large merchants there is not much to be done, however for a lesser known merchant, don’t use my affiliate banner as branding.
I fully agree with you, Steve. In fact I wrote about it in the banner mistakes article (point #4) too. I can’t believe I’ve missed the .com on the LowerMyBills.com and Overstock.com’s banners. It was precisely the reason why I excluded Priceline.com’s banners (all of them have the “.com” on them), and went with one for Priceline Europe (which doesn’t spell the full URL out) instead.
Yes, Steve is making a great point. Affiliates are no instrument for free branding.
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