You've all seen the narrow banner ads all over most of the web sites out there. Ever wonder how they got there, and what do other webmasters know that you don't know? What they know is how to get advertising. But does it really work? How expensive is it? Can I get some for free?

Banner Exchanges

What is banner advertising?

There are as many different ways of doing banner advertising as there are sites offering the service. On the surface it really is simple and breaks down into two categories:

Let's swap banners and each get more traffic. You can do this with a specific site where you each run the other's banner and get traffic from each other's sites. Or, you can enter into a banner exchange program, where you run random banners for other sites and other random sites run your banner. For every banner you run for someone else, you get to run some portion of a banner on other sites. The difference is used by the exchange service to make a living and pay their expenses. They sell it to paid advertisers.

I have lots of traffic and want to make money by selling ad space on my site to techsupport support my site and myself. Just like a magazine selling ads, but you only pay for the actual number of people that see your ad.

Notice in the above scenario, the phrase, 'see your ad' not 'read your ad'. All a banner provider can guarantee is that your ad will appear on the page. They can't promise that anyone will read it, or if they do, that they will click on it to visit your site.

Click-through is measured in 'how many people click on the banner out of how many that actually saw it?' A click-through of 20:1 means that for every 20 viewers, one visited the site. By the way, 20:1 is very good. Average is 35:1 to 50:1.

The Banner Exchange Services

Over the past year, many services have sprung up to techsupport webmasters find other sites to exchange banner advertising with. This is a valuable service to site promoters and deserves a close look to see if it fits your needs.

The basic formula works like this, you submit a banner ad to the Exchange and give them a URL that you want them to point to. They give you some HTML code to insert into your page (or pages) so that your site will start displaying banners from the exchange's inventory. Each time a visitor comes to the page you have designated to include a banner ad, the user's browser links to the server for the exchange and pulls up a random banner and displays it on your page. The exchange keeps track of how many banners you have displayed on your site, and gives you credit for that many hits so that you can have your banner run on other sites. Most of the time, the exchange gives you only a certain percentage of the credits your site earns. Why? They have to make a living, too. So the difference is used by them to sell to advertisers for cash or they use them to promote their exchange to get new members.

Beware of exchanges that offer huge banner ads or large file size banners. Some even spit out 5 banners for each call from a site. Imagine adding 50K of size to your home page! Really irritates the visitor.

Beware of exchanges that allow unlimited animation in the banners. They can be really long downloads and can also be very gaudy. Don't forget, not everyone is a graphic artist.

We suggest you take advantage of the FREE banner exchange networks. You should make sure that the exchange carries ads for sites appropriate to your audience. Most allow you to exclude adult theme site ads, but if you want more restriction than that, seek out a specialty exchange. They do exist.

Don't freak out when you discover that every exchange and paid advertising site has a different standard for ad size, file size and content restrictions. Some ads are 40x400 pixels, some are 50x500, 50x250, 50x200...... Some limit you to 7K files, others have no limit (avoid these completely!) and some don't allow animated banners. The more restrictive, the better. Big ads with lots of file size and animation irritate your visitors while they wait for this huge thing to download. Remember that the visitor doesn't care about your advertising program. He/she just wants to have fun and get information. You must work the advertising into your overall site planning, and don't irritate your visitors

Buying banner ads

This particular type of advertising is very risky, so we recommend that before starting down this path, do your homework. Visit a lot of advertising information sites and read everything. When you sign a contract for advertising space, make sure you know what you are getting. Are you getting traffic or impressions? Impressions means that your ad will be displayed to a certain number of viewers. Traffic (or click through) means that you pay only for people that actually click on your ad and visit your site. Traffic is more expensive than impressions.