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Once you familiarize yourself with different banner ad sizing requirements, your business will have a competitive advantage in today’s banner ad market. Before we get into banner ad sizes that perform well, let’s set the foundation.
Banner advertising refers to ads being displayed using rectangular sizes that stretch across the top, bottom, or sides of an online platform—or sometimes right in the middle, as in, say, a social media platform newsfeed.
Keep in mind that the terms banner ad and display ad are often used interchangeably in the advertising industry, though they do have minor differences.
The most important thing to note to differentiate the two is that banner ads are a subcategory of display ads. Kind of like how a square is technically a rectangle but not the other way around. Display ads can be banner ads, interstitial ads, or video ads.
Marketing professionals have many options to connect with their audiences in today's advertising industry. Banner ads have been a reliable way for companies to amplify brand awareness since the beginning of the digital advertising era. The fact that they are still around says a lot.
There are a lot of different banner ad sizes to choose from, but the question we’re sure you’re asking is, “Which ones perform best?” The answer is that it depends on the platform, which we’ll detail throughout this article.
Let’s take a look at a few banner ad examples to get an idea of which sizes have been known to work well.
Leaderboard banners typically appear at the top of web pages, which is appealing since they are visible immediately when consumers open a website. Though they are usually at the top of a site, they can be placed between web content or at the bottom of the page.
Due to the high potential for visibility, leaderboards have incredibly high demand in the market and can come at a premium price. This makes buying and selling ad spots easier due to sheer volume.
One of the most popular ad sizes for mobile are mobile leaderboards. You may see them labeled as anchor ads on Google AdSense. These ads are smaller than most mobile banner ads but are extremely popular since it creates a positive user experience. The mobile leaderboards stay in view on the screen while the user scrolls through the page.
Wide skyscrapers, or large skyscrapers, are another popular banner size that you have probably encountered before. They are placed on the side of a web page and remain visible as users scroll through the site.
The medium rectangle banner ad is commonly known as the best performing out of all ad sizes. You get what you pay for, so this ad size is more expensive than others. This ad size is optimally placed for increased visibility and engagement.
Every social, SaaS, and app platform is slightly different and requires specific-sized ads to be optimized and look visually appealing on the page. You’ll have to keep these tips in mind depending on where you want to place your banners.
Let’s start with Facebook since it’s known to have the highest potential ad reach. Facebook should be part of your marketing strategy if you're serious about growth.
Here are the three most popular ad sizes for Facebook:
There are a handful more available sizes for Facebook ads, such as 1200 x 628 pixels. AdCreative.ai gives access to create your banners in every size that Facebook requires.
Instagram is owned by Meta, so it makes sense that the popular Facebook ad sizes (1080 x 1080 and 1200 x 628) are compatible with Instagram. However, the most optimal banner size for Instagram is 1080 x 1350. This ad size works best because it covers the whole screen to grab the user’s full attention.
Instagram Stories (1080 x 1920) are extremely popular as well.
With Google Responsive Display Ads, you can upload your creative banner ads to run campaigns for websites, apps, YouTube, and Gmail. AdCreative.ai supports the following ad sizes that are optimal for Google Responsive Display Ads:
Here are a couple of great tips straight from Google’s help page:
This one can be a bit tricky because the websites that take your ads from Google Display Ads dictate the placement of your ad. With that in mind, it’s best to optimize your banner sizes to match the top-performing ad sizes for Google Display Ads.
Google makes it clear that these are the top-performing ad sizes:
Over 25 banner ad size variations are compatible with Google Display Ads. We’ve received a lot of requests recently to make all of these sizes available, and we hear you! These sizes will be live and available on AdCreative.ai soon!
Google Performance Max Ads is a new goal-based campaign type that lets a business access all of its Google Ads inventory from a single campaign. At a minimum, you need one square banner ad and one landscape banner ad creative to start.
However, you should follow these tips to optimize your Google Performance Max campaign:
From our experience, we’ve found that landscape ads perform better with Google Performance Max Ads. AdCreative.ai continues to add features to make it easy to optimize ads for Google.
Taboola is one of the largest discovery platforms. It helps promote your brand with over 500M active users daily.
Keep these in mind to take advantage of Taboola’s sponsored content spots:
Criteo is an open platform that lets you build new campaigns quickly. To get started, create banner signs with these sizes in mind:
Horizontal and square banners created in AdCreative.ai are better, according to Criteo.
Launching an advertising campaign on Teads can boost your brand and put your ads in the spotlight. This platform is great for video ads because it doesn’t play your ad until at least 50% of it is visible to the viewer.
Teads follows popular social media layouts, so the following banner sizes are best suited:
When you generate ads for Facebook and Instagram in AdCreative.ai, it’s easy to use the same designs in square and landscape mode to capture leads.
AdRoll recommends that you have these six banner ad sizes at a minimum, ready to go.
The above list contains recommended banner ad sizes, but you actually have a better chance to increase your campaign’s reach if you upload additional ad sizes.
Here are the additional sizes you should consider:
There are a lot of variations to consider when using AdRoll. Luckily, AdCreative.ai can generate everything for you quickly and efficiently.
Outbrain is an extensive ad network that helps your brand get discovered. \
Here are its recommended banner ad sizes:
You will have no issues creating these banner sizes in AdCreative.ai.
LinkedIn is a great social platform to grow your professional brand and reach.
Here are its recommended ad specs:
All recommended banner sizes for LinkedIn are available on AdCreative.ai.
Pinterest excels as a social media platform that lets people share images.
Keep these specs in mind when creating banners for Pinterest:
Pinterest ads are usually placed as one large image on top of three pictures, or “pins,” as users scroll through the feed. 1000 x 1500 banners are more successful because users are naturally drawn to the image since it takes up more screen space.
Every platform has a unique audience, and your product or service benefits from exposure across multiple websites, social media platforms, and pages. Remember, though, that advertising is not a one size fits all type of deal.
The biggest mistake businesses make when launching marketing campaigns on multiple platforms is not taking their target audience into account. For example, Facebook demographics show that 25-34 years of age represents their largest group, while Instagram shows 18-24 years.
You will have to deep dive into where it is worth advertising and tailor your images and text to match the audience on that platform.
AI-powered advertising tools like AdCreative.ai make testing your ads easier by analyzing data quickly and predicting what will work best on each platform.
A lot goes into optimizing banner ad sizes. It can be overwhelming for business owners to navigate through all the requirements and manually tweak banner dimensions to work on each platform.
AdCreative.ai uses automation to minimize the stress of constantly adjusting ad sizes. Once you input your images and text, all you have to do is click on the sizes you want to create. Within minutes, you can generate hundreds of variations.
It kind of sounds too good to be true, right?
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