Good Banner
I think that the animation banner from Neopets.com is pretty good. This site is a game site targeted for kids and the banners are advertisements targeted for them. The banners are really colorful which attracts the kids a lot. The banner is not really flashy and only a small portion of them it is emphasized (e.g. the cartoon character and the button “play”. If you put you mouse on top of the banner, the banner will drop down which allows audience that are interested to see more of the ad. I think this is a pretty good way to do the animation banner because its there and you don’t really get annoy over it.
Bad Banner
I thinkthe animation banners on dictionary.com are examples of bad banners because its not that visualize. The banners either have the product there and then have words sliding across or the product zipping acorss the banner and then the prices come out and then stop. I think that this type of banner is really common and commercial. It doesn’t catches the users’ eyes, thus making them want to look into the banner and learn more about it.
The neopets banner fits the site well. It’s very animated and colorful. Since children is the target audience here, the banner works very well. I like how the type interacts with the images (characters). As the character flies in, the type smoothly flies out. When the character slides in and bumps into the type, the type slightly jiggles and shakes. I thought that was a nice little element.
Dictionary.com’s banners are really simple. The one that showed up on my browser was an ad for Fidelity. The type slides in and a large orange button that says “FIND OUT NOW” pops out. There’s nothing much to see in comparison to the neopets banner. What I like about the banner is that it has a rollover effect. When cursor is over the entire banner, the over state of the button is activated, making the type expand and the text in the orange button flicker. That was the only thing interesting about the banner.