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This is a really tough one and something a lot of affiliate marketers struggle with; should you use banners for affiliate marketing or text links?
The answer is that it depends.
Both methods of promoting affiliate offers can bring sales and both have their benefits over the other.
Using Banners In Affiliate Marketing
First let's look at banners.
Banners are typically either small squares 125×125 pixels in size, larger squares 250×250 pixels, or leaderboard type size usually 468×60 pixels.
The good things about banners is that they can draw attention with nicely designed graphics and animation that prompts the user to look at the banner.
If you're using an animated banner it's best to look for those that have just a couple of slides with a strong call to action on the last one.
Using Text Links In Affiliate Marketing
Text links on the other hand can be great for contextual affiliate marketing and offer affiliates a chance to intermix their affiliate links into the content on the web page.
As an affiliate this allows you to generate a really focused call to action which has been shown to convert better than straight banners.
Unlike banners, text links don't usually suffer “banner blindness” unless you have a large amount of links on the page.
So which is best to use for affiliate marketing?
As we said above, it depends on a number of factors.
If your website contains a lot of banner ads then it's probably going to be more effective to use text links in the majority of your affiliate campaigns.
That's not to say don't use banners. Banners can be highly effective for brand awareness and can draw the visitor's attention.
We recommend not overdoing the number of graphical banners on your site though. If you run a website where you promote multiple offers, try to rotate the banners instead of displaying them all at once. This will surely increase your click through rate.
It can also depend on your audience. For some audiences banners might be a bit of a turn off, whereas a recommendation to them in an article might be just the tip they want to follow.
If your audience isn't cautious of banners then they will likely be more effective.
Additionally, because banners are great tools for brand recognition if they see the brand identifiers in full graphics rather than just a name it might be all they need to jump on an offer.
Test And Tune Your Strategy
The name of the game with affiliate marketing is to test and tune.
If you can try different types of offers then you can also try using more banners vs. more text links.
For some the balance might lay somewhere in the middle but you never know unless you test.
