HOW TO MAKE A BANNER

Banner ads may have been around for more than two and a half decades, but they’ve evolved a lot over that time. So with all of the new functionality coming to banners via HTML5, there’s more reasons than ever to see what results they can get for your business.

But creating and running banner campaigns is a bit different than most types of ads. So, let’s run down everything you need to know to create and run effective banner campaigns.

Start with an idea and a hypothesis

This is critical. Most guides start with the practical knowledge of building the ads, but before you get to that stage you need to understand what you’re trying to achieve. Start with ideas you want to test. Getting conversions for your business is great, but ideally those conversions should be teaching you lessons you can incorporate into your broader marketing and operations. In other words, you want to test a hypothesis, not an ad itself.

Ensure the hypothesis you want to test is something that the data from your banner can actually teach you. Then, collect the data and use a statistical significance calculator to ensure the results of your tests are actually worth taking as real. Then be sure to start by testing big changes, because testing small changes doesn’t always tell you anything very substantial you can use.

Okay, once you’ve got a practical hypothesis you’re ready to test, you can start creating ads.

How to create an HTML5 banner ad manually

There are two basic ways to create an HTML5 banner ad: manually or with an automated builder. The manual method will depend on what tools you want to use. For example, Adobe Animate CC has options for creating HTML5 ads. You could also use Google Web Designer. But in either of these cases, you’ll need to hire an experienced motion designer and possibly banner developer because these tools are simply not user friendly enough for any marketer to pick them up easily.

How to create an HTML5 video ad

Adding video into ads generally starts with creating the video you’d like to insert and saving it as an .mp4 file. Then you can use the <video> tag to specify the source, whether it’s autoplayed, looped, muted, etc. The challenge again is that this requires some coding knowledge to avoid mistakes as well as understanding of best practices, so your ads will not get rejected by the ad servers you have chosen for trafficking. That’s why for all types of HTML5 banner ads, we recommend building them using a tool specifically designed for that job.

How to create banner ads in a builder

When you’re creating multiple versions of many ads and updating them regularly (or even doing something similar) manually making those changes would be a full time job. So instead of hiring additional resources, try using StreamEye. There, you can create a library of images and videos and automatically use them to generate dozens of unique banners for all of your campaigns. Hence you will not be reliant on in-house designers or an agency to consistently support your banner production. You can do it yourself making your marketing team so much more self-sufficient.

Then, when you want to update them, you can automate the process to ensure your ads always display the latest offers or other information. All of these features mean creating compelling and dynamic banners is simple. Here is a very quick walkthrough of Streameye's user friendly interface.

Banner ad examples to get you inspired

If you’ve gotten this far but are still feeling stuck, check out some inspiring HTML5 banner examples which show just how all of the powerful features this format offers can transform into compelling ads which perform well.

Start creating effective banner ads the easy way

If you’re ready to get started creating ads and want to skip all of the hassle of doing it manually, try StreamEye. It’s intuitive building and management tools mean you can spend fewer resources on designers and marketers and instead put those resources into the ads themselves. Start today and see why this new generation of compelling HTML5 ads are so compelling.