Banner ads are web advertising images that link back to your site. They come in varying types, sizes, and costs. They are placed on high traffic sites such as search engines and portals, or on complementary sites that are related to, but not competitive with your site. Their goal is to drive traffic from the banner ad site to yours.
 

Placement on Search Engines

Consider placing a banner ad on one of the search engine sites (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Excite). You can select targeted keywords which, when typed, will cause your banner ad (usually text only) to appear.  You can also  choose to have your text-only ad appear on selected search results pages. Ads on image-free Google and Yahoo search results pages yield 15 times the industry average click through rate.
 

Billing

There are generally two different ways of billing for banner ad placement:

• Cost per thousand impressions (views) - You are charged a fixed fee for every 1,000 people who see your ad, regardless of whether they click on it.
• Cost per click - You are charged a fee for each person who clicks on your banner ad, sending them to your site
   

Types of Banner Ads

• Text only
• Image: GIF or JPG
• Animation: Usually animated GIFs
• Rich Media: Video, Special effects, applets embedded in ad
   

Banner Exchanges

You can also offer to display banner ads from other sires on your site if they agree to display your banner ad on their site. There are also banner exchange services that will get your banner ad placed once for every two ads you agree to place on your site. These include:

• Hyperbanner.com - Interactive setup. Choose a category of web site for placement from 20 choices.
• MSN Link Exchange - Largest link exchange with 150,000 member sites. 300 categories of web sites to choose from. Offers mailing list services.
• Smart Age - 38 site categories. Will shift your banner ad to a different category automatically if click through data indicates a more relevant category placement for your site.
   

Earthlink Banner Ads

• Submit one ad to Earthlink that is placed on thousands of sites.
• Your ad can be up and running in 5 days
• You choose the category and maximum amount to spend
• Ad requirements:
• File format: GIF image
• Banner size: 468 pixels by 60 pixels
• File size: Must be less than 20KB
• Steps to follow to place ad:
• Create banner gif
• Email it to customerservice@digitalwork.com
• Provide the URL that the banner ad should link to
• Select type of distribution
• Run of network - Broad audience ($10 per 1000 impressions)
• Category (16 choices) - Targeted ($20 per 1000 impressions)
• Select campaign size - Amount you’d like to spend on your banner ad placement.
• $100 - 10,000 impressions from Run of Network, or 5,000 impressions from Targeted Category
• $200 - 20,000 impressions from Run of Network, or 10,000 impressions from Targeted Category
• $500 - 50,000 impressions from Run of Network, or 25,000 impressions from Targeted Category