This will take your GIF Ads to a Whole New Level

This will take your GIF Ads to a Whole New Level
CrakRevenue-Commission

Webmaster

Written by

Papa Whale

PUBLISHED ON

April 2, 2014

Category

Webmaster

Crakrevenue-blog-Affiliate-Marketing

Everyone loves .gifs. Especially animated .gifs! And if you throw cats, dogs, or babies into the equation… forget about it, everyone goes nuts. Let’s face it, the internet has a special place in its heart for cute, fluffy, and adorable things depicted in animated .gif form.

But, what if I told you that you could be doing something entirely more productive with your .gifs? (Well, besides using a .gif to showcase your kitty’s amazing skateboarding skills … as cool as it may be.)

While using animated .GIF ads to promote your campaigns is nothing new, maximizing your exposure, all while increasing your earnings has never been more simple to do, thanks to a couple new handy tools:

GFYCat

GFYcat is a useful site revolutionizing how the web handles .GIFs

It is .GIF hosting, but with some dandy advantages:

  • Unlimited Size
  • Speed (8 times faster than the average gif)
  • Playback options (Reverse play, slo mo, pause, etc.)
  • Automatically converts to HTML5 video

GIFcam

GIFcam is a downloadable app that can be used on your computer to record anything on the screen, and turn whatever you see into a gif, in mere seconds.

Competitive Edge - Advertise Smarter with GIFs

In a previous lesson, we outlined the importance of uniquely naming your own advertisements, hosting them yourself, and staying clear of Adblock-trigger-words.

Have you seen other webmasters using flash banners to promote a campaign?

Of course you have! That’s because flash banners are typically the #1 choice in marketing today.

Why, you might ask?

First and foremost, they look awesome visually -- and secondly, it’s like a mini-movie on the visitor’s screen, conveying (hopefully) what your product is all about, and enticing them to click (if it looks appealing enough).

And here lies the problem with flash banners... For such a premiere method of advertising, there are still a couple of drawbacks at times:

1 - Flash + Mobile = FAIL

GIFs are superior to flash when it comes down to visitors on mobile devices because well, most of the flash ads just won’t show up. Simple as that.

We’ve talked about the record growth of the mobile market -- and with more and more people buying tablets instead of actual computers. Times are definitely changing, overlooking mobile traffic is not an option anymore.

And if this first reason wasn't already enough, here's another one...

2. Ad network hosting gets blocked quicker

With regard to Ad networks… unfortunately, any and every network in the industry will find their hosted flash banners blocked almost instantly. It’s just the way of the game now. And because the average affiliate relies on sponsors to host their flash creatives, this is where they feel the weight of the drawback.

.GIFs on the other hand, stay animated -- on any device!

Here’s one way to use the information in this article to jiff up your site!

  1. Find an existing flash creative that you really like
  2. Use GIFcam to record it on your screen
  3. Upload the .GIF to GFYCAT
  4. Use your link code to link to the .GIF … And that’s it!

More people will be seeing your ads, and it will be animated for EVERYONE!

To get a little more fancy, there’s a few lines of javascript you can implement, so the browser can best determine whether to display the .GIF, or the .GIF converted into HTML5 video. Please refer to these instructions on how to embed.

Pretty neat, isn't it? We just love these tools that know how to make our lives easier!

Do you have any other smart tools you're using that could deserve a spotlight here on the blog? We want to know!

Feel free to suggest in the comments!

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