Banner advertising has gone through a full cycle of good, bad and ugly, and has returned to the good, for the most part. Read on to find out more about the current state of banner advertising.

In the early years when banner ads were new, they were novel and interesting. After a time, they became over-used, and at some point, users learned to tune them out, acting as if the banners were almost invisible. Eventually, most advertisers moved away from them for a while, but there were always a few holdouts, a few mavericks that managed to figure out how to make them effective.

Some times this involved moving images, usually implemented in the .gif format. As these got more involved, their size increased along with the complexity. As few web surfers had high bandwidth connections, they again fell out of favor because they took too long to load. With the increasingly available broadband connections via Cable-modem (roadrunner and such) and DSL through the phone company, the size and complexity of the banners doesn’t matter quite so much any more.

The use of banner ads is somewhat cyclic. They come, they get over used or ignored, they go, and after a while the cycle repeats. With each cycle, it is if there is a new crop of banner creators, and for some reason they have to learn the same way as their predecessors: Try, experiment, go overboard, then quit.

However, as you might imagine, there are still some prime examples of the good, bad and ugly for banners out there.

On the good side, they provide a graphical presence that is not immediately communicated with text. As they say, “one picture can be worth a thousand words.” Properly and tastefully done, they can fit well with a web site design, and draw the attention of the viewer to the desired message or action.

In some cases, they provide a bad influence on the page. A banner ad with a garish color scheme or moving elements is a major distraction for someone trying to read the text on a web page. Static images can often be just as effective without being overly distracting. Yes, we want the user to notice the banner ad, but we don’t want the banner ad to detract from our message either.

Improperly or over-done, they can be downright ugly, providing little more than an obnoxious or irritating distraction for the viewer, in some cases to the point that the user leaves the page to avoid them.

With some careful attention to detail, it is possible to create tasteful and effective banner ads that will continue to produce results even well into the next cycle.

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