I posted on a webmaster board recently about a banner that was running on that site that disturbed me. I was mostly joking, but the banner featured a closeup of a woman's face, focused primarily on her eyes. I'm guessing the idea was to mesmerize me into clicking the banner, but it didn't work.

There were a couple things that bothered me about the banner, one of which was that the company's name was very small and turned so it ran vertically up the right side of the banner and unless you twisted your neck, it was almost impossible to read, and the other, the one that really got me, was the chick's eyes. They looked like black holes. They weren't blue and alluring, they were black and dark and definitely weren't having the desired effect on me, assuming that the desired effect was to get me to click on the banner.

We've been hearing for years that banners just don't work as an advertising tool anymore, and yet there they are, on just about every website you go to, some of them even blinking and talking to you. Is it true that they don't work, and if so, why are webmasters still using them? Personally, I think banners do work, but only when they're designed well and used effectively.

When we compare the click through stats for banners and compare them to the stats for well written text links, we will usually find that the text links work far better. But, is that because text links work better than banners, or is it because most of the banners just suck? I think a properly written text link will out perform most banners on most web pages, but there are lots of places that a well-positioned banner will work very well. If you are building a TGP gallery, for example, and you put a banner at the top of the page, above the thumbs, it's probably going to have a poor click-through rate, but if you start with some enticing text to set the mood, like "If this babe doesn't get your dick hard, you're gay or need Viagra. Click here to watch her get ass fucked in this free video.", I can almost guarantee you'll get a decent click rate. Does this mean you should leave the banner off completely? No, it just needs to hit the surfer at the right time. If you start with a text link and then show some thumbs and then hit them with the banner, it will be much more effective, especially if the banner isn't the standard 468x60, but a nice big odd-sized banner, and if the banner knock their socks off.

Another reason a lot of banners perform poorly on galleries and freesites is because the webmaster gives away too much hardcore and the banner certainly isn't going to get a surfer's attention if it's sitting in the middle of a bunch of thumbs showing hardcore sucking and fucking. But, if you keep the hardcore to a minimum and focus more on using the gallery pics to tease the surfer and then slam them with a killer hardcore banner, especially if you've built it yourself and used the same chick that's featured on your gallery and save the most explicit shot for the banner, I assure you, the banner will be effective.

Hey, there's a novel concept, don't use the sponsor's tired old banners, build your own. I've written about that before and also espouse building your own tours, but I digress.

Another big reason banners aren't effective and doesn't necessarily prove that banners are worthless, is something I mentioned earlier in this article. Designing an effective banner requires talent. Just putting a sexy picture and a line of text that says "Our content is the best" isn't going to cut it. First, you've got to get the viewers attention, but once you've got it, you've got to make them click on the banner. If I can't tell what the hell you're trying to sell me, I'm not going to click on the banner just because there's a pretty girl on it. There are probably already plenty of pictures of pretty girls on the page I'm looking at already anyway.

One of the biggest points I think most webmasters miss is one of the main reasons large companies still pay huge amounts of money to display banners on websites. Branding. Which brings me to another point I made earlier about the name of the site being difficult to read. If you're banner prominently displays the name of your website and also lists the url with the .com on the end, it doesn't need to be clicked to be effective. Building brand awareness should be an important part of any marketing campaign, especially if you are advertising a service oriented website or a paysite. Surfers won't always be in the mood to check out what you're advertising at the specific moment they see your banner or won't be in the market for your service at that particular time, but if you get your site's name in front of them often enough or prominently enough that they at least read it and remember it, at some point you might still make a sale when they type it in some day.