If you surf around the net for a couple of minutes, chances are you will probably have seen some really great banners with high quality and imaginative concepts, basically interactive masterpieces.

That is, if you stopped what you were doing and focused on the banner for ten seconds. However, when was the last time you waited for a banner to get to the point?

Let's take a step back and remind ourselves of what the goal of most banners are. The majority of all banners' job is to take the consumer from point A, the site they happen to be on, to point B, which is either a landing page or a web site. So what is the best way to achieve this goal?

There are two points of reference I often use when talking about banner production.

The first is a study done by MSN, later backed up by a similar study done by SvD in 2009. In these eye movement studies they tracked how the eye of the consumer moved when visiting different sites.

One of their findings was that 79 procent of the time the average banner only receives two seconds of attention by the consumer, in spite of the fact it's visible for up to 18 seconds.

The second point of reference comes from the ad networks.

They are the ultimate experts at driving consumer traffic. They handle billions of impressions every month with hundreds of clients advertising at the same time. With all that data at hand, they know exactly what type of creative executions that work and don't work, often before the campaign starts.

The three simple truths are 1) show your logo at all times, 2) concentrate on one message per banner and 3) use a distinct call-to-action.

So what does this mean for the beautiful banners out there?

If it takes more than two seconds to see what the offer or message is 79 procent are probably going to miss it and not click on it.

If your ad agency has to explain the banner it will probably fail. If it has more than two frames it will probably exceed the time-limit. If the banner reminds you of a TV spot send it back. If your banner doesn’t have a clear call to action like a well designed button that says “click here” be prepared to loose more clicks on those valuable media dollars you are spending.

Granted, there are banners whose job it is to deliver brand awareness and not a click-through, with formats like the take-over, interstitial or pre-expandable banner, but then we are not talking about driving traffic to your site in the most effective way.

Remember, set a goal for the campaign and produce banners accordingly. If you find yourself saying you want to drive traffic to your site then your banner's main function is moving someone from A to B.

Av: Christian Ullmark, digital planner på Starcom