No matter how rapidly digital marketing evolves and changes, some of its tools remain timeless, and advertising banners are one of them. Most likely, you’ve seen them everywhere: at the top of a news site, tucked between blog content, or alongside your favorite shopping page.
In this article, you’ll discover what exactly ad banners are and why they are still such a valuable marketing tool in 2025. Read on!
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What exactly is an advertisement banner?
An advertisement banner (often just called a banner ad) is a graphic image or interactive media that is displayed on a website or app to promote a product, service, or brand. It’s a common form of online advertising, which is still very relevant in 2025, as ad spending in this market worldwide is forecasted to reach $1.16 trillion this year.
Web ad banners are usually rectangular and include images, text, and sometimes animations or videos. Its sizes vary depending on where a banner can be placed. For instance, banners displayed at the top of a page are often 728×90 pixels in size. Rectangular banners placed in sidebars or between content are often 300×250 pixels, while vertical ads for the same sidebars can be 160×600 pixels.
How can your business benefit from launching advertising banners?
If advertising banners are created and placed strategically, they can benefit businesses in several impactful ways. Here’s how they do that.
By increasing visibility and brand awareness
Banners for advertisement put your brand in front of new audiences on websites they have already visited. Even if users don’t click on it, just seeing your name or logo online often helps build recognition over time.
By generating traffic
Clicking a banner takes users directly to your website, landing page, or product. This is one of the quickest ways to boost web traffic, especially during campaigns or product launches. Such ads can generate an average click-through rate (CTR) of 0.35%.
By helping you advertise to the right audience
Most platforms let you target by demographics, location, interests, or behavior. This way you easily reach people who are more likely to engage or buy from your brand.
By promoting time-sensitive items
These can be:
- Sales and discounts;
- Seasonal promotions;
- Webinars or events.
By allowing you to track and optimize results
With banner ads, you can track the number of their views, the CTR, and the number of sales or conversions. This data can be later used to further optimize your marketing campaigns and improve return on investment (ROI).
How to efficiently generate strong banner ideas for your business
To create an appealing banner that is relevant to your target audience, you need to do more than buy a high-quality image online and come up with a catchy text. Here’s how you can generate banner ideas that will work for your brand.
Determine your goal
The first thing you need to do is understand which desired action you want to encourage with the help of your ad. This can be visiting your website, buying a product, signing up for something, or simply learning about your brand. The goal defines everything else.
Research your audience
Most likely, you already did this when building a marketing strategy and purchasing images for your content. However, if you haven’t done it or want to advertise to a specific, more narrow part of your audience, you need to do some research once again. Think about the people you target, their interests, the problems that your product or service can solve for them, and the visuals and texts that can efficiently grab their attention.
Make your banner clear yet impactful
One important rule of ad banner design is not to overload it. A good banner should include a hook (short and bold headline), a benefit or value proposition, and a call to action (CTA).
Keep the design simple and relevant to your branding
You can do this by using your brand colors and logo and obtaining high-quality images or illustrations. You also need to ensure that your banner is easy to read at a glance (especially on mobile) and that the CTA button stands out.
Test and optimise
A good practice is to create a few variations of the same banner that differ by visuals, headlines, and CTAs, and then test them. See which ones the audience prefers. This will offer you valuable insights and will help you improve your advertising strategy quickly.
To sum up
Advertising banners can be accessible and effective tools in your digital marketing toolkit when designed strategically. They can boost your visibility, drive high-quality traffic, and increase sales while giving you measurable data to refine your campaigns. Understanding your goals, knowing your audience, and keeping your designs clear and compelling will allow you to create banners that not only look great but also perform well.
