Abstract:
A significant drawback of implementing Internet banners is the small number of clicks (or often referred to as clickthroughs ) on the banners. Several factors have been altered so as to attract more web site visitors and then they would ultimately click on the banners. Two factors of this study’s interest are banner styles and banner presentations. A review of previous literature found no published work on comparison of clickthrough rates among these three banner styles (i.e., embedded, popup and layered styles) or between these two banner presentations (i.e., the presentations on a web page with and without animated background). This study hopes to fill this gap and offers insights into these two factor’s interaction effect on the clickthrough rate. This study recorded the clickthrough rate based on a field experiment in which banners with the three different styles were placed for 56 days on homepages of two sites: www.mbachula.info and it.acc.chula.ac.th. The former characterizes the presentation, of which the background is animated and the latter corresponds to the presentation, of which the background is not animated. Since the collected clickthrough rates are not normally distributed, the analysis had to be nonparametric. The result indicated that the embedded banner received the lowest clickthrough rate. While the difference of these rates on popup and on layered banners are not statistically different; it is however, significantly higher than the rate on the embedded banner. Regarding the clickthrough rates of banners on web pages with and without animated background, the difference was not statistically significant. Finally, because the analysis was not parametric, the test of interaction effect to the three banner styles and the two types of web pages on the clickthrough rate could not be statistically verified. Nevertheless, the exploration indicated a trace of the interaction effect. This study ‘s findings could extend understanding on this multidisciplinary knowledge of advertising and information technology. Practitioners may also apply the findings so as to maximize outcomes from their online campaigns.
