This is a very important question regardless of whether you are going to market products or services through the affiliate channel. If it is the former, you will pay a lot of attention to deep-linked text links, conveniently formatted and well-categorized data feed, but you will have to have both general banners and holiday-specific ones. If, on the other hand, you’re providing a service (and you will have no data feed at all), you definitely need a good creative inventory for affiliates to work with. One or the other, you want to provide your affiliates with a solid and diverse creative arsenal.
Below you may find a list of banner sizes that I recommend every affiliate program to have. The list follows this format: [banner size] – [minimum quantity]-[recommended quantity]. Some of these recommendations come from my observations of the sizes that affiliates prefer (e.g.: 88×31 px buttons, the importance of having which you should never underestimate); while the choice of some other sizes rests directly on the assumption that many webmasters, who will be recruited into your affiliate program, are already monetizing their traffic using Google AdSense, and, therefore, it is important for you to provide them with a banner to upload in place of an AdSense unit (e.g.: 120×600 px and 160×600 px skyscrapers). Here is my list:
468×60 px – 2-5 banners
125×125 px – 2-5
120×600 px – 2-5
88×31 px button – 2-5
160×600 px – 2-3
120×240 px – 2-3
234×60 px – 2-3
254×331 px – 2-3
728×90 px – 2-3
720×300 px – 1-2
300×250 px – 1-2
Remembering that some affiliates will need banners of different sizes or color gamma, it is always good to let them know that you are open to creating custom banners for affiliates. If you do not have an in-house capability of handling the creative support, it is easy to outsource such work on the on-demand basis.
If you are an affiliate reading this post, and there’s a banner size that you think must be listed, but it’s not, feel free to post your recommendation in the “comments” field below.
This is a great post because no matter how great merchants are, affiliates cannot use them if they do not provide the ad sizes they need. From your list, I have never heard of 254×331 and I am hearing more and more requests for 300×100 ad sizes lately.
Ayako,
Thank you for your post. Believe it or not, but there are actually hundreds of affiliate programs out there that have only one size “banner” available, and it is their logo.
Wow! I’ve just found an affiliate program on CJ that has no banners at all.
Hi Geno,
I think you’ve got the sizes pretty well covered, but something I’d like to see from companies who have multiple products that are all in the same niche is a system where you can rotate ads for the various/products services they sell without needing your own script, or your own ad serving solution.
Having to download banners individually, upload them to your own server, then load them into your ad software is just a pain in the butt and that’s what a lot of companies expect their affiliates to do. But what they should do is provide a solution at their end that lets their affiliates just copy a snippet of code and paste it into their sites.
The easier you make it on your affiliates (cut and paste is always good), the more they use your promo materials and the more sales you make.
Simple. But surprisingly few (especially smaller) merchants do it.
~ Paul
Paul,
Thank you for your comment. When you say “multiple products in the same niche”, are you referring to service niches? It seems like it, as for retail products data feeds are the way to go.
For e-businesses that offer several different services in the same vertical, a rotating banner solution is definitely the way to go. Dynamic banners also work very well for retail merchants when running deal-of-the-day or seasonal campaigns.
Yes Geno, exactly.
I’m very familiar with CJ and networks like that where the majority of it is retail and feeds are definitely the way to go there, but what I was really referring to is more relevant to the IM industry, casino/gaming affiliate networks, the affiliate companies who manage multiple dating sites and services like that, where one company (or one guy) is running the show for multiple digital downloads or for multiple services.
Then providing one snippet of code to your affiliates that lets them rotate ads for different products/services AND that allows you to run seasonal promotions etc. on your affiliates’ websites, without them doing a thing, makes so much sense.
If the affiliate program and sales process is already solid, then adding a feature like this should go without saying. Would take a programmer all of 10 minutes to do it too.
So many people don’t do this though. I don’t get it.
Affiliate Management 101 – make it so easy that all they need to do is cut and paste and YOU update their websites.
Brilliant
~ Paul
Nice list and great info. I use a 250X250 quite often in some of my posts. It is a convenient size to put within an article post and still have some word wrap around it.
Well put, Geno. I’m glad that you’ve mentioned Google’s Adsense program as many people from newbies to gurus use Adsense on their sites. As an affiliate manager myself, I’ve modeled my banner sizes after the Adsense sizes in hopes to one, standardize the sizes, and two, perhaps draw some people to replace their Adsense ads for one of ours.
Best Regards,
John
Geno,
Thanks for publishing this! I think I’ll forward a link to all the merchants I sign up for that don’t have proper sized banners.
Two sizes they always seem to omit:
728×90
160×600
Thanks again, and keep up the excellent work!
~ Denis
Paul, yes, as mentioned above dynamic banners/widgets/etc is definitely the way to go.
Rich, Denis, thank you for your comments too. I do hope merchants will find this list/post of help. After all, if I don’t post about this, how will they know they want to offer all these sizes?
A prospective client has asked me about the sizes and quantities of affiliate banners they should have, and after I’ve given them the above list, they told me that their competitors offer only 4-5 banners through their affiliate programs (meaning: “Why bother creating 20-30 different ones?”) Why? If nothing else mattered, then to look more attractive to prospective affiliates, and to offer wider creative options to the current ones.
The standard sizes would do better to reduce dimensions by one or two pixels because there are still adblockers keyed to standard banner sizes. Many of Amazon’s cookies (not the ads though!!) are blocked because Amazon does not have a privacy policy in the required format. Hey, why should they? But that’s another topic. Browsers today decide what you can see based on their default settings which new web shoppers have no clue as to settings and adjustments/how/why to alter those default settings. No wonder toolbars proliferate.
Nancy brings up an important point (about altering standard size banners by 1-2 pixels for ad-blocking functions not to cause affiliates a problem). However, since the majority of merchants stick to the standard sizes, I think it’s often easier for an affiliate to obtain an image resizer php script, and apply it to all merchant banners they use on their website (regardless of the merchant).
Thank you very much for this really informative article – i was wondering why no one in germany has such kind of listing and found yours. Great work – keep going on!
Hi Geno,
Thank you for this list, I’m a Merchant and I’m sourcing some Affiliate networks at the moment, but there’s not a lot of info on the best image sizes to offer affiliates, and this is just great. Your excellent suggestion of offering custom image sizes for Affiliates is also something we plan to do offer.
Ciao
Paul