In any marketing strategy, consumer behavior is of utmost importance. Likewise, in internet marketing through the popular banner ads, it is of prime importance that internet marketers keep a close watch on how users view and react to different types of banners. Currently, advertising companies test the effectiveness of banners by calculating their 'click-through' ratio rate. This ratio is the number of times an ad appears on a page compared to the number of times an individual clicks on the banner. 

Simply looking at click-through rates does not, however, consider key concerns, such as brand awareness, recognition, and recall of the product being advertised. For instance, Ipsos-ASI (1999) found that online advertisements are equivalent to television advertisements in raising consumer awareness of brands. In fact, immediate recall of an online static banner ad was 40% compared to 41% for a 30-second television commercial.

It was also found that extremely colorful and obvious banners tend to be ignored by users. When participants in this study were asked to find specific information on a web page, the information was not found if it was imbedded in a banner.

It is observed that animated ads have a 15% higher click-through rate than static ads. In fact, in some cases a 40% higher rate was found. It has thus been suggested that people tend to notice ads if they are animated in an effective way.

Results from a study indicated that recognition of the banner advertisements were fairly high (74%). In addition, about half of the participants were able to recall at least seeing an advertisement on the page – and many of these actually recalled the name of the company. These results show that most users did notice and remember the banners even though they were not part of the search tasks they were performing. 

Animation tends to enhance recognition of banners.

As the number of internet advertisements continues to flourish throughout the world, it is imperative that we understand how online users view and interact with banners. This study demonstrated that most users are not totally "blind" to banner advertisements. Further research needs to be done to explore the effectiveness of animation, color, and graphical design, on banner recognition and recall so we can better understand what constitutes the optimal online advertisement. The bottom line is, plan your marketing strategy according to user behavior for at the end of the day; if you click them, you cash the cheque!