I’m a visual guy and that’s why I like Instagram, SlideShare, Snapchat and believe in content such as infographics, presentations, .Gif’s and also banner ads. Yes, my friends, I believe in banner ads.
Because like I told you before, the banner ad is still alive and working and it won’t die for the next 10 – 20 or even 30 years. And you want to know why? Because everything around us is a banner ad.
Today a banner ad is more than a display that’s on the website of your favorite online newspaper and you click on. A banner as is a Facebook ad or even a Facebook picture that comes from a brand. A banner ad is an Instagram ad you will see in your news feed or a picture you just saw on Snapchat.
Back in the day when a brand wanted to promote its product or service you didn’t have as many options. You only had a website (if you even had that) and used adwords and Google Display to let the audience know about your brand, or promotion.
But today the only thing changed is the platform, because the format remains the same – an actionable image.
Visuals are today the key success factor to attract new customers and also to know them better.
Think about this, if the human brain can process images in as little as 13 milliseconds (exactly, milliseconds) why don’t brands use visuals in their communication strategy more often?
But there are also brands that are doing a great job.
For example, here is what Netflix has learned about how their users respond to images. They conducted a study early in 2014 and found out what an important role a visual can play in their user decision.
They knew that they only have 90 seconds to capture a member’s attention. So they found out artwork was not only the biggest influencer to user’s decision to watch a movie or series, but it also constituted over 82% of their focus while watching Netflix.
They found out that they have so little time to capture the member’s attention and how much impact an image has on a member that wants to consume content from their platform.
In their study you can find out the 4 things that you can consider in your next visual strategy:
1. People react better to an emotional image – and we point this out because we found out in our research, at Bannersnack, that banner ads including a person who expresses an emotional reaction will always attract more clicks.
2. Bad guys convert better than good guys – I bet you didn’t thought about this. Well, the guys from Netflix found out that their members responds to villainous characters better.
3. Every story’s got its own audience – Even if you have a great story and you want everybody to know about it, you need t consider a situation when you need to design the story for a specific language, to a specific target. This is why we always tell our users and community to think about their audience first when they design their banner ads.
4. The power of number 3 – Did you know that the brain finds it relatively easy to grasp 3s – elements, colours and fonts. Know if you push that marginally up to four or five, the brain gets confused about where to look and what to do.
So Netflix just outlined this strategy once again and found that images that incorporate more than 3 elements have recorded a decrease in user engagement.
And even if these studies are focused on movies, they also offer an important lessons on how to use visual marketing to generate better engagement.
Once again, here is the power of visuals and why they are important in your brand communication.
So don’t let it in the hands of an amateur or make it just because you heard somewhere that it’s a good strategy.
© Volodymyr Melnyk | Dreamstime.com
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