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Tips & Tricks – Enhance your affiliate programme with mobile banners!

Written by 3 minute read

The number of transactions in affiliate marketing is also growing, reflecting the optimization of advertiser’s mobile shops.

Last month, we published our Mobile Performance Barometer. Remarkable growth rates again demonstrate the impact of mobile devices on the shopping behavior of modern consumers. It’s not only mobile sales that are increasing.

However, many advertisers are yet to provide mobile banners for their publishers. In our tips, learn the basics of mobile banners for affiliate marketing and find out what standard sizes you should provide.

Text links


Why is the first point on our list the simple text links that you have already been providing for years? The reason is simple – the majority of sales generated via mobile devices result from text links. Most traditional publisher models are based on websites and these websites continue to drive traffic, including to mobile users. Hence, the regular mobile sale that we see results from a click on an affiliate text link, or image on a mobile publisher website or e-mail.

So what does this mean for advertisers? Put your redirects, affiliate tracking and tracking switch to the acid test! Affiliate tracking on mobile e-commerce sites should be commonplace today, however it still doesn’t appear to be the highest priority for some advertisers. Make it a priority – not only are you losing sales (our Mobile Performance Barometer revealed that 26% of transactions are generated through mobile devices) but also the trust and loyalty of your publishers.

It’s also important to make sure that redirects work correctly. A user that clicks on a publisher’s link via a mobile device should be directed to the mobile site. And if the site prompts to use the app, the tracking should work seamlessly – if not, remove the app-popup for affiliate links.

Mobile Banners


Mobile banners are crucial to providing good mobile usability and advertising revenues.

Most publisher websites, particularly blogs, are responsive. Every responsive design is different and follows its own rules. Depending on the user’s screen resolution, regular image banners on responsive websites are either scaled down, displayed in another place (sidebar banners for example, because the sidebar is not displayed on smartphones) or not displayed at all.

To enable your publishers to perfectly promote your products on mobile devices, you should provide them a selection of mobile banners.

At zanox, we don’t have restrictions for the dimension of mobile ads. However we recommend sticking to the standard ad unit specifications for mobile devices:

  • Medium Rectangle (300×250px)
  • Rectangle (180×150px)
  • Leaderboard (728×90px)
  • Skyscraper (160×600px)
  • Half Page Ad (300×600px)
  • XXLarge (320×50px)*
  • XXLarge II (320×53px)*
  • XLarge (300×50px)*
  • XLarge II (300×75px)*
  • Large (216×36px)*
  • Large II (216×54px)*
  • Medium (168×28px)*
  • Medium II (168×42px)*
  • Small (120×20px)*
  • Small II (120×30px)*
  • Micro Bar (88×31px)

You probably already use some of these formats in your standard banner sets, like the Leaderboard, Skyscraper, etc. Others are specifically created for smartphones*.

Banner creation: Think mobile!


mobile ads affiliateWhen creating mobile banners, it’s important to think mobile. It’s not only the size of the banner that changes, the consumption of the website and the advertisement also vastly differs. Mobile users are often less attentive, as they’re not sat at a desktop in front of a large monitor. They might be quickly checking the news while waiting for the bus, so make sure to create banners with clear visual elements that are adapted to small screens, and restrict text to a minimum.

Also, consider the landing pages for your mobile banners. Do you have specific landing pages for mobile ads? Or are you linking to the start page? Which product or service works best on mobile devices?

Keep it simple. It’s better to provide one appealing banner set that is perfectly optimized instead of creating a large quantity of banners for each product or category. The best way to prove if the mobile experience is optimal is simple – test it!

For more information visit the IAB’s Mobile Creative guidelines.