Affiliate Coupon Banners: Sizes, Info to Include, Samples

Having studied my posts on the affiliate coupons, a merchant has emailed me asking about the sizes of banners I would recommend for coupons. I replied: “give affiliates a 125 x 125 px square, and a 88 x 31 px button for each”, and received the following question back:

We are preparing our coupon banners right now, but how should we handle fine print details (such as expiration date, restrictions, coupon code) since the space for coupon size is tiny?

So, really, how do you fit all of the necessary info on a banner of such small size?

Answer: you don’t have to!

In fact, you don’t even want to do include some of this info, because, for example, listing a coupon code on the banner may be perceived as a “leak” (the end-customer could just pick up the code from the banner, go to the merchant’s website, and key it in by-passing the click on the affiliate link). So don’t do what Symantec does:

I recommend having the following info on coupon banners:

• Coupon title (make sure you emphasize the deal)
• Your logo (preferably without the “.com”)
• Expiration date (if there is one)
• Call to action (some won’t click unless you ask)

Here are a few good examples of coupon banners:

While some of the above examples are not perfect (like the “.com” on the Buy.com’s banner, or the speed of animation in the Checks in the Mail banner), they should still give you a good idea of what affiliates are looking for.