Do Banner Advertisements Work?

Yes i think youre right, just to many banners on each page. my impresions are over 40,000 per day but something like a 0.003% click through rate... what a waste of money..

Its like asking if buying ads on Google Adwords or Facebook works.
It works for some people. Not for others. A lot of factors come into play.

1. Your banner has to win attention. Use pictures of people. Use subtle animation. Use heuristics like a mouse button or a coupon border. Use shiny colors.

2. Your banner has to be placed in a position where people pay attention. If its placed in the footer, its useless. If its placed in the sidebar with 7 other banners, you should know that your click through rate will dramatically reduce - even if your banner looks better than others. Placement matter a lot. Banners in between content work the best.

But bad placement is also fine if they cost very low. The point is: don't pay for ads based on the number of impressions a page receives. Pay on placement.

3. You need to track how well your banners perform and from which websites. Use Google Analytics - campaign / source / medium feature if you don't have a better tracking app.
Tool: URL Builder - Analytics Help

4. If you are promoting on the same website, your conversion rates will reduce as more time goes by. So think of changing banner images when you see a reduction in conversion rates. If that too doesn't work, then drop the site.

5. Use banner ad networks for discovery. But try and contact the website owner and ask if you can buy ads privately too. Many of them - not all - but many will agree to it and give you a reduced rate.

6. Reduce your ad risk by starting an affiliate program. Contact website owners and ask them to put up your banner ads with their affiliate links. And if they don't see a positive rate of return, you will pay the difference in their ad rate for the first month and quit.

Eg: banners on a website go for $40 a month. Ask them to put up your banners for no upfront cost. Using their affiliate link. At the end of the month, if they've only made $25 via the affiliate program, you pay them $15 more and quit.

With this model, you can test a lot more websites and reduce your risk a bit. The downside is obvious, you will be paying more to websites where they earn more in affiliate commission than what their ad rate is. But I think its a good trade off because now, instead of buying ads on just 10 websites, you'll be able to put up banners on 30-40 websites.

7. Middle of the month, go through your statistics. And if a website is not doing well, contact the owner and ask him if he can do something to help turn the numbers around. Many a times, they will give you a link from the bottom of a new link. Or maybe even mention you in their newsletter. Or extend your banner ad for 15 more days. Never hurts to ask.

In that case, no, banners have never really worked for me very much. But I have never tested it enough to really say for sure whether or not it is a viable option.

Obviously SOME of them work or else they wouldn't be ALL OVER THE INTERNET!

Actually, no. That's a fallacy.

Many large companies buy banners for brand exposure. Their ROI is atrocious but they don't care; they're not going for conversions. They're going for repetition, repetition and more repetition.

But here's the biggest reason why it's a fallacy: There isn't perfect information flow. If you were able to survey a majority of the entrepreneurs and marketers who bought banner ads in 2011, you'd have the answer you seek.

But you can't. Best you can do is ask in a group like this, and the answers you get are self-selecting. Example: I have experience buying placements on BuySellAds but I'm not telling what that experience is. Another person may have plunged $10,000 in banner ads and be too ashamed to admit he had a net loss.

Sorry you're not feeling well.

fLufF
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Yeah Sitescout does it too, but at a higher CPM and higher minimum to play with it.