Banner ads. The two words are enough to send a chill down any advertiser’s spine and this year marks its 20th anniversary. Widely disliked and scarcely clicked the banner ad is typically regarded as annoying and invasive. With a futile click-rate of 0.05% in Australia last year, banners are ineffective and thanks to ad-blockers many of them won’t even be seen. But at their inception, on HotWired in 1994, they were actually pretty cool.
The first banner ad was for AT&T and was displayed on 27 October on HotWired, the online version of Wired. At the time there were only about 30 million people on the Internet and in order to keep information on the net free, advertising was the way forward. The banner ad was a revelation, a new way of thinking.
The AT&T banner ad ran alongside various others but whether due to its popularity or because its materials were the first to reach the Wired office it has been credited as “the first”.
In comparison to today’s CTR, the AT&T ad was a resounding success with a click rate of 44%. The ad featured no sign of AT&T branding, rather it possessed an alluring and rather prophetic line to entice clicks, “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.” Whether the click rate on the ad is attributed to a good design or because there just wasn’t much to do on the internet back then is to be debated.
Fast forward to today and a lot has happened since 1994, the internet is saturated with banner ads. Nearly every website you visit will have a banner ad of some sort, they have become a part of the furniture. Their sucess is miniscule, with greater return and better click through rates experienced through mobile, native and social, traditional ad revenues are experiencing a slow decline. As well as the low click rates, recent ComScore research revealed that most people who do click on banner ads only do so by mistake and with that said, the banner ad seeing its 30th birthday is looking unlikely.
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Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.