The number of choices that marketers have about where and how to spend their online marketing budgets has grown at a dizzying rate over the past decade.

From rich media and video ads to search engine marketing and advertising on social networking sites, marketers can today choose from a host of high-value environments and technologies that match their target markets and the needs of their campaigns.

Yet, even in the face of all of these glamorous choices, the humble display or banner ad remains the king of the online marketing world and looks set to retain an important position for years to come. Rumours about the demise of the banner ad are clearly greatly exaggerated.

Display ads currently account for about one-fifth of online ad spending, and should hold at least this much of the market until 2011, according to eMarketer. The market researcher says that nearly US$8.2-billion will be spent on display ads in the US in 2011, which is twice as much as was spent in 2007.

The major players in the online media space are certainly still treating banner advertising as an important and viable market. Most market talk about Microsoft's attempt to buy Yahoo! for more than US$40-billion centres on search marketing. But Yahoo! is also an attractive asset because of the high rates that it can charge for display ads placed on its portal. Despite the fact that display ads aren't glamorous, they're still bringing the money in for large online media portals.

Banners under fire

In recent years, banner advertising has come under fire for poor response rates from viewers who face a clutter of ads on most mainstream sites and portals. But the good news is that media companies have had to slice the cost of banner advertising to make it more attractive to advertisers.

Against this backdrop, marketers should still be looking at ways that they can effectively use banner ads as a part of their online advertising mix. Provided one has a sound campaign strategy, banner ads can deliver a great return at an affordable cost.

This is especially true in bandwidth-starved South Africa, where many users are on slower dial-up or wireless connections and do not always appreciate being bombarded by heavy rich media ads. Yet clutter on many websites and user indifference to banner ads mean one has to work harder to get the audience's attention.

So how does one get the best results from banner ads?

It's increasingly important to get design and messaging right to entice users to click your banner. Using the right colours and imagery for the environment where the ad will be placed, crafting a strong call to action, and creating clear messaging are all important parts of a good banner campaign.

Using geo-targeting and behavioural targeting can help a marketer to reach the right audience with its message rather than blanketing a mass-market at great expense. As long as the creative and messaging are well-crafted, display ads can still work well for both brand-building and direct response campaigns.

Closing words

In a fast-moving field such as online marketing, marketers find themselves under constant pressure to move ahead with the next big thing. As much potential as rich media and other recent innovations in the online advertising space offer, they don't make tried-and-tested techniques such as banner ads obsolete overnight.

It's important for advertisers to constantly explore the potential of new technologies, but this doesn't mean that they should stop using the tools that have delivered consistently good results for them in the years that have past.