Back when internet business started booming, banner exchanges was a popular way to advertise a website. An online advertising banner is generally placed on a website that is relevant to yours for the purpose of advertising your website and driving traffic to your website.

Banner advertising has declined in popularity and has, in many cases, been replaced with link exchanges rather than banner exchanges. However, publishing an online advertising banner on websites that still use online advertising banners either through exchanges or for paid advertising is still an effective method of internet marketing.

Many companies that have affiliates marketing their products and services provide affiliates with an online advertising banner to be placed on their website or in their newsletters and other publications for the purpose of promoting their products and services and directing traffic to the parent website through an affiliate link.

At any rate, advertising through a paid or exchanged online advertising banner is an internet marketing technique that is still alive and well although the use of on online advertising banner has declined in popularity.

Because of the diminished popularity of online advertising banner campaigns, websites that sell online advertising banner space are generally very inexpensive resources for paid advertising and sometimes placement of an online advertising banner can even be free. Most sites that engage in online advertising banner placement for a fee offer either a pay-per-impression option or a pay-per-click option.

Pay-per-impression is the most common program for placing an online advertising banner, but it is also pretty risky because with such programs you are paying for exposure to your online advertising banner rather than your fees being tied to the results it produces.

Pay-per-click programs that use an online advertising banner are much more reasonable and cost effective than pay-per-impression services. With a pay-per-click program, you only pay for click- throughs to your website that result from clicks on your online advertising banner. When participating in a pay-per-click online advertising banner program, you are more likely to reap benefits from your advertising dollars.

To get free exposure from an online advertising banner, it is best to join a banner exchange network, or to contact relevant websites yourself and ask them to exchange online advertising banner ads with you. In effect, you display their online advertising banner and they display yours, so it is a win-win situation in that you each get free advertising space.

In regard to the design of an online advertising banner, it needs to be produced using sound graphic techniques so that the banner ad loads quickly. A slow loading online advertising banner simply will not produce results because internet users do not have the patience to wait for graphics to load.

The information contained in an online advertising banner has to be pretty concise because of the size limitations that are generally associated with an online advertising banner.

While being brief and to the point is necessary when creating the copy for an online advertising banner, the information provided on the banner has to attract attention, provoke internet and persuade the viewer of the online advertising to banner to take action - to click on the online advertising banner so they will be directed to your website.

A well designed online advertising banner will be effective if it loads quickly, captivates attention and results in click- throughs. To meet the criteria for effectiveness, both design and copywriting issues must be considered, so it may be beneficial to work with both a graphic designer and a professional copywriter to produce an effective online advertising banner.

It is also vital that the online advertising banner be placed where it will be viewed by your target audience, so relevance of the websites on which your online advertising is placed is of utmost importance.