Measuring ROI on Online Ad Banners

Online marketing efforts such as banners, social media marketing and PPC campaigns are a popular and effective way for e-commerce businesses to reach out to their target audience. However, adequately measuring your real or potential ROI on these types of advertising campaigns can turn out to be a real headache for marketers and deciding which third party websites will be most profitable for your business can be an even bigger challenge. So how exactly do savvy marketing experts turn their advertising budget into an exponential source of income? In what follows, we will be specifically looking at ad banners and how to make the most of them.

Real and potential ROI

For small campaigns on one dedicated website or banners promoting a specific product, simple mathematics will of course do the trick. Divide your total profit by the cost of the campaign, convert this figure into a percentage and this final number is your ROI. Most large to medium-sized companies, however, require an average figure that takes different variables into account and are often interested in calculating their ROI on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis. For this reason, most online business use some form of ad tracking as a continuous, automated system to track their percentage of return. Tracking solutions gather vital information on how your banners affect consumers and provide an estimated ROI based on the quality of your campaign, your intended target audience and the potential effectiveness of partnering websites. Online analytics companies like Opentracker can help you facilitate this process even more by analyzing the resulting data.

Finding your hot spots

By calculating an estimated ROI from a prospective advertising partner, ad tracking can be just as effectively used to shortlist websites for an upcoming campaign but doing a bit of proactive research can prove just as valuable. Common keywords used to access a certain website or personal data gathered from their visitors shows in how far the average visitor profile correlates with your target customer base. You should also pay attention to third party advertising campaigns that already feature on the website. Research shows that banners placed on top of the page, next to the scroll bar or in other eye-catching positions, are most likely to generate clicks and, therefore, conversions.

High traffic media sites, social networking pages and online directories are the best places to contact for an ongoing partnership. But do not make the mistake of just focusing on the CNNs and Facebooks of this world – small affiliate websites with a high Google ranking can often generate a similar profit for your business without breaking the bank on your advertising budget and are usually much easier to contact. If you manage to team a talented designer with a savvy advertising partner, you can turn any banner into a real goldmine.