Posted by Bart on October 26, 2010
An Ad Banner is composed of 2 things:
- an image (or a video)
- a link
An Ad Banner works like an Hyperlink. It is actually an Hyperlink with an Anchor, the image and a Target, the link.
The image:
The image can of course be a drawing, a picture, etc. and contain text or even music and video. The image is either a file (GIF file or video file) or a link to an hosted image. This means that the Ad on a website may either be a file hosted on the website, or a link that will upload an image from another website. This is transparent for the Internet User, but important for the Ad Management.
The link:
The link is an Hyperlink that will redirect to the website of the product or service the Ad is promoting.
A basic link is:
http://www.costperwhat.com.
However the link can be a bit more complex and include additional information.
For instance the link can redirect to a specific page of the website: http://www.costperwhat.com/glossary/ (it will then redirect directly to the Glossary page).
But a link can also contain much more information, like the link below:
http://tmc.go2jump.org/aff_c?offer_id=36&aff_id=5
We will see in a next post what all this information is for.
The technology of putting a maximum of information into the links is what allows Online Advertising to do some tracking, and that’s what makes Online Advertising such a powerful tool compare to traditional (offline) advertising.
Posted by Bart on October 24, 2010
Everybody knows the hyperlinks (or links) because one sees them everyday while surfing on the web: these are for example these words (but it can be images too) that are underlined or in a different color and that you can click on to upload another page or another document. But how are they actually built and how do they work?
To understand Online Advertising techniques, it’s important to clearly understand what are hyperlinks.
Wikipedia says:
A hyperlink (or link) is a reference to a document that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks, and is commonly viewed with a computer. A software system for viewing and creating hypertext is a hypertext system, and to create a hyperlink is to hyperlink (or simply to link). A user following hyperlinks is said to navigate or browse the hypertext.
A hyperlink has an anchor, which is the location within a document from which the hyperlink can be followed; the document containing a hyperlink is known as its source document. The target of a hyperlink is the document, or location within a document, to which the hyperlink leads. Users can activate and follow the link when its anchor is shown, usually by touching or clicking on the anchor with a pointing device. Following the link has the effect of displaying its target, often with its context.
In some hypertext, hyperlinks can be bidirectional: they can be followed in two directions, so both ends act as anchors and as targets. More complex arrangements exist, such as many-to-many links.
The most common example of hypertext today is the World Wide Web: webpages contain hyperlinks to webpages.
Here is an example of an Hyperlink:
<a href=”http://www.costperwhat.com”>Link to CostPerWhat?</a>.
The source is the text “Link to CostPerWhat?” and the target is the website “http://www.costperwhat.com”.
This link inserted in a web page becomes: Link to CostPerWhat?
A click on the link will open a new page or a new document, inside this page or on another page. This is the basis of “browsing” the World Wide Web.
In Online Advertising we also call this link a Redirect Link.