Size Matters – The Illogicality of Affiliate Marketing Banners
Posted under: Does size matter in affiliate marketing? Well yes it does and it matters a heck of a lot when you’re trying to actually give free advertising space on your site to promote a merchant. But size is an issue that is causing problems for many merchants on all networks… mainly because some sizes aren’t that important.
I’ve spent the last few days in search of 125×125 buttons – in one case a bit too specific (duck related buttons) – but apart from that buttons for generic topics like gadgets, broadband and charity.
But blimey! What a palava and what an amazing amount of time wasting!
Some merchants have 125x125s (hooray), but unfortunately many don’t (booooo). Of the merchants that do have this creative size some of is is woefully out of date (booo some more). For example, Seatwave are promoting Rugby World Cup Tickets – just days before the Six Nations kick off and the mighty Wales look to beat everyone again.
Now costs will be cited as a reason for the lack of standard creative or up-to-dateness! As an affiliate I’d hope that networks are reminding merchants to pull their fingers out and on top of updates and that they’re telling clients “please provide these sizes”.
However, there seems to be little or no standardisation from merchant to merchant in terms of sizing plus very poor housekeeping in making sure that things are up to date – and that’s across all networks. It’s all incredibly frustrating.
Yes I could devise my own or resize the creative that is available – but time is a commodity and given the choice between playing with graphics (which no doubt would need to be given the ok by the merchant anyway) or picking up a 125×125 from a different merchant – guess which is more favourable?
On affiliates4u, recently, there was a discussion asking affiliates why sign up and not promote?
Well the answer is incredibly simple…
… because some merchants do their best to make it as hard as possible to get promoted at even the basic affiliate level of adding a banner. There should be a standard suite of creative (why some can create a 150×150 button but not a 125×125 I don’t know) and that creative should be kept up to date.
As affiliates we want to promote merchants – but please can you try and make it easier for us?
I said the same thing last year mate, I couldn’t agree with you more, it can be very frustrating trying to get banners in the most popular sizes from some merchants:
http://www.here.org.uk/2008/07/affiliate-merchants-please-ensure-you-have-banners-available-in-all-sizes.html
BTW did you just make up a word? “Illogicality”?
Illogicality is a real word
http://www.answers.com/illogicality
You’ve seen our range of 125×125 banners right? Just wanted to point out that there are some merchants who do them. Granted, there are also a lot that don’t.
Once our design team have a spare minute, if you’ll use it I can look at doing a duck product themed one.
One of the problems here is that not all sectors/affiliates have the same recommendations for “standard” banner sizes – doesn’t a Price Comparison need different sizes to a content site?
So what are the standard sizes? Kieron gave a nice list on his post;
88×31
120×60
120×90
120×240
120×600
125×125
234×60
250×250
300×250
468×60
728×90
But that’s a heck of a lot of banners. Remember also that many merchants have many, many different products they promote with banners. If they just have 20 products they are promoting then they will have over 200 banners!!
My question, as an affiliate manager, is which of those eleven are the absolute must haves? Can you perhaps order those with the most important at the top.
I just make my own now – save’s a lot of frustration and I can do quite a nice line in static banners – which is what I want.
@Naomi – yep got your banners… and if you can do a duck related one then that’d be really cool
@Mike – I understand your point, but many merchants don’t even have a basic/generic set of those sizes – and as a starting point they should all be available. If you look at merchants in the same sector on the same network there’s some with one set another with another… that seems odd to me.
I’d like to see at least a 88×31, 120×60, 468×60, 120×600, 125×125 and perhaps a 250×250 or 300×250 (which can easily be scaled to 250×250).
Woohoo! Let’s hope the mighty Wales do beat everyone again Jason
Thanks Jason. Most of the clients we work with have at least these sizes, and some have all from that list of Kieron’s. I must admit our order of priority was a little different than yours but it’s good to know we are not so far off.