Banner ads for online promotion

What are web banners

In simplest terms (I'll push in a few "technical" terms in the next two paragraphs), web banners are images or animations which advertise products or services.

Banner sizes

Web banners come in different sizes and styles. The Internet Advertising Bureau, has released standard sizes for web banners. Most web sites or ad servers accept banners which conform to the standard sizes. The standard sizes vary from the very large vertical banners to the very small. The sizes are measured in pixels - hmmm, what are pixels? (click to know the answer). You can find the standard banner sizes here.

Banner styles

On the basis of style, web banners can be classified as follows:

1. Static banners - GIFs, JPGs or PNGs. These are simply different image formats.
2. Animated banners - Animated GIFs or Flash files
3. Interactive banners - are banners that respond to visitor actions such as mouse-overs, mouse cursor movements or key presses. Interactive banners can be developed in Flash, Java, or HTML and JavaScript.

These banner styles can be applied to all standard banner sizes.
Note: The JPG image format does not support animation hence you cannot have an animated JPG banner.

Let me also make one point very clear. A successful banner ad campaign entails a great deal of hard work and determination from you. After all you cannot hand over the promotion of your products entirely to someone without taking an active interest in what they are doing.
Remember, you would know more about your business than the person developing the ad campaign and the banners. Hence, a proactive role from your side is essential.