When you are new in the world of online advertising, you come across many challenges such as determining your banner advertising cost or how much you should spend on a particular banner ad campaign.
Generally, there is so much online advertising information you need to know such as the type of ad campaigns, ad formats, setting your maximum bid rate, optimizing your ad quality score, and various performance metrics used to evaluate the value of your ad campaigns.
Apart from all these, banner ads, in particular, are one of the most popular ad formats still used by millions across the world which still raised questions like…
“How much does it cost to run a banner ad?”
In this post, we’ll be taking an in-depth look at banner advertising costs on various platforms and discuss all the factors that influence those costs and how you can lower your advertising cost while increasing your ad performance and ROI.
To start with, there is no specific fixed ad cost for either banner ads or search ads. It all depends on your budget and the audience size you want to reach.
Ad cost varies based on several factors such as industry, keywords location, target audience, your maximum bid rate, and most importantly your quality score in the case of Google Adwords (Google Ads) and relevant score for Facebook and Instagram Ads.
Looking at the above-average cost of advertising on Google search networks and Google display networks. Average Cost Per Click (CPC) The average CPC in Google Ads across all industries is $2.32 on the search network while on the Google Display Network $0.58 only.
This could easily help you understand your banner advertising cost.
To add to the above, here is a summary of the average cost of ads on Google Ads (Adwords), the Cost of Instagram ads, the Cost of Bing ads, and approximately how much small businesses spend on Ads per month according to WordStream
Knowing the average cost of advertising on Google display networks is not the end of your quest to understand your cost of advertising but rather the beginning.
Going in-depth will lead you to a better understanding of the actual amount you should budget for your banner ad campaign. So let’s look at how much your banner ad will actually cost.
How much does banner advertising cost?
Many factors play a pivotal role in your banner advertising cost. The most important of these all is your ad quality score and your maximum bid rate. On top of these, factors that influence your quality score matter a lot too such as Click-through rate (CTR%), average time on site, your landing page, User experience (UX) etc.
Also, when it comes to banner ads specifically, placement is a factor too. This means where your banner ads will appear on the publisher’s site also determine how much you be charged.
If you choose to place your ads on the top of the publisher’s sites, it might cost you more than placing your banner ads in the middle of the button of the site.
Placement on Google display networks (GDN) such as YouTube could influence your banner ad cost depending on placement location and time you choose to show your banner ads.
These are the factors that play a major role in determining the cost of your banner ad campaign. Now let’s look at how to actually calculate your banner ad campaign cost.
Calculating the cost of your banner ad campaign
This is how you know approximately how much your campaign is going to cost you.
First, you figure out how many converting customers you want to get. You can figure out this based on your advertising budget and by looking at the approximate cost per click (CPC) of a display ad campaign.
For example, if you have $5,000 and the average CPC for Google display networks is $0.58. You should divide your $5,000 ad budget by the average CPC of $0.58 which will give you approximately 8,621 clicks.
This could be done when estimating your banner advertising cost as well.
That’s the simplest way to determine how far your banner ad campaign budget can go. However, it much more to it. This is because the actual cost per click may be higher than this example or even less.
The above-mentioned factors influence the actual cost of a banner ad campaign and they are the factors you should really focus on.
To achieve better results, we suggest you set your maximum bid rate at $0.60 for most industries. However, in some cases setting your Maximum CPC at $1 or even more won’t be a bad idea.
You may like to read How to calculate the maximum cost per click
How to improve your Ad quality score or relevant score
Understanding how approximately your banner ads can cost, your next goal should be getting those ads at a cheaper rate which will result in you having a higher ROI on your Banner ad campaigns.
All these can be done by having a high-quality score in Google Ads (Adwords) and a relevant score in the case of Facebook ads and Instagram Ads.
Here are some of the things you should consider doing to get your banner ads cheaper
Fast loading Mobile pages
All advertising platforms, be it Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads or Bing Ads, rate your ads based on user experience which mobile pages are one of the factors.
Making sure your landing pages load fast as possible could improve your relevance score and quality score as well. It is essential you get your pages to load fast on mobile devices.
Ad Consistency
This is basically making sure the content on your landing pages is consistent with what your ads are saying. This gets your visitors to stay on your page longer as they find it relevant.
Make sure your visitors find the right information as fast and as easily as possible. They should also be directed to call-to-action buttons as easily as possible.
Website security
This is very important for e-commerce sites or generally sites that collect users’ information and payments.
Ad Networks care for the security of your visitors and insist you have a secured website that protects your visitor’s data and sensitive information against internet fraud and theft.
This is done by installing an SSL certificate that encrypts your website and ensures users’ data is fully protected.
Retargeting and remarketing
Another must-do is remarketing and retargeting. This has a chance of lowering your banner ad cost dramatically.
When you run your ads for some time, either Google Ads or Facebook and Instagram ads will collect data based on your visitors behavior on your site.
In most cases, 98% of the people that visit your website after the first visit will end up leaving without taking any action.
Remarketing and retargeting in the case of Google Ads and Facebook respectively give you the opportunity to get those visitors to come back to your website and convert.
This is why it is an important tool for successful display advertising and you should use it to your advantage and help lower your banner advertising cost.
Periodic ad campaign optimization
We mentioned this several times and will still do it here. It is very important you update or rather optimize your ad campaigns periodically.
This involves removing what is not working well and focusing on what is working well.
This could be removing some keywords, target location, optimizing your image, or removing demographic groups etc. You will get some recommendations from Google ads to help you with the optimization process.
Conclusion
The cost of display advertising generally is on the rise basically because of higher demand. But in any case, you can always get cheap ads if you optimize your campaigns regularly for higher quality scores and set the right Max bid rate.
Regular optimization and evaluating your results really put you in a good position.
Following these recommendations will help your banner advertising cost affordable and will ensure your campaigns bring in the best advertising return on investment (ROI).
If you have any questions relating to banner advertising, please let us know in the comment section. If you have been running banner ad campaigns, you are also welcome to share your knowledge with the community in the comment section.
