Who Makes Banner Ads?

Pretty much anybody with computer knowledge can learn how to make a very basic banner ad. To code the banner, simply combine the HTML tag for a link with the HTML tag for an image. You can create the necessary graphics using a simple computer art program, like Paint Shop Pro, which you can download from this site.

To understand the coding involved, let's look at an example. Here is a basic static banner ad for How Stuff Works:

Its code looks like this:

The link component of the code is:

___________

As you can see, the information in quotes is the URL for the How Stuff Works home page. If you were writing a text link, you would simply write something like "How Stuff Works" in the blank space, and a site visitor could click on those words to bring up the HSW home page. To make a banner link, you do pretty much the same thing, except instead of text, you put a tag for a graphic in the empty space. The graphic tag component of the code is:

In this case, the tag simply consists of the URL location of the graphic image; the full URL would be "http://www.howstuffworks.com/gif/banner-ad-static.gif" (go to this URL and you will see the graphic), but we only need to put the last part of the URL here, since we are already within "http://www.howstuffworks.com." This tells a visitor's browser to load the image posted at that particular URL. The visitor can then click anywhere on the entire image to visit the How Stuff Works home page. For more information on how to code image and hyperlink tags, check out the How Stuff Works article, How Web Pages Work.

Basic, static banner ads are so simple you can make a few for your site in an afternoon, and animated GIF banner ads aren't much more complicated. On the other end of the spectrum are complicated rich media ads. Ads with elaborate animation or user interactivity require much more extensive programming ability.

Amateur banner ads often work fine, but with so many ads competing for viewer attention, many Web sites need the help of professional ad designers. Good advertising agencies and professional designers not only bring their programming skills to banner ad creation, but also their creativity and extensive marketing experience. They work to match a banner ad campaign with the advertiser's product or service, and to make innovative, attention-getting graphic content. There are many ad agencies and free-lance banner ad designers serving Web sites today, and they have a wide range of experience, ability and success. They also have a wide range of fees: You can get a professional banner ad for $50 or you can spend upwards of $1,000.

There are also Web sites that offer free banner ad creation. They either provide you with all the components you need to create your own banner ad, such as backgrounds and fonts, or they create a banner ad for you. These designers and companies do this for a number of reasons. Some simply make money from advertising on their sites, some offer free banner creation in exchange for their customers posting client banner ads on the customer's site and a few designers simply create banners as a hobby.

Some popular free banner design sites are:

­ Like most forms of advertising, banner ads vary considerably in quality because their creators vary a great deal in ability and experience. The range is even greater with banner ads than with most other forms, however, because it is so easy and inexpensive to create and post banners.