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Graphic Advertising FAQ

How does Graphic Advertising work?
Banner ads are displayed at the top of each page of UKClimbing.com and side-bar button ads are displayed at the side of each page. When a page is requested, the ad software chooses banners and buttons at random and sends these graphics with the page. This choice is weighted so that advertisers who pay for more impressions have their adverts shown more often.

Can I have banners and buttons at the same time?
At any time, you can run as many different banners and buttons as you wish and we recommend that you run them concurrently for maximum impact.

How many banners and buttons can I have?
You can have as many different banners and buttons as you wish, in fact we recommend that everyone uses a variety of graphics since this has proved to give a better click-through rate. We also recommend that you change your banners every few months to avoid them becoming "wall paper" to the regular site users.

How can I check my stats?
When you set up an account you are sent an email with an account name and password. Log into your account to check your stats. This will show you the number of times the banner has been displayed per month, the number of click-throughs and the conversion percentage. You can also upload and amend your banners on your account page.

What does 'page views' or 'click-through' mean?
Page views - also known as 'hits' or 'impressions', this is the total number of times all pages are seen by visitors. For example, if a single page is looked at 10 times, that is 10 page views. If 5 different pages are looked at 10 times each, then that is 50 page views.
Click-thru - when a user clicks on a advert to 'click-through' to visit your web site.

Can my advert appear on a more prominent page?
The way the graphic ads system works makes this a superfluous question since a graphic ad is never associated with a particular page. Just because you see the banner on a certain page once doesn't mean that others see the same banner on the same page, nor that you will see that banner next time you visit the particular page. You pay for a number of impressions not for a location, but each time your banner is served, there is someone looking at the page with your banner on.

Why can't I see my banner?
If you have purchased a small number of banners (less than 50,000) then you will not see your banner very often. The total traffic generated by UKC and its partner sites was 10,370,000 page views for last month, so a banner with 50,000 impressions will only appear once for every 200 pages loaded. However, this does not mean that you can't achieve a good click-through rate on a small number of banners.

What rate of 'click-through' can I expect on my banner?
This will depend on how well your banner is designed, and its relevance to our users. From your account page, you can view the click-through rate for any one banner or all the banners together. Anything less than 0.10% would be below average while anything more than 0.25% would be good. The Google average click-through-rate is between 0.25% and 0.30%. You can fine tune the audience of your banner by clicking the 'Edit Banner' button and selecting categories that are most relevant for your product or service. eg. Travel and Trekking, Rock Climbing.

Do you support 'Rich Media' Banners?
Yes we support Macromedia Flash and other Rich Media formats. Please contact us with your requirements.