Okay, hear me out on this one.
We recently created a set of banner ads for IGY Marinas and it got us thinking about how often this kind of work gets written off before it’s even given a chance. “It’s just a banner ad.” “Nobody clicks on those.” And honestly? We get it. Click-through rates on display advertising are not going to set the world on fire. We’re not going to pretend otherwise.
But here’s the thing – clicks aren’t really the point.
Think about the last time you noticed a brand popping up everywhere. On a news site, on a trade publication, in your social feed. You probably didn’t click anything. But somewhere along the way, you started to just… recognise them. Trust them, even. That’s not a coincidence. That’s display advertising doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, just quietly, in the background, without making a big fuss about it.
Banner ads are less about driving immediate action and more about being consistently present. Every single time someone scrolls past one of your ads – even without clicking – your brand is landing. Your message is getting through. That awareness builds up over time and it matters more than most people give it credit for.
So what actually makes a good banner ad? Three things:
And on that note – we’re pretty pleased with how these ones turned out. The deep navy, the stunning marina photography, that clean “Experience the exceptional” headline. They do exactly what a good banner should do: stop you just long enough to make the brand feel aspirational. IGY Marinas operate across 14 countries and 24 marinas, and these ads needed to feel like that level of operation. We think they do 😄
There’s also a data angle that’s genuinely useful. Impressions, reach, and view-through rates all tell you something valuable about how your audience is moving around online and where your brand is showing up. That’s not nothing.
So if you’ve ever said “we can’t afford advertising” or “we tried it and never saw any results” – it might just be that you were looking for results in the wrong place. Not every win shows up in a click report.
Sometimes the job of marketing is simply to make sure that when the right person is finally ready to make a decision, your name is already the one they recognise.
And if they look great too – well, that never hurts either.
