Display advertising has always intrigued online marketers. It's appealing as it carries great potential to brand our companies and when you've got a banner campaign that works, they can really generate the clicks - whether they come from the same group of active community should not matter.

I have the opportunity to speak with many online media agencies and what I've found is that when these organizations perform their media planning services and prepare an advertising budget, they do it with the understanding that there will 1) be a consistency within all of the promotional campaigns they are running, 2) be placed on efficient advertising mediums determined through thoughtful research and empirical data, and 3) will inevitably fall in line with the clients pre-defined advertising spend.

When efforts and expenses are aligned, online banner advertising often secures a good share of attention and over time has become essential to achieve awareness, Web traffic, and attention within and from the target audience. Whether you use a media buying agency or not, it's important to give this type of advertising some consideration. But what actually distinguishes effective online banner advertising campaigns?

Here are a few tips for effective banner/display advertising:

- Create visually interesting elements with bright colors
- Large headlines work better than small ones
- Copy must be at a minimum; 12-15 words is ideal
- Focus on benefits; save features for landing pages
- Include calls to action; "register to win",