What to expect from Banner Ads?

I assume you are doing media buys. There are only 3 metrics that you need to focus for that, your banner CTR, landing CTR and your CR.

Commonly banner CTR is always lower than 1%, I think this hold true for most display ads as well. Your landing CTR should get above 70%. And if you have been testing the offer else where, you should know the offer CR already. Based on this metrics, you can pretty much calculate how much you can spent on the banner, that's your CPM.

Regarding targeted sites or match demographics, in the end you still want as much targeted traffic to see your banner. That very much depends on your offer really.

Honestly I haven't yet done any media buys, but this is from my research and studies, so take it with a pinch of salt.

I got the stats from a seminar. And some of my facebook ads are having between .6% - .1% so I believe it's not impossible to achieve below 1%.

The idea is to control the metrics that we can, aside from the offer CR, there really is nothing we can do about others except the CTR for banner and lander.

Banner is pre-qualifying your lead, no one would click it if they aren't interested right? So the job of landing page is not to pre-qualify, but to do pre-sell. So if the CTR of this two is not really high, it's our job to optimize and get them as high as we can. There's no one to blame except us, the marketers, for this. Basically the higher the CTR you can get, the better your chances to profit.

Go give it a try, GDN is good. However people choose direct media buys because they could get around the big G, for obvious reason of course.

So basically, with direct linking banner ads, one should, on average, expect 1 click in 100 impressions and than 1 conversion in 100 clicks. Like 1% CTR and 1% conversion. I just need an broad average as a reference.

Erm.. no you misunderstood my point. Landing page CTR is the page you create, this is different from the offer CR or sign-up rates (SUR).

So your traffic would look something like this:
Site > Banner/creative > Landing Page > Offer Page

If you could get 1 click per 100 impression heck yea, you must got a good creatives that speaks to majority of your traffic, I said it's generally will be below 1%. If you doing direct linking, yes you do not need landing page, but whether it's the best option, it's up to your split testing to decide that. Your conversion rate like I said before, can be determined by other traffic. Do a ppc campaign, drive traffic to the offer page, you can probably get the feel of how much it converts.

Then do the math, if the media that you are buying can give you 1 mil impression, e.g.
1mil > banner with CTR of .2% = 2000 qualified leads > 2000 then of 75% = 1500 > offer CR of 10% > You would make 150 conversion in total, then depending on your CPA or CPS, multiple that, you could get your total gross.

And you should start to think in per thousand impression since CPM is the cost of per thousand, and 'generally' is the metrics you would use for display ads. So instead of thinking 100, I'd say think in 1000. It's no right or wrong, just thought it would make your calculation easier.

If you understand the 3 metrics I mentioned here, just try to do what you can to improve your campaign, and that is the banner and landing page CTRs. Don't expect it will be profitable at first if you never have a profitable campaign in hand. If you already have one, you would already know what you CTRs, and how much can you spend for your CPM.

junkdna, with so many variables, it is really really hard to give that answer. I tell you why, not every marketer will know the CTR of untested banner, without the CTR you wouldn't know how much you can expect. Even with a tested banner with other traffic, bringing the banner to another traffic will have a different affect on your CTR.

Our job is to get the best CTR for the particular traffic, if you can create a banner with higher CTR than others, you are a better marketer.

Honestly I wish we all can expect an exact number of clicks per 1000 impression, but that's not how it works. I don't think we should expect, and I don't think it's that important. In the end, it's how we optimize and improve the campaign, I've already given you the expected percentage of CTR that can make your campaign profitable, it's up to you to do the rest. Do you understand what I mean?

With the wrong offer and CPM you still can't break even with that CTR. It doesn't matter how much my CTR is as long as I can profit out from it.