We are going to be talking about Banner Advertising. Contrary to popular beliefs and commentary, banner advertising is sill a viable means of advertising your affiliate program. However, as the title suggests, the success of any banner advertising will be based on location, location, location.

A Banner Ad is a form of advertising that entails taking an advertising "banner" and embedding this advertisement into a web page. Its given intent is to attempt to attract traffic to the given website or product that the advertisement is promoting. Normally these types of advertisement are created from an image, Java Scripting, or other type of multimedia objects such as Shockwave or Flash.

Banner ads, to date, are still one of the most efficient and practical means of getting targeted traffic to a given website or promotion. But, there are some rules and insider secrets that you need to know to make sure that your banner ad campaign is a success.

One of the keys to any successful campaign is to make sure that your banner advertising does not look like banner advertising. As you have already probably noticed from your travels on the web, banner advertising is everywhere and quite frankly most of it is pretty annoying. So how are you to distinguish your self from the crowd and make sure that your banner advertising works?

If you visit my website for your affiliate linked banner ads, you will note that they are simple, tasteful, and elegant. No flashing lights, no dancing robots, no in your face video. There is a reason for that. In a recent study that was conducted it was determined that almost all internet surfers have trained themselves to ignore banner advertising at a subconscious level. So if you are trying to put an in your face banner ad out there you are almost assuredly guaranteed fail. That is why we went through a great expense to develop these banner ads for you.

So the first rule of banner advertising is to keep it simple. No high flash animation or any of that other fancy programming that just turns people off. Keep it simple and tasteful. That's it, no great secret here.

Now the next insider secret to making sure that you have the results that you want with your banner advertising is to make your banner ad appear as if it part of the text that you are using. For example if you were creating a blog post and wanted to include the banner ad to make sure that you got the maximum exposure you should take the time to create a post that incorporates the banner into the text. For example;

Having a banner ad that does not look like a traditional banner ad, practically guarantees that your banner ad will not get over looked. If done correctly your banner ad should prompt an individual reader to want to click on the "banner ad" for more information.

Or for example you could write a blog that reviews my home study course and use the banner ad in the article/blog post itself;

The key to remember is that you are to incorporate it into your post as part of the post. Don't do what everyone else does and try to put it at the top, or bottom, or side of a website.

Now, you also have the option of using banner advertising free and pay sites to promote your program. The downside to this is of course that more often than not they are going to want to place reciprocal links on your site. What you choose to do is totally up to you, but in my humble opinion I frown upon that and find that using embedded organic banner adds to much more successful and much more cost effective.

Here is another rule of banner advertising that is most often overlooked. Any piece of advertising is always more effective when it is located where people want to see it! That is why posting your banner ad in an article or blog post to make it look like part of the article is so powerful. People are expecting to see it. It is part of the information they are looking for and as such they are more likely to "click through" when the advertising is relevant, located where they want to see it, and presents the information they are looking for.

Keeping it simple,

E. Alan Cowgill

P.S. Don't fall into the trap of paying to place your banner ads; most of the time the only ones making money are the ones promoting the service to post your ad.