Guides 
Banner Advertising
- Search Engine Registration
- Banner Advertising
- Site Design
After you finish your banner design, you can use several methods to post your banner. Since banners are used to attract Internet surfers to visit your sites, it is important to put your banner in the pages of other web sites. You might want to put your banners on your own site in order to keep visitors there, but there are more effective methods for that. Normally, your banners are best left on other web sites.
Banner Exchange Services
Banner exchange services are a great source for free advertising. They use the power of the internet network to allow web sites and advertisers to reach a wide range of targeted audiences. You can join one or several exchange networks, agree to display some banners of other sites on your site, and in return, those banner services will display your banner on other sites. Normally how often your banner is displayed is based on how many times your site displays other banners. Some banner exchange networks may provide other free services such as statistics tracking.
The most famous banner exchange services are LinkExchange and SmartClicks. Dir: All Internet World has a list of Banner Exchange Networks.
Buying Space
If you don't like the idea of banner exchange services, and want to put your banner on some specific sites, you need to spend money to buy the space there. The price ranges are quite large depending on the site you choose and the success measuring methods you use.
The most common method for determining banner advertising rates is on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) impression basis. An impression (page view) occurs when a visitor to a Web site views a page where an ad is displayed, whether the ad is seen or not. Keep in mind that most sites have repeat visitors, and most visitors view more than a single page of information, so your 100,000 impressions could actually represent 10,000 to 40,000 unique visitors. The current industry standard rates for CPM also vary greatly, from $1 to $100 or more, depending on the theme and audience of the site. The average cost for large web sites is $30-35 CPM.
You can read the article Exploding The WEB CPM Myth written by Rick Boyce in Internet Advertising Bureau to learn more about CPM.
Some advertisers prefer to pay based on "click-throughs", or the number of visitors they get from the links on their banners on other sites, which is a direct measurement of response and ad performance. A click through occurs when the visitor sees or reads the ad and clicks on it, taking them directly to the advertiser's Web site. Sometimes a visitor will click, but quit before the other Web site is displayed. Most web sites try to avoid selling advertising this way because poorly designed ads won't be clicked on, reducing ad revenue.
Many other advertising models require performance results before the Web advertising site is paid, which is usually based on percentage of sales.
Ad Resource has the Sample Ad Rate Guide.
Many advertisers find that it is s best to use an advertising representation firm to buy ad space for you. They provide services of ad sales, ad serving, ad targeting, ad tracking/reporting, third party audits and billing and collections. These companies have much more experience and good networks, but are often expensive. Depending on your order, some are willing to give you a discount.
Ad Resource has a list of these Advertisting Companies including DoubleClick, Engage Media.
If you want to learn more about banner advertising, please go to our Resource section to see other sites we've collected for you. Or go to our Examples section to check our Analysis of a Banner Advertising Sample.
