Banner Ad Exchanges

Most people will agree publicly that they never click on banner

ads. Then they go home and click on them without even knowing it. Banner ads

today are all about creative placement which can work well when done right.

It’s true that they’ve lost their effectiveness significantly… In 1994, webmasters

could EXPECT 5% or more clickthru rates for semi-targeted banner ads! We

were in the infancy of marketing on the internet and back in those days we all

thought that Advertising wouldn’t go very far online! How naive we all were…

But in 2000, Harvard University did an in-depth experiment on web surfing with

the conclusion that we had trained ourselves to avoid looking at banner ads.

Specifically, the strip across the top 10% of the screen was virtually invisible to

us already.

Clickthru rates plummeted from 5% way down to 0.0005%, and I have no idea

where they are today. The same old banner ads simply won’t ever work again.

So, why did I rate them 3 out of 5 for quantity?

Advertisers have figured out how to make banner ads somewhat effective again.

They simply move them around on the page, make them into different shapes,

turn them vertical, or whatever else to vary them from one page to the next.

They look different, and generally webmasters know to only place very targeted

ads on their sites, because the more targeted the ads are to their content, the

better the clickthru rate will be.

The method that allows you to get access to this form of advertising for free is

called a Banner Exchange. Like a traffic exchange, these work by you

exchanging impressions with other webmasters.

All you have to make is a single banner, (obviously the more, the better) and

place it along with your website profile into one of the many Banner Exchange

services. The drawback is that you have to find a site to display other people’s

banners on your site… A catch that most sales websites can’t afford to live with.

If you can find room on your website for such a banner, these do move some

traffic around pretty well now that they’ve divided up all members sites into

categories… That way you’ll only show ads on your site from other websites in

your own general nic he. And the more times you show that banner, the more

times yours will be seen.

Overall, it’s an average traffic generation method, nothing too powerful. Perhaps

you’ll have a use for this kind of traffic, but in most cases I’d say that you could

do much better.

If you’re interested, you can easily find a good exchange by googling: "Best

Banner Exchange." Often you’ll see Banner ad exchanges built into other

services mentioned here such as traffic bars and surf exchanges.