A banner ad is the small, persistent ad shown at the top or bottom of a mobile app's screen. Banners are always visible — they don't interrupt user flow, they don't take over the screen, they just occupy a strip of pixels. This persistence is both their strength (continuous impression volume, no user disruption) and their weakness (low attention, low brand recall, low eCPM).
Banner eCPM is the lowest of all mobile ad formats (2026 anchors):
- US iOS: $0.50-2.
- US Android: $0.30-1.50.
- Western Europe: similar to US, slightly lower.
- India / Brazil Android: $0.10-0.50.
Compared to interstitials ($5-15) or rewarded video ($10-25), banner eCPM is 5-50× lower. The trade-off is volume: a banner can serve hundreds of impressions per session per user, while interstitials serve 3-5 and rewarded video serves whatever the user opts into.
When banners still make sense
- Utility / productivity apps with long session times — a banner running for 30 minutes of session time can serve 30+ impressions on a 60-second refresh, multiplying low eCPM into meaningful revenue.
- Content browsing apps where the user scrolls for extended periods — banner persistence aligns with browsing behavior.
- Casual games with long active gameplay — banner runs during play without interrupting.
- Apps where interstitial / rewarded placement is awkward — no natural break points, no opt-in moments.
When to drop banners
- Premium consumer apps where banner ads compromise the brand experience.
- Short-session apps where banner volume is too low to compensate for low eCPM.
- Subscription-monetized apps where banner ads conflict with the "pay to remove ads" value proposition for the free tier.
- Hyper-casual games that monetize primarily through interstitials and rewarded video — banners add complexity without much incremental revenue.
The broader 2026 trend: publishers are replacing banner inventory with fewer but higher-eCPM formats. A single rewarded video impression often beats 30 banner impressions on the same user-session economics.
Technical considerations
- Refresh rate: banners refresh every 30-60 seconds (configurable). Faster refresh = more impressions but lower per-impression engagement; slower = vice versa.
- Anchoring: bottom banners typically outperform top banners on engagement (less visual conflict with primary content).
- Adaptive sizing: modern banner formats adapt to device width; older fixed-size banners (320×50) get progressively smaller on larger phones / tablets.
- Smart banner / native banner formats: hybrid banner formats that look more like native UI — typically 2-3× the eCPM of standard banners.