Banner ads have been around since the dawn of the internet. A poorly designed banner ad annoys many users, but it has been around for a long time. But 30 years later, businesses still have to pay to put them on websites and ad carousels, so they have to work if done right. Right?
Banner ads, especially animated ads, are being used more than ever for social media profiles and social ads as marketers realize the power of video in attracting attention. Today’s banner ads are well-designed and very effective. But for designers, they present a huge challenge, so how do we generate banners quickly? Let’s move on to the discussion:
Coding banner ads is difficult and expensive
Banner ads, especially animated ads, are notoriously difficult to code in HTML5. Sure, you can create animated banners in Flash, but Apple’s iOS doesn’t support them, and Adobe says they’ll turn Flash off completely in 2020.
GIFs are another possible solution, but they often have poor resolution, and most web users associate GIFs with memes and humor rather than serious products. So you’re left with HTML5.
Writing HTML5 ads – especially animated ads – requires expertise, which is expensive. Good programmers know their value, and finding someone you can trust can be an impossible task. Freelancing platforms may seem like the obvious place to start, but competent programmers will soon move away from third-party websites.
How to Generate Banners Quickly with Bannersnack? Luckily, this is the SaaS era, and designers can now use apps like Bannersnack with a drag-and-drop interface, allowing you to design banner ads quickly and efficiently.
What does Bannersnack do?
Bannersnack is an online app that helps you design fully responsive banner ads for websites and social media platforms – without any coding or design skills. The creators of Bannersnack have come up with all the hardcoded stuff, so you just log in, choose your size, add your image, choose colors and fonts, and get creative. Image credit: Bannersnack
Let’s take a quick look at the Bannersnack platform and see what it can do.
Choose your size
Bannersnack quickly generates banner instances: start with custom sizes and orientations (vertical, horizontal, and square), or choose a preset size. You can even opt for Facebook ads or Instagram posts: Image source: Bannersnack
Design your ad
How do I generate a banner quickly? You can design from scratch or use an existing Bannersnack template. Bannersnack offers static or animated designs in its template library, so you can get started even if you don’t have a design idea. Image credit: Bannersnack
Add images and text
How to Generate Banners Quickly with Bannersnack? Customize your design with just a few clicks. If you can use Mailchimp or other SaaS marketing tools, you can use Bannersnack. Edit titles, text, buttons, backgrounds, add your own logo and images, and change design nuances like line height and transparency. You can create beautifully designed banners that perfectly match your existing brand standards and colors. Image credit: Bannersnack
Animate with ease
Animated ads are known to be more engaging and drive action better than static ads. Readers are more likely to react to the video and are more likely to visit the publisher’s page or website than non-animated content. Image source: Impactbnd.com
But animation is notoriously tricky. Bannersnack manages to overcome this obstacle – using HTML5 animations, including fade-in, slide-in, and bounce. These aren’t full video ads, but they’ll still grab the user’s eye and boost your engagement on a busy web page. They have the added advantage of being fast loading – which is essential for preventing mobile users from scrolling before the ads load.
Bannersnack’s HTML5 editor has an intuitive and user-friendly interface and slide management system that makes animation simple. Try using one of the 32 pre-made animation presets to animate any part of your ad: Screenshot Source
Or, create custom animations and adjust things like duration, delay, and transitions.
Make a full set of banners in a variety of sizes and shapes
Bannersnack Quickly Generate Banner Instances: Once you’re done with your layout, try using Bannersnack’s smart resize option. You can create more than 30 banner ads in minutes, all based on the same design, so you can use the same ads on your clients’ websites, campaigns, and social media platforms. (Check out this YouTube video.) Image courtesy of Bannersnack
If you want, you can adjust the layout of individual banners by changing the transition timeline or rearranging specific layers, but this is usually not necessary due to Bannersnack’s intuitive resizing feature. New Smart Adjustment feature: Screenshot Source
The YouTube clip pictured above will walk you through the process of creating a set of square, horizontal, and vertical banners from a basic design.
Collaborate with ease
How do I generate a banner quickly? There’s nothing more time-wasting than sending proof of design for comments and markup. Instead of downloading files and emailing approvals, use Bannersnack’s online collaboration interface. Your team can view ads, leave comments and suggestions, and even mark ads as approved – all within the system.
You can organize all your designs by setting up your own folders and workspaces.
Exit and go
How to Generate Banners Quickly with Bannersnack? Once everyone is happy with the ad, just choose the format you want and export it. Your banner is ready to embed. You can choose between JPG, PNG, GIF, or HTML5 — compatible with all major display advertising platforms, including Google Ads, ReTargeter, and more.
For HTML ads, you can download them as HTML5 or AMP HTML (Google’s preferred safe and fast download format).
Pro tip: Bannersnack can even help you create Facebook video ads that have been shown to attract more visitors and increase conversions than static ads.
When you subscribe to Pro or Plus Bannersnack, you can download your ads in MP4 format as required by Facebook.
What will it cost me?
You can test Bannersnack for free, but to get the most out of the tool (including banner sets, AMP HTML, and MP4 downloads), you’ll need a Pro or Plus subscription. While this sounds scary, the price is surprisingly affordable. When you consider how much time you can save by hiring a coder or getting the job done yourself, you’ll find that it’s worth the price on the first project you create. Screenshot source
Pro tips for designing banner ads
Now that you have the tools to create banner ads, let us prepare some pro tips for you to get the most out of your ad investment.
Retargeting
Banner ads often get a bad reputation because of their low response rate. That’s true, but it’s true for any medium, from TV commercials to billboards. It depends on the quality of the creative, as well as the effectiveness of the targeting and retargeting of the ad.
Retargeting banners give you a second chance to influence your purchase decision. The audience is seeing your marketing graphics for the second or third time. Another factor is that web users see your ads again because they’re interested in your services.
Retargeting ads have a click-through rate ten times higher than first-time impression ads. Screenshot source
Digital Information World has some great ideas to help you reposition yourself like a pro.
Overcome advertising blind spots
Bannersnack Quickly Generate Banner Instance Tip: Readers are becoming more and more adept at ignoring display ads. Jeff Bullas offers some useful tips to help you overcome ad blind spots:
- Place your ads in unusual locations
- Make your ads relevant to your audience
- Use unique colors, formats, and sizes
- Use fewer ads to optimize for mobile users
- Make your ads a part of your design
Following this logic, you’ll get better ad engagement when:
- You are selective about who you show
- You use custom sizes and colors that contrast with your main site colors (without conflicting with them)
- Place your banner where users are forced to see it, such as in the middle of a blog post
Test, test, test
How to Generate Banners Quickly with Bannersnack? Split testing, multivariate testing, or A/B testing: Whatever you call it, testing your ads is key to improving their performance.
ConversionXL says you need a lot of traffic (over 100,000 unique visitors per month) before multivariate testing makes sense. Most businesses should instead conduct simple A/B testing, which is testing two variations of one ad, sending half of the visitors to one ad and the other half to the second.
Designing banner ads and being able to modify them quickly is key to split testing; Using a service like Bannersnack can be cost-effective for you.
You can change anything in split testing. Start with the big variables: transition types, static vs. animation, fonts, colors, CTA colors, and images. Once your A/B results are similar and you think you’ve found the best ad in terms of the main variables, test less obvious variables – such as transition time, image placement, font size, and slight color changes.
Additionally, be sure to use this testing tool to check if your A/B results are random or statistically significant. Image source: VWO
Once you’re satisfied that one of the ads is performing better than the other, you can drop the ones that are performing less. With continuous testing, you’ll have even a small improvement in your CTR.
Be wary of analytics
Your online advertising platform may include analytics. Banner ad automation platforms certainly include them, as well as the ability to view interactive heatmaps and understand which ads work best for you.
Take a look at the analytics interface provided by your developer or ad platform and look for user behavior patterns to help influence your next ad design and copy.
Banners can be powerful…… If you do it right
To really take advantage of your banner ads, you need to stand out in a good way. Hit customers by entertaining or inspiring them in some way, rather than by pitching.
How do I generate a banner quickly? Banner generation apps like Bannersnack allow you to quickly design banners and make changes easily so that you can combine modified ads with original ads to try and increase ROI and really engage customers.
Try it yourself. See the results you’ve achieved with banners you’ve designed from scratch and compare them to what you’ve achieved with a professional banner creator. See if you or the customer can see any difference – because there is no doubt that their customer will.
