Banner advertising is a lot like any other advertising: not all ads are equally effective. One banner for a web site can pull two or three times better - or worse! - than another for the same site. And sometimes the only difference between the two is the color of the background.
Big businesses can afford to spend a lot of money testing ads. Small businesses on limited budgets can't. So, how can you know what ads are more likely to work than others?
The answer is to test your ads for free - on your own web site. Set up your ad using an inexpensive banner tracking program running (Webadverts and BanmanPro are two that I've seen). If your budget is small keep the test simple. Try changing the background color of the ad, or the text in the banner. Run the ad on your own site to see if there are any differences. To expand the test, consider teaming up with another web site and tracking ads on each other's sites. Go with the ad that gets the most click-throughs in your tests...
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