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Understanding banner sizes and competition (5)

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Hello everybody

Hope you all having an awesome day!

I wanted to ask about banner sizes, competition and the philosophy around it.

I assume this goes for all traffic sources but I'll just refer to Decisive in my example below. Please note this is for mobile only.

While I was in the planner section looking at the CPM's for each GEO, I noticed that there was a breakdown with CPM's for each banner size. As I am planning on running for the first time 2 banner sizes (320x50 , 300x250), I was shocked to see the massive difference these 2 sizes have in terms of cost.

For example 320x50 was $0.20 CPM and 300x250 was $3 CPM

This raised a couple of questions:

1) Does this ultimately mean that 300x250 is more competitive (Most people bidding for 300x250) for that specific GEO? If yes, then should I assume that the money is there?

2) Is there any reason I would want to run a less competitive banner size? Especially if they have a big difference like the example provided above?
Excluding the fact it's more affordable. Perhaps 300x250 is big enough to allow proper use of advertising i.e. more space to write something, add a clear image and big CTA button. Hence, converting much more. Whereas a 320x50 banner everything is crammed.
and people are very blind to those types of banners.

3) I created a few 300x250 banners and tested them on my phone and noticed they are MASSIVE. Where are these banners usually placed? Pop ups? Website? I don't see that being in any app. It's quite hard to see that on any website as well.. it's huge!

4) Choosing the right banner size must have it's philosophy but I didn't find any specific post on the forum. Perhaps my keywords where wrong. I was wondering, what banner sizes are people in general making money with? Is there a formula or anything you research in order to get some kind of indication of what banner sizes are working for a specific campaign?

Looking forward to hearing from you all soon.

Thank you

Aris

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Sorry to bump this thread. I am just really eager to understand the above

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Hey Aris! I'll attempt some of these and hope the pros will join the discussion later.

You're not going to like the answer, but the only way to find out would be through testing. There are many possible reasons why the bids are so different: 300x250 has more real-estate to use for selling so conversion rates are probably better. Many big companies use the bigger sized banners to promote brand awareness and they have big budgets to spend on that. Etc.


Some reasons to run to the smaller banner in this case are a)you'll get access to different placements than for the 300x250 (which also means more traffic) and b)that traffic is a LOT cheaper. Because I personally work with pop traffic I'll use that as an analogy - it would be like saying "since by placing a higher bid we'll get access to better-converting placements, why would anyone bid lower?" There are 2 factors that determine ROI: cost and revenue. So if your cost is low enough, you can still make money with a low conversion rate.

(Note: I'm not saying the 300x250 for sure converts better than the 320x50 - just pointing out that even if we made that assumption, that there would still be reasons to run the 320x50.)


Oops I missed that as I was reading your post the first time. Yup my thoughts exactly.


Yup those are huge indeed! But they're displayed on both sites and apps. Due to the intrusive size, when used in apps they often appear in pause or confirmation screens - see an example here: http://androidrich.com/experiment-wi...00x250-format/


Why not just set up a test to find out? One thing I know for sure though: With 320x50 being the most popular size, that's where most of the other affiliates are competing. Ask your traffic source for a percentage breakdown of banner sizes for your target geo and exchange, and test other banner sizes that are less popular but still have a lot of volume and you'll circumvent some of the competition.


Hope that helps! I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but the best way to find out whether anything will work or not is to test. It doesn't take that much time or money to take your best banner, convert it into other sizes, and run a low budget test to each size to compare results.


Amy

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Your reply was actually spot on and I totally agree with testing (which I would've been doing anyway). The reason for the post is for a system I am developing for organizing my work load. Basically making a checklist for campaigns with standard Q&A and steps to follow i.e. I just noted breakdown from traffic source, high cost and low conversions = loss while low cost high/low conversions can be profit etc

Thank you !

Aris

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Best banner in 99% of all cases is the 300*250 so if you have to focus your limited time on one kind of banner go for this size!

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