Banner ads are a familiar sight even today. They are the famous animated images that, when clicked, lead to the website of what they advertise. Several website owners will allow you to display their banner for a sum of money, in exchange for your banner being displayed on their website, or in some cases even for free.

A special possibility are PPC (Pay-Per-Click) services, where the amount of money you pay for the displayed banner varies depending on how many people click on it. Until a few years ago, most ads used the GIF format, which had numerous limitations. Today, most banners use the Flash format. Flash is a technology that allows you to design very rich content, including interesting image effects, true-color images, sounds, and interactivity, while keeping the banner ad size small enough.

Another thing that has changed in the use of banner ads is their placement. Initially, banner ads belonged only to the page header, or sometimes to the sidebar, if there was one. This is not the case.

Now let’s learn how to use these banners.

STEP 1: Mandatory planning.

There are a number of decisions you need to make in this step, especially regarding how the banner will be displayed and what will happen when the user clicks on it.

1. How will the banner be displayed? Banners placed in the header or footer of the page have the advantage of being cheap and not very annoying. They fit nicely on the page almost regardless of how they look, and there’s a good chance visitors will see them (while the page is loading or immediately after it’s loaded).

2. What will happen when the user clicks on it? If you’re advertising your brand or a service you provide, you should drive to your home page. If you’re advertising a product, you should lead to that product’s description, especially if you sell a wide range of products.

If you’re on a tight budget, you might want to consider a banner exchange program, like neobanners.com. If you can afford the expense, you can do some research and find high-traffic websites willing to show

your flag Many online magazines, for example, do this, and in fact, so do many popular portals, such as Yahoo! However, they do have a set of strict guidelines.

If you don’t want to do this research and want a very reliable banner exchange service, you should consider Google AdWords. However, since Google AdWords is a “frontier” service, it requires certain

special techniques to use.

Who would want to display your banner for free? That’s pretty obvious: people who appreciate you, or what you’re doing, or your product or service. These are your fans.

Lots of people have a personal website, blog, and signature that they use on many forums. If they like your product enough, they may be willing to display your banner. In this case, the banner does not have to be complicated. In fact, a button-like image with your logo is enough.

If you intend to allow people to do this, be sure to include these banners on your web page for them to copy.

STEP 2: Design the banner.

When it comes to ads, this is probably the trickiest step if your creative skills aren’t very good. Fortunately, there are ways to overcome this lack of inspiration.

One option is to use specialized computer software. Tools like Swish (swishzone.com) let you design Flash animations without much knowledge of Flash technology, and they also include a fair number of templates.

You can find even more of these templates on Google, and you only need to change the text and images, which is easy to do after ten minutes of reading the help file.

The other possibility is to pay a specialist. Since banner ads are a common requirement, a talented designer won’t charge you a fortune. You can find someone to do this for you by randomly googling artist portfolios.

Or you can compare quotes and qualifications of numerous professionals at once, in freelancer

websites such as elance.com, rentacoder.com, and guru.com.

These independent websites typically employ a customer review and rating system, allowing you to check the track record of those who bid on your project and anyone you wish to invite to bid.

STEP 3: Publish your banner.

This process is usually automatic. Link exchange services usually require you to simply upload your banner via an online form and will provide you with detailed instructions. Large websites that offer advertising opportunities (such as Yahoo!) often use a similar method.

STEP 4: Promote your business.

Gone are the days when you simply had to have some kind of internet presence to “get the clicks” and, if you were lucky, a worthwhile number of sales. The emphasis now among Internet marketers is very much on proactivity.

One form of advertising supports and promotes another, and it is essential that you use various ways to draw attention to your message if you want it to be heard and acted upon.

Thanks to the magic of fast and wide communication through online social networking sites (OSNs), blogs, bookmarks, clouds, article sites (outside of NSOs), etc., together with the networking sites of direct businesses like Ryze, Ecademy, LinkedIn and many more, there is no practical limit to the openings available to promote your business.