Static Ads

Why You Shouldn’t Use Static Banner Ads

Static banners are one of the things that can give banner ads a bad name in the world of advertising. They usually consist of an image, copy, and a CTA. No movement, no frames, no transitions, just those assets frozen in their frame.

While the imagery and messaging can be carefully chosen for the unit, without animation, static ads almost always fall flat in performance. In order for a banner ad to be an effective vehicle to drive sales or increase brand awareness, your audience needs to flick their eyes toward it for even a second. How will that happen if there’s nothing to look at?!

Quite often, we hear that the reason clients feel like they’re stuck serving statics is the media agency citing a lack of file size.  However, thanks to the lightweight HTML5 base that digital ads are built in, that’s not much of an issue! We’ve got a whole slew of ads that have shockingly slight file sizes and beautiful animation. That’s right—they’ve got the whole package. You banner ads can, too!

Why should you choose animation instead?

Let us tell you!
According to Peter Roesler of Web Marketing Pros, “[a]nimated creatives averaged 7 percent higher conversation rates. Similarly, animated ads with 6-9 seconds of animation (including loops) averaged the highest rates among animated creatives and saw conversion rates that were 138 percent higher”. According to Moon Workshop, a study based on more than 200,000 users found that over 65% of advertisers feel that animated HTML5 banners outperform static banners and utilize them in their media plans instead.

522productions backs us up as well! They cite research that found animated banner ads to be over 4X more effective than static ads!

In case that isn’t enough to sway you, animated banner ads also:

• Stand out from the crowd of other online advertisements that don’t move at all.
• Create character around your brand and branded assets that will have better staying power in your customer’s minds
• Allow you to be more creative! Rather than making it all about your brand offering, creativity and interest gives something to your users, kicking off that relationship in a fun and engaging way

Animated ads focus on the function of our brains that we like to call ‘The Serengeti Response.’ If you’re a gazelle or other adorable creature on the savannah and there’s movement out of the corner of your eye, you’re probably in the running to be someone’s lunch. While banner ads don’t have such gory consequences, animated banner ads leverage this reflex in our brains—something is moving on our screen and we can’t help but look over at it.