Awarded at Toronto "Ultra Advanced SEO Symposium" Nov. 2005.

Banner advertising

Banner advertising is still widely used on the Internet. In the early hey days when 'everyone' and his dog was supposed to be online and shopping - driving prices of the Dot Com share prices through the roof, banner adverts were all the rage.

Banner ads are priced in impressions. So if a banner ad is displayed 1000 times and the cost per impression is say $1, the cost per 1000 impressions is $1000. Needless to say the price of banner impressions dropped dramatically when the people paying the bills figured out that people often saw the same banner more than once - in other words the same pair of eyes belonging to the same human being ended up costing them wasted money...

So the price per 1000 impressions dropped, the online ad revenues collapsed as did the whole Dot Com bust - which left a sour taste in many peoples mouths.

Still banner ads are offered and in some instances they are worth investigating if one can cap the price and the banner is prominently displayed on a high traffic site. Further, anyone clicking the banner needs to be accurately tracked in order to assess the nett cost per click.

Google's patented Cost Per Click campaigns have completely revolutionised the way that online advertising takes place. You only pay per click and Google targeted methodology of matching adverts precisely to relevant content means that the targeted visitor is eminently more pre qualified to suit your product or service. Google's PPC is currently the market leader and offers better quality advertising than it's major competitor which is Yahoo's Search Marketing.