Web Banner Advertising and Search Engine Advertising are two very different online advertising models.

Search engine advertising (commonly referred to as pay per click advertising) provides a very simple method of presentation, in as much as your advertisement is restricted to text only and a limit is placed on the maximum number of characters that can be used per line. The maximum number of lines that can be used in your advertisement is also restricted.

Search Engine Advertising offers only a limited amount of text to promote your product or service.

Google for example, in addition to displaying your URL, will only allow you to display 3 lines of text for your advertisement. The first line displays the title of your advertisement and is restricted to a maximum of 25 characters. This is followed by two lines of description, each restricted to a maximum of 35 characters per line. Clearly this restricts the amount of information that can be used to promote your product and you will therefore need to consider the content of your advertisement very carefully.

This type of pay per click advertising will only allow you to promote a very limited number of sales benefits and offers only limited value, in terms of promoting your product or service. If the criteria for measuring the success of your online advertising includes, both brand awareness and return on investment, then internet banner advertising offers a more flexible solution.

Web Banner Advertising enables you to use media rich content in your advertisements.

Internet banner advertising campaigns will enable you to use media rich, banner display advertisements. Web banner advertising design can include your logo, your corporate colours, flash animation and even video. Banner advertising campaigns allow you to promote your brand image in a similar way to offline advertising, except that the creative content can be even more dynamic and interesting.

Web Banner Advertising campaigns can include a wide range of different banner shapes and sizes.

Most internet banner advertising networks will accept a wide range of different sizes and shapes of web banners and there are no restrictions on the amount of words or characters that can be used in your advertisement.

The most common web banner sizes used for internet banner advertising campaigns are as follows:

• Banners (468×60 pixels)
• Leaderboards (728×90 pixels)
• Skyscrapers (120×600 pixels)
• Rectangles (300×250 pixels)

Search engine advertising is an established method of internet advertising, as you only incur a cost when a customer clicks on your advertisement and visits your website. However, what is not so well known is that web banner advertising can also be purchased on the same basis. The average cost per click for banner advertising campaigns compares favorably to pay per click advertising.

Depending on the type of product or service you wish to promote, you may find that internet banner advertising offers a considerably cheaper alternative.