That’s what John Reese famously said. Banner ads are the most overlooked goldmine on the internet when it comes to traffic generation.

So what are banner ads?

Banner ads are are basically those images you see on websites. They use to be very popular during the dot-com boom. During the dot-com boom, whenever you go to a website, you’ll always see a lot of flashy banners over the place. But after the dot-com boom busted, banner ads became really ineffective. It was said to have a very low click-through-rate, when in fact, it is quite effective.

Most advertisers stay away from banner ads because of its poor reputation and poor effectiveness. But actually, it’s one of the best way of getting dirt cheap visitors – ideal for those on a budget. I still remember during dot-com boom where banner ads soared as high as 100 per 1000 impressions (CPM), but since the dot-com boom busted, a lot of people left behind the idea of using banner advertisements.

And now you can get banner ads dirt cheap, dirt dirt cheap, as low as just $0.2 per 1000 impressions. Some excellent banner advertisement sites you can go to are:

• http://www.valueclickmedia.com
• http://www.hahapaymenowptc.com
• http://adwords.google.com
• http://www.1800banners.com

You can also use banner networks, which are quite effective as well. You are just basically swapping banner impressions with another banner advertisers. So if you display 1000 impressions on your website, then your banner ads will be displayed on other people’s website for 1000 impressions. It is like swapping in a network.

Unlike pay-per-click marketing, banner ads are paid dependent om impressions, in other words, the number of times it is displayed. So the higher the click-through-rate, the less money you need to pay per visitor. So how can you get a high click-through-rate?

Interestingly enough, the most effective banners actually use words. They are images as file, but the images has words on it. Some words you can use to boost your click-through-rate:

• views
• how to
• discover
• secrets
• new

Reverse psychology also works quite good. For example, “Don’t click on here unless you want to make money.”

Lets talk about where you can banners designed and made for you. You can get it outsourced at places like:

• http://www.rentacoder.com
• http://www.guru.com
• http://www.scriptlance.com

I’ll talk more about outsourcing in another post – if I get enough comments or requests 🙂

You can also use photoshop or flash and make it yourself. Since it is just words, it should be quite simple to make it.

Let’s recap on what banners ads are: banner ads are just image advertisements that were once really popular during dot com boom, and now has been left behind and forgotten.

Post your comments and let me know what YOU think about banner advertising 🙂

Stanley Tang