Banner Blindness and attempts to maximize add space.

[LiveCasinoPartners]

Recently, I've been re-evaluating how I serve banners and how my banner (or text call to actions) relates to conversions. I don't have that much time to dedicate to my affiliate site, but recently I realized that most of my banners were for a handful of properties. If a potential player hasn't clicked on the banners they see then what benefit am I giving them (or myself) by serving the same banner time and time again?

So the question is how can I maximize the possibility of converting a player based on their preferences and reduce "banner blindness". In a perfect world we would have metrics for the internet browser in real time and serve them the most relevant banners based on these metrics. Unfortunately, we don't know the sex, age, or income of the internet browser.

(1) Geo targeting exclusion: We can easily find the geographic location. That's at least a start. If the player is from the US or France, then we don't want to serve banners that do not allow these players. It doesn't make sense. So, based on this I'm making a banner system that serves banners based on geographic regions. Even though LiveCasinoPartners does offer geo targeting, the banners are still served based on the creatives selected. I'm taking a more "exclusion" rule set for these. It makes more sense to exclude banners who do not operate in a certain region. US players will not be served banners for non-US properties. You can learn to find the two letter designator via http://www.maxmind.com. They have example codes. It's taken about an hour for me to implement this. At best, I'm an intermediate php coder.

You could take this a step further by cross referencing the exact location of the internet browser with third party demographics. I'm not sure it would be worth it for me, but an affiliate with tons of traffic could benefit from delivering "high roller" promotions vs. free deposit bonus hunter promotions for players in affluent areas.

(2) Previous clicks on banners served. This is pretty cool and I think worth my time in implementing. The idea is to make an internal redirect for the properties you promotes. Before you hand off the player to your affiliate link, write a cookie with the designator for the brand you are sending the player to. So, you can use this information when you serve banners. Again, exclude the banners that your player has already visited. I've also set a preference order for properties. I could also make a rule set to calculate a maximum number of impressions before I switch up banners.

I'm halfway done with this part. I'm not sure what rule sets I will end up with. I think I'm going to have to test different strategies and go from there.

Has anyone else addressed these issues? How do you deal with "banner blindness"? I realize that these measures may only be marginally effective. One extra satisfied player will make it worth while.

[best.hands]

Reading the whole content makes me so amazed with the way google addressed the problem. Now, it makes me wanna simulate how Google Adsense system works on analyzing the page to come up with so relevant text ads and flickering banner images, not to mention that the system sometimes seemingly knows the ad displayed is what you really want - 0% banner blindness. It's not that what you are trying to come up? If so, then I guess the third part is to detect which page the player is on your site and what properties the page have, analyze them and display a relevant ad. The player wouldn't be on that page without a purpose and if not he's looking for something relevant.

Just really my wild assertion. It really is a great idea you have. Putting flashy banners in the player's face is not enough, it should always answer "What's in it for me?" More power to you Adrian.

[webber286]

By tracking click thrus, we have noticed that banner ads get about 2% click-thru where natural links get about 45% click through, so banner blindness is a definite concern. The logical approach seems to be figuring out how to integrate banners into a website that look less like banners and more like a part of your website. We have some plans for this, but have yet to implement anything.

[graham]

I think banners are becoming so outdated that affiliate programs should spend less time on them and more time coming up with other types of cool tools that utilize things like RSS feeds (ie. jackpot tickers, embedable games, winning player streams, etc.), instead of focussing on banners. I would suspect these tools would give you a much better CTR than any banner.