{"id":76890,"date":"2025-11-12T13:16:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T13:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morningtrain.dk\/?p=76890"},"modified":"2026-11-12T13:16:26","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T13:16:26","slug":"banner-ads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morningtrain.dk\/en\/banner-ads\/","title":{"rendered":"Banner ads: when do they make sense, and how many impressions does your budget buy? How to assess and calculate it yourself"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lead generation<\/p>\n

\n 12. November 2025 ·<\/span> 6 min <\/p>\n

Banner ads: when do they make sense, and how many impressions does your budget buy? How to assess and calculate it yourself<\/h1>\n <\/div>\n

Banner ads are static or animated ads on websites and social media that you pay to show to people who have not searched for you. See when they fit your goal, and work out how many impressions your budget buys based on your own CPM. <\/p><\/div>

\"Banner<\/figure>\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n
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\n Indhold\n <\/p>\n \n When do banner ads make sense, and what are they confused with?\n <\/a>\n \n What decides how many impressions and clicks you get?\n <\/a>\n \n How many impressions does your budget buy?\n <\/a>\n \n What else do people ask about banner ads?\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n

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Banner ads<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Banner ads are static or animated ads on websites, in apps and on social media that a business pays to show to people who have not searched for the business or its products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also called:<\/strong> Display ads, Banner advertising, Web banners<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Banner ads are also called display ads. You usually pay per impression, and the goal is most often to get more people to know your name, not to make them buy straight away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When do banner ads make sense, and what are they confused with?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Banner ads make sense when your goal is to become known to people who are not looking for you yet. If you want to reach people who are already searching for what you sell, search ads are a better fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Banner ads are often confused with search ads and retargeting, because you can buy them on the same ad platforms. But they do three different jobs, and they should be measured on different numbers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ad type<\/th>What it is for<\/th>Who sees it<\/th>What you measure<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Banner ads<\/span><\/td>Making your name known to new people<\/td>People in your target audience while they read or scroll elsewhere<\/td>Impressions, reach and whether more people search for your name afterwards<\/td><\/tr>
Search ads<\/span><\/td>Capturing demand that already exists<\/td>People who have just searched for what you sell<\/td>Clicks, enquiries and sales<\/td><\/tr>
Retargeting<\/span><\/td>Reminding past visitors of you<\/td>People who have already been on your website<\/td>How many come back and buy<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Take a bike shop owner opening a new shop in Aarhus. Nobody searches for her shop’s name yet, so search ads on that name reach almost no one. Banner ads shown to people in the local area, on the other hand, can make the name known before they need a new bike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This advice does not always apply. If you sell a very niche B2B product to a few buyers, you quickly spend your budget on impressions to people who will never become customers. Here, search ads on the exact keywords usually work better. The same goes if you need sales tomorrow and have no time to build awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What decides how many impressions and clicks you get?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Your number of impressions is your budget divided by your CPM, the cost per thousand impressions. Your click-through rate, the share of impressions that lead to a click, decides how many of those impressions end up as visits to your landing page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You control the budget yourself. You do not set the CPM: it depends on how many advertisers want to show ads to the same audience in the same placements. The placements are on websites and in apps that have made them available through an ad network, such as Google’s, or on social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From budget to visits on your landing page<\/figcaption>
Your budget in DKK<\/div>
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CPM: cost per thousand impressions Audience, placement, competition<\/span><\/div>
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Impressions = budget \/ CPM x 1,000 What you buy<\/span><\/div>
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Click-through rate: share of impressions that lead to a click<\/div>
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Clicks<\/div>
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Visits to your landing page<\/p>

This is where it is decided whether the visit leads to more<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The narrower the audience, the fewer placements advertisers compete for, and the higher the CPM usually gets. If the bike shop owner only shows her banner to people within a few kilometres of the shop, she gets fewer impressions for her money than if she showed it nationwide. In return, the right people see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The click-through rate on banner ads is normally low, because people are busy doing something else. That makes clicks a poor measure on their own. A banner can have worked even if nobody clicked: people remember the name and find the shop later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many impressions does your budget buy?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Impressions = budget \/ CPM x 1,000. With a budget of DKK 6,000 and a CPM of DKK 50, you get 120,000 impressions. But you need to use the CPM from your own ad platform, not from an example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The numbers in the example are made up. The bike shop owner needs to enter her own monthly budget and the CPM her ad platform or a previous campaign shows for the audience she wants to reach. If she has not run campaigns before, most platforms give an estimate when you set up the campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n

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How many impressions does your budget buy?<\/h3>\n \n

Enter your budget, your CPM and your click-through rate to see roughly how many impressions and clicks your budget covers.<\/p>\n \n

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