Banners

Banners have existed for a long, long time, since the Roman Empire, from where the word banner originally comes from. Back then, banners were another word for a flag, but in today's world a banner can be not only a flag, but any piece of cloth with a slogan, message or a logo. And when speaking of online uses, banners have evolved to a whole different usage - banner ads.

Banner ads

Banner ads are the first form of Internet advertising. The first banner ad dates back to 1992, when the first graphical web browser was released. Banner ads in their simplest form represent a still image, which, just like a regular add, informs the visitor of services and products offered by the company, owner of the ad. With time, banner ads have evolved a lot and today, while the still banner ads represent a major part of the ads out there, there are a lot of other types as well.

In the beginning, an advertising company would pay the website, which was displaying the banner ad, 5 to 10 cents per a click. Today, the payment varies from payments based on impressions (visits to the web page showing the banner) to payments based on the clicks made on the banner.

Pop-up banners

Banners were originally meant to attract attention. This is why, after the simple, still banners proved successful, the pop-up banners were created.

Pop-up banners will appear as a new window, while you are browsing a website. This new window will appear on top of the current window you are viewing. This approach, however, was easy to detect and very soon there were a lot of software solutions, which could block all the pop-ups from a certain website.

The pop-up ads usually use a small Java script to appear as a new window, which makes them easily discoverable. However, modern pop-up ads use Flash instead of a Java script, which makes them hidden until they appear.

Today, a lot of websites use pop-ups not for banners, but for showing the visitor additional information, images, music or form submission. A general pop-up filter will block all of these pop-ups.

Pop-under banners

The pop-under banners are very similar to the pop-up banners. However, instead of popping up on top of the current window, they pop under it, making them harder to detect if you are not using a pop-up blocker. The pop-under ad is also the first banner ad type to receive a patent.

Hover-ad banners

Hover-ad banners are a brand new type of banners, which also will appear on top of the window you are currently viewing but, unlike the regular pop-up, they will have to be closed, before you can continue browsing. Hover-ad banners represent an integral part of a web page's HTML code and can't be detected by the regular pop-up banner detectors.

Animated banners

Animated banners are a very good way of advertising and are better than the regular, still banners. An animated banner will always attract attention to itself, since the human eye is attracted to movement. Banner ads usually are displayed just like the regular, still ads, and have the same content with little animation. They are most often in GIF file format.

Banner sizes

Banners come in different shapes and sizes. There are several standard types of banner sizes: