Which Banner Size is The Most Effective?

Online advertisement is at its largest right now, and banners are still taking a significant chunk of that rise in popularity. However, the effectiveness of your banner advertisement is something that you should always keep in mind. From this perspective, it’s fair to say that not all of the banner types are equally effective.

An obvious conclusion from that statement would be that some banner sizes are considered more popular than the other ones. This is our main topic of discussion in this article.

Banner ads are advertisements that are shown to visitors of various websites (not search engines). The main purpose of any banner is to increase brand awareness by expanding the reach of the brand in question. Choosing the wrong banner size could easily lead to you losing a lot of money within your marketing campaign, at the very least.

Online ad builders like Viewst tend to offer a wide variety of different banner sizes so that you might choose the one that you need the most. It’s not uncommon for these platforms to split different banner sizes into two groups: Desktop and Mobile.

Viewst ad sizes – Desktop

Viewst ad sizes – Mobile

That being said, the knowledge of which banner sizes are the most effective ones is still important for the best marketing results. The overall list of banner sizes is quite extensive as it is, but Google themselves are saying that there are five different banner sizes that are considered the most effective: 728 x 90, 300 x 250, 300 x 600, 320 x 100, and 336 x 280.

728 x 90 banner size – Leaderboard

728 x 90 banner size is the one that is mostly placed at the top of a webpage, and is noticed by almost every visitor of the mentioned website. Since this is one of the most effective banner sizes – the ad inventory is much bigger than in other cases, allowing for more creativity and effectiveness from even one ad placement.

An example of this banner size can be seen in the picture below (upper part of the picture).

Viewst banner sizes example #1

All in all, it’s right to say that 728 x 90 “Leaderboard” banner size is one of the most effective banner sizes right now. It’s also interesting to know that 728 x 90 is an evolution of one of the oldest banner sizes – 468 x 60.

It is a banner ad size that has been much more popular when the overall resolution of most of the screens was lower and the banner was taking much more space than it is right now. 468 x 60 “Banner” ad size is still used quite a lot in some specific cases, although it’s not as effective as its successor.

300x250 banner size – Medium rectangle

Sometimes called “Inline rectangle”. Performs well due to its placement between organic content (parts of an article, for example), or in the sidebar – capable of attracting a wide audience thanks to that placement.

Another potentially effective placement is after the organic content (the end of an article). Also offers a wide ad inventory due to how popular it is.

Often called MPU – there are several potential explanations for that type of abbreviature. More information about these explanations, as well as the information about 300 x 250 banner size itself, can be found in our dedicated article.

300 x 600 banner size – Half page/Large skyscraper

As a particularly large banner, this one offers more ad space than most of the other banner types. However, while this means that you, as an advertiser, would have more free space for ad placement, you’ll feel far more pressure to create various means of drawing people’s attention to such a large banner – be it via stunning visuals or thanks to generous offers from the advertiser.

320 x 100 banner size – Large mobile banner

As the name suggests, 320 x 100 “Large mobile banner” is a banner size that is at its most effective when viewed from a mobile device. It has twice the height of another mobile-related banner that is 320 x 50, and both of them can serve as a partial alternative to 300 x 250 for mobile devices.

Since this ad type is not as limited as leaderboard variations, there’s a lot of versatility and potential for such banner sizes, even when it comes to advertisement mainly for mobile devices.

336 x 280 banner size – Large rectangle

Another relatively effective banner size, 336 x 280 is more focused on serving as a page break or an ending to an organic piece of information – with 300 x 250 being more sidebar-focused. Other than that, these two are quite similar.

Both of them have expanded ad inventory due to their popularity, and both are considered to be on the list of most effective banner sizes right now. More often than not 336 x 280 is considered a very noticeable ad on its own. An example of such a banner size can be found in the picture below (middle-right banner example).

Viewst banner sizes example #2

Other banner sizes

There are many different ad sizes, each with its own name and use case, although most of them are not as effective as the ones above. Some other examples of different banner sizes include, but not limited to:

• 234 x 60 – Half banner. While it is technically a part of the regular banner size, its limitations lead to it not being able to list most of the content, which is the case of its limited popularity.

• 125 x 125 – Square button. Sometimes used in specific tight spaces with little free space to spare. Offers limited performance, rarely used, if ever.

• 120 x 600 – Skyscraper. Can fit into some specific narrow spaces, tends to have sub-optimal performance due to the limited supply of ads in this size.

• 250 x 250 – Square. Fits into smaller spaces due to its size and shape. Relatively unpopular, not that great of a performance value.

• 180 x 150 – Small rectangle. Also fits in smaller spaces, rarely used due to the small size of the banner in question.

• 120 x 240 – Vertical banner. Capable of fitting into small spaces. Often has limited performance due to the limited supply of the ads in this size.

• 970 x 250 – Billboard. An extremely large ad format that operates with good efficiency when used at the top of the page – in the so-called “premium position”. Despite the fact that there is a demand for larger ad formats, this one is mostly unpopular and rarely used.

Resizing is also an option if you don’t want to use the services of one of the online ad builders like Viewst – and nowadays there are many different banner resizing services all over the Internet.

Another interesting thing that Google is using with their ads to help advertisements is responsive display ads. Responsive display ads are capable of automatically adjusting both their size and their appearance to fit most of the ad spaces. That way, you can focus on better ad performance, and Google takes upon itself the brunt of optimization and creative testing.

Conclusion

Choosing a specific banner size to start your marketing campaign is no easy feat since all of the banners have their own nuances, use cases, and effectiveness ratings.

Luckily enough, Google AdSense is stating that there are some banner sizes that are more effective than the other ones, and we discussed those sizes above. While picking up the most effective banner size is not everything, it is still a solid ground to start working from, a good foundation for your work.