I'll never forget the revelation… my banner ad epiphany, you might call it. I was working on a matrix e-mail project, whipping out a complex and intricate maze of communication for a client with a great product and lousy P.R. After hours on ICQ chat servers, chattering back and forth about our project and everything else, my client casually shot over a URL of her server statistics page. I opened a browser.

"Hey!" I messaged her, "What do all these numbers mean?"

"Dunno," she messaged back, with typical candor. "Haven't had time to learn!"

My fascination with demographics and market analysis took over, and I gamely dug in and tried to make sense of the numbers and charts as they loaded. It had been a long, long time since my last adventures with hard data.

After I had looked for a little while, I hailed my client again. "Says here you had 27,872 unique visits last month. Is that good?"

"Dunno," she messaged back. "I hope it ain't BAD."

I read on, sleepily absorbing the numbers, trying to understand their relevance and meaning.

Then I sat bolt upright in my chair. Quickly, I opened another browser. I did several Alta Vista searches, pulling up several dead links and a few inadequate pages till I found a site that seemed simple enough for a rank beginner like myself. A few moments passed in which I read frenetically, my coldly lustful marketer's heart beating faster and faster.

I reached for the phone. Before my startled client could even mutter a 3 A.M grunt, I interrupted with a whoop of excitement that might have been heard in the next county.

"Ya there? Sorry, but I just HAD to call you in person. You know anything about banner ads?"

"Uh, not really," she said. "Why?"

"Because they're gonna make you RICH!"

Tacky Billboards

We've all seen them, and we've all tried to ignore them. Sometimes gaudy, sometimes bothersome, mostly forgettable and rarely worthy of a second look, much less a click, banner ads are the tacky billboards whizzing by as we merrily race along the information superhighway.

But if your Web site is drawing significant traffic (or even moderately respectable traffic, for niche markets), or if you've discovered high-traffic sites offering a product or service which compliments your OWN product or service, do yourself a favor: consider banner advertising.

Yes, this can be perplexing for the uninitiated. The medium has its own vocabulary, its own intricate pricing structure, and even its own trade group (the Internet Advertising Bureau, or IAB). It requires careful attention and strategizing by both buyer and seller. It's controversial, too: depending on who you talk to, it's either a valuable or even critical addition to an integrated marketing plan, or a complete waste of time.

Sounds like fun, huh?!? Well, before we can strap on our jetpacks and take off for the stratosphere, we'll need to learn the lingo. Let's look at some of the terms used in the wild world of banner advertising.

Banner Advertising: A Glossary, Of Sorts

Banner ads, simply, are graphics that incorporate animation and text, created to attract visitors to Web sites, and generally "hot-linked" to the sites they advertise. They can be sophisticated or simple. There are a number of standard dimensions for ads; however, their physical storage size, in bytes, must be small enough to enable quick loading.

With the right tools, the success of banner ads as direct paths to a Web presence is directly measurable.

An impression occurs when a visitor to a Web site views a page where a banner is displayed. Whenever a page is "served" to a computer screen, measurement software counts the "impression." Impressions are sometimes referred to as exposures, page views, and ad views.

A page view is a measurement of access by visitors to a Web page. Non-document files such as graphics are excluded. Page views and user sessions are the most relevant measurements of traffic.

A user session begins at the moment a single visitor enters a Web site, and ends when they log off, or exit. During a session, the visitor will typically view several web pages.

In a rotation, a specific web page contains a single banner window, in which all scheduled advertising banners are arranged in a loop or series. When a visitor enters the page, the next banner in the queue is displayed. After the last banner in the "loop" is displayed, the rotation begins again with the first banner. Advertisers are given the option of having their ads appear every time a page is loaded, or a lesser percentage of the time.

Methods of Measurement

There are several different methods for measuring the success and actual value of banner ads: two common methods are the tracking of click-through rate (CTR), and the basis of cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM).

Click-through rate (CTR): When page visitors click on a banner ad with a mouse cursor, they are "clicking through" to the advertiser's web site. Each time this happens, it's known as a click-through. Accordingly, click-through rate, or CTR, is the percentage of total click-throughs versus total impressions.

With this formula, an advertiser can measure the effectiveness of banner design and placement. For example, if 100 impressions of a banner are seen by visitors, with 15 resulting click-throughs, the CTR is 15%. Advertisers pay Internet publishers based on the number of clicks a specific ad banner gets.

Cost per thousand impressions (CPM): With this pricing method, statistics are logged for total exposures per billing cycle, and advertisers are charged either for estimated or actual impressions. Advertisers are often given access to their ad's statistics on Web-based reports.

Now, that wasn't too difficult, was it? Please join me next month as we put these new terms to use! We'll explore banner advertising from a seller's perspective, and take a look at an actual case history. Don't forget the freeze-dried ice cream!

Author's note: This column was intended to be the first part of a two-installment column. However, before I wrote the second part, Hawai`i's Internet Gazette ceased publication. After a great deal of consideration, I made the decision to discontinue writing this column --- at least for now. Mahalo nui loa, gentle reader, and thanks for joining me on my joyrides!

Caroline Wright, of WRIGHT FOR YOU Word Services, is a freelance writer. A former resident of Hawaii, she now lives in rural South Carolina. Feel free to e-mail your comments to Caroline at gazette@wrightforyou.com.