MedBanner Banner Exchange Member Newsletter Vol 1 Issue 1
Double Your Click-Through Rate by Testing Different Banners
The MedBanner Exchange program was designed to help medical sites attract target audiences by promoting them on other medical sites for free.
By uploading more ads you can significantly increase the medical professional or healthcare consumer traffic to your site from MedBanner.
MedBanner's Banner Exchange Program advertises your site to the visitors of hundreds of medical sites at no cost to you. The two benefits that your site receives are:
- Increased brand awareness among your target audience
- New qualified traffic and new customers for your site
In order to generate more traffic, you have to increase the number of people clicking on your banner ads. To achieve that you can design many different banners and then test them to determine the best performing ones.
To determine the success of your ad, you can use a measure called Click-Through Rate (CTR) - a number that tells what percentage of times people actually clicked the ad that was displayed on pages they viewed. The CTR is simply a ratio of the number of clicks to the number of ad displays (impressions).
MedBanner Lets You Chart the Performance of Different Banners
- And Select Those that Perform Best
Through its online reports, MedBanner informs you of the Click-Through Rate for each of your different banners, which allows you to compare their performance. If you upload several banners, you will be able to see which of them generate better Click-Through Rates. Then you can optimize your advertising. You can disable banners that don't produce a good click-through rate and leave the best-performing banners in the rotation.
A Case Study Testing Effectiveness of Different Banners
Below are the actual reports for a member of the Banner Exchange. You can see how this member was able to nearly triple the Click-Through Rate by uploading many banners:
At first only two banners were uploaded and the results were:
| Size | Description | Displays | Clicks | CTR% |
| 468x60 | Banner001 | 5660 | 30 | 0.53 |
| Banner002 | 6053 | 19 | 0.31 | |
| Subtotals for 468x60: | 11713 | 49 | 0.42 | |
| Total: | 11713 | 49 | 0.42 | |
Then 20 more banners were uploaded and the results were:
| Size | Description | Displays | Clicks | CTR% |
| 468x60 | Banner005 | 9972 | 152 | 1.52 |
| Banner012 | 7920 | 112 | 1.41 | |
| Banner015 | 7593 | 106 | 1.40 | |
| Banner007 | 8961 | 119 | 1.33 | |
| Banner013 | 8018 | 102 | 1.27 | |
| Banner019 | 7216 | 90 | 1.25 | |
| Banner021 | 7003 | 81 | 1.16 | |
| Banner017 | 7489 | 76 | 1.01 | |
| Banner020 | 7102 | 62 | 0.87 | |
| Banner006 | 8854 | 70 | 0.79 | |
| Banner001 | 14983 | 78 | 0.52 | |
| Banner014 | 7834 | 39 | 0.50 | |
| Banner010 | 8104 | 38 | 0.47 | |
| Banner003 | 10047 | 46 | 0.46 | |
| Banner008 | 8549 | 32 | 0.37 | |
| Banner018 | 7043 | 24 | 0.34 | |
| Banner002 | 19661 | 65 | 0.33 | |
| Banner011 | 8050 | 27 | 0.34 | |
| Banner004 | 9845 | 23 | 0.23 | |
| Banner022 | 6958 | 13 | 0.19 | |
| Banner016 | 7509 | 14 | 0.19 | |
| Banner009 | 8373 | 13 | 0.16 | |
| Subtotals for 468x60: | 197084 | 1382 | 0.70 | |
| Total: | 197084 | 1382 | 0.70 | |
The final step was to keep only the best performing banners:
| Size | Description | Displays | Clicks | CTR% |
| 468x60 | Banner005 | 16036 | 242 | 1.51 | Banner012 | 13972 | 203 | 1.45 | Banner015 | 14197 | 197 | 1.39 | Banner007 | 15224 | 196 | 1.29 | Banner019 | 13255 | 170 | 1.28 | Banner013 | 13713 | 165 | 1.20 | Banner021 | 12991 | 144 | 1.11 | Banner017 | 13879 | 151 | 1.09 | Banner006 | 15968 | 112 | 0.70 | Banner020 | 13050 | 85 | 0.65 |
| Subtotals for 468x60: | 142285 | 1665 | 1.17 | |
| Total: | 142285 | 1665 | 1.17 | |
This member managed to nearly triple the Click-Through Rate, from .42% to 1.17%. The member's site now receives nearly three times as much traffic a day.
The industry average CTR for 468x60 banners is 0.4% - compared to 1.17% for this member. The key is testing and then using those that were best.
How long do you need to keep a new banner in the rotation to be able to determine its performance? With too small of a sample, you might prematurely discard a banner, which could produce a good result over a longer period of time. A simple rule of thumb that we use is that a sample of either 8,000 impressions or 40 clicks is per banner enough.
While most exchange members have never uploaded more than four banners, others take full advantage of the Banner Exchange program. Some get amazing results such as 1.17% CTR. The above-described case produced dramatic improvement, and there is no guarantee that all of you will achieve these results. However, we can assure that you will significantly increase your CTR by following this example.
We invite you to experiment with your banners. The range of the click-through rates on different banners can be very high, and it is nearly impossible to predict which banner will give you best results. All the more important to test many banners.
Banner Exchange Support Team
© 2004 MedBanner, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
