The format of an advertisement refers to its type and the position it occupies on a page. Web based advertising formats are most similar to the types used in traditional print media advertising because of the visual medium of both. There are a variety of advertising formats to consider when you are looking to strategically market your business.

Banner Ads

The granddaddy of internet marketing advertisements is the banner ad, a clickable rectangular image, displayed across the top of a web page. The placement of an ad at the head of the page is a strategic choice. Westerners are taught to read top to bottom, left to right, so whatever information appears at the top of the page is in a targeted real estate area for grabbing attention.

Banner ads were one of the original internet advertising tools, have enjoyed a great deal of success, and are reliable and proven way to attract customers to your business and services, and your website. Banner ads however are not foolproof or one hundred percent successful. Banner ads have become so prevalent that web users have started to get desensitized to the images, sometimes ignoring the images altogether. This phenomenon was first described by researchers at Rice University as banner blindness, and it is this issue that eventually gave rise to other forms of internet advertising.

The next phase

The market saturation with banner ads prompted a new crop of internet ads to be born. Tower ads, inline ads, sliding ads, pop-up ads, and video based ads are all popular forms of web advertising you see on just about every web page now, and are types of ads that morphed out of the success of the original banner ad.

Most of these advertising types are a variation on the format of the banner ad, changing the placement, orientation and style of the ad to gain more of an edge for visually capturing one's attention. A tower ad is a vertical rectangle banner placed either to the left of right of the web page content. An inline as is a smaller, more narrow banner ad that is inserted into the middle of web page content.

Aggressive advertising

There are a couple of banner inspired internet advertising formats that are more aggressive ways to grab a viewers attention and tend to be more controversial, spurring loyal fans and staunch opponents. The sliding ad and pop-up ad are two of these more aggressive marketing tools.

A sliding ad is an advertisement that literally moves around the web page, often until it is accessed by clicking. These ads are some of the most infuriating for internet users because they force you to stop what you are doing to acknowledge the ad and make it go away, and one of the most successful ads for strategic marketing for the same reason: the advertisement demands the viewers attention.

A pop-up ad is the most infamous of these aggressive methods, literally popping up into a new browser window when you click on a web link. These ads are another type that cannot be ignored - you must acknowledge the ad to dismiss it, thus the advertisers have achieved their goal by capturing your attention.

Most companies use more than one of these types of ads to make for a collaborative marketing platform. All of these advertisements can be used in affiliate marketing systems and using a combination of these methods is an intelligent way to strategically market your businesses products and services.

Copyright (c) 2008 Christian Fea