Conversational technology is permeating all existing marketing channels. Its dynamism and versatility define it while making it one of the most exciting interfaces for interacting with users and customers. As this technology evolves, new strategies are emerging. Among all of them, chatbot banner ads are my favorite.

Chatbot banner ads (or "banner bots") are an innovation enabled by the advent of no-code chatbot platforms like Landbot.

Sure they were possible before no-code, but not nearly as easy or cheap to create.Now, what are they?

While they are still not very well known, their applications can be very interesting.

Let’s dive in!

What is a Chatbot Banner Ad?

Banner chatbots are nothing more than conversational assistants integrated into a standard digital banner. In fact, when you see them integrated into a page, they may look like typical banners. However, they are interactive and ready to entice a conversation.

Here is an excellent example of emirates running a banner bot ad:

How Can they Help Us?

Banners are a common way of attracting or re-engaging customers. However, similar to email marketing, banner ads have been losing effectiveness. Consumers have become accustomed to them - or accustomed to ignoring them - causing the conversion of such advertising to be lower and lower.

There is no need to panic, though. The technology and strategies behind it are constantly evolving, always striving to improve the format and boost conversion rates, ranging from Real-time Bidding (RTB) to Multi-touch attribution (MTA).

Design approaches, too, have been evolving to be more eye-catching. Now, thanks to the conversational solutions, we are entering a new world where the creation of chatbots for banners is a matter of minutes. While simple to deploy, they are also significantly more engaging and challenge the industry status quo.

Thus, more and more brands start to introduce Conversational banner bots to boost campaigns’ ROI.

Why Use a Chatbot in a Banner Ad?

Never before has the conversational format (chat) spread with such a speed and degree of penetration. The crisis of 2020 likely had a LOT to do with it. The shift ended up affecting everything from personal to business-related scenarios, paid advertising not excluded.

Banners don’t have it easy lately. The oversaturation of digital space made them somewhat “invisible” while tech like ad blockers simply prevents them from doing their job. After all, banners are not the most trustworthy of ad methods.Chatbots can change that.

Conversations are a natural way of engaging with other human beings. Written or spoken, they the primary form of communication.

Furthermore, conversations tick the boxes of what digital advertising should be. They:

• Aren’t be disruptive/aggressive;
• Offer personalized experience;
• Provide value or utility;
• Incite engagement;
• Provide a friendly starting point for a business relationship.

Better yet, interacting with a chatbot feels like a natural extension of messaging or texting. It’s familiar. It’s intuitive. The experience is based on allowing the user to self-select how to engage and what content to view.

A typical banner ad can only lead to a single landing page. On the other hand, a chatbot banner ads can direct users to a specific page based on the interaction and user preference.In this sense, banner bots allow customers to interact with the brand and get a feel for it before asking them to leave the native environment of the ad.

‍You can say goodbye to the frustration of accidental clicks! Users won’t get annoyed by being redirected to another page because they accidentally clicked on your banner. At their worst, such accidents will end up with the bot initiating a conversation that is likely to attract attention rather than discourage it.

It’s a fresh approach that allows to improve your PPC campaigns and customize acquisition efforts on a large scale.

Chatbots in banners allow us to extract the best of both worlds. The combination offers the visibility of display ads with the familiarity and personalization of chatbots.

What to Remember when Running Chatbot Banner Ads?

When introducing a chatbot in a banner, and in fact in any interface, several points must be taken into account.

Ad Objective

The first and most important is to be clear about what you want to achieve with the chatbot. You can find chatbots for lead acquisition, customer service, content dissemination, etc. On this basis, the first question you need to answer is, what do I intend to achieve with my chatbot banner ads?

‍Most commonly, the banner bot objective is either:

• Offering information to the user about a particular product or service;
• Capturing the lead to give him/her continuity later on.

Once the chatbot's objective has been defined, you need to think about the path that the chatbot will follow and what questions it will answer in order to prep it for each of the different possibilities.

Bot Personality

Equally important is deciding on be the personality of your chatbot. You need to make sure it realistically reflects the image and persona of your brand.

After all, a bot personality that’s on point makes forging a new relationship much easier and often much more durable.

Formatting

When it comes to chatbot banner ads, there are also a few UX challenges to consider. One of the most obvious ones is that the bot’s UX/UI needs to work seamlessly across various ad sizes and placements.

Theoretically, conversational display ads can work in any sizing format, but three formats seem to complement the experience the best:

• 300×250 manages to offer a reasonably decent UX, though you shouldn’t go any smaller than this;
• 336×280 is slightly better as it provides some extra space for some of the response formats such as text field or buttons;
• 300×600 is the largest and the best as it mimics the phone screen format, and the responses can easily fit into the frame.

Are Banner Bots Really a Solution to the Low Banner Effectiveness?

Yes!

One of the foundations of good marketing is to be continually innovating. It’s about offering users a unique and unparalleled experience starting way before they convert and make a purchase.

Considering this, the interactive and dynamic experience offered by conversational interfaces nestled in the banner ad format can profoundly impact UX.

From novelty to real-time personalization, chatbot banner ads are more likely to capture attention as well as actively engage with the users.

They represent a disruption in the sea of sameness.