Banner vs. responsive ad. Which reaches prospective customers better?

Before you start building an ad in Google Ads, or even wondering whether your marketer picked the right type of display ad, it is worth going through the advantages and disadvantages of the graphical formats and being clear about the purpose you are building these campaigns for. From that you can work out which ad type suits you.

In this article we will go through the pros and cons of using the classic display network — banners, in the most modern form the display network allows, AMPHTML banners — and responsive ads, which are generated automatically from the assets supplied. So we will answer the questions: which format is more eye-catching and which is cheaper? Which suits performance campaigns and which brand campaigns? And how can both types of graphical ad be optimised?

Content is king

Nothing has changed about the familiar maxim "content is king", and in all likelihood nothing will, whatever the marketing channel. Content is the message; content is what catches attention and drives acquisition. For our comparison, AMPHTML banners — that is, banner advertising — win this most important contest hands down, by several places.

With their full scope for graphical treatment we can draw on all of a person's creativity and express it in images and in animation. So here it comes down above all to the quality of the preparation and execution. Unlike banners, responsive ads are very limited graphically. They are supplemented by the copy we prepare and a predefined button. The graphical expression is simple and does not work on all our senses.

BANNER vs. RESPONSIVE AD 1:0

Price plays a part

Price and time. We often trade one for the other. Their bond in society is very close. Whether it is price or time, the responsive ad has the upper hand over banners. Preparing responsive ads is very fast: we supply the basic assets and the system generates the ads. We get several kinds at once and have targeting set up with clearly defined formats.

Banner ads, by contrast, are very demanding in time. We have to produce the graphics, in several formats no less, which in itself calls for long preparation. We come up with the concept and then set about making it. But it does not end there: we then have to build the campaigns and set the targeting. Vector AMPHTML banners, which are fully responsive as a result, can be placed almost anywhere. The work takes time, and time is money. Overall, then, it can be said that with the most modern formats such as AMPHTML banners you pay for quality.

BANNER vs. RESPONSIVE AD 1:1

Display quality

AMPHTML files are very small and so load very fast. Thanks to that a high-quality ad is seen by many people who would otherwise have left the page before it loaded. Responsive ads, by contrast, are inserted automatically and have high reach. Once we set AMPHTML targeting, those too can appear almost anywhere, just as responsive ads do — in apps, on websites or in other banner spaces. But they cannot be automated the way responsive ads can.

BANNER vs. RESPONSIVE AD 2:2

Metrics in Google Ads and Google Analytics

Graphical ads suit brand work overall: they have a high impression count and, because of fewer clicks, a low CTR (click-through rate). The advantage of responsive ads is that copy in the banners can be revised quickly, which means fast A/B testing. Good optimisation can then raise both CTR and conversion rate.

In practice it can be said that thanks to the better graphics of animated AMPHTML banners they catch the eye more and bring better-quality visits, which we can see in Google Analytics under time on site and pages per session. The impression count is more or less the same in both cases; with AMPHTML banners it depends on the setup, but overall they are less amenable to optimisation than responsive ads.

BANNER vs. RESPONSIVE AD 3:3

So what follows from all this?

Although one approach may strike someone as better than the other, overall it comes down to the campaign's focus and goal. If you are building brand campaigns, which are typical of the display network, choose banners instead. A brand has to have a clear message, and it comes down to being eye-catching — which responsive ads do not have in abundance.

Have fun with quality banners, and if you cannot produce them yourselves, have them made by professional designers with experience of banners and animation. But if you want to support the display network and performance, favour the responsive ad, which is strong above all for its simplicity and the fast, undemanding, quality optimisation that suits winning conversions. If remarketing is part of your strategy, definitely favour banner ads, which are freely configurable and let you really play within remarketing.

How about reaching customers and then, in the next set of banners, reminding them they bought nothing? How about asking a question in the first banner and answering it in the next remarketing set? You can build many interesting, graphically polished remarketing strategies that lead the customer all the way to a conversion. With banners and animation there is no limit to the imagination.