Banner ads -- yes or no?

Ever wonder if the banner ads that you carefully avoid clicking on really work for the advertiser?  Or are they just another example of the visual pollution that comes with life on the web?  A number of writers say banner ads aren't particularly effective, for example Andrew K Kirk at FaceTheBuzz in his article, "Ultimate Banner Ad Stats #Infographic." Here's an excerpt:

For a cross-section of how marketers/advertisers spend their dollars, take a look at Marketing Land's library page titled, "Statistics: online advertising."  There's also Wikipedia's definition of online advertising.

Of the many avenues open to online advertisers, two stand out right now -- social media and mobile.  The site Black Box Social Media talks about social media psychology in advertising in this blog article.  I particularly like the example about P.T.Barnum, possibly the world's best marketer:

It’s said that P.T. Barnum would hire a man to stand in the middle of a road and drag a large block back and forth across it all day the week before the circus opened.  People would come in droves and ask what he was doing and why? He wouldn’t say a word but on the day the circus opened and with the largest crowd watching, he would drag the block into a tent. Many would follow. Others would run off and tell their friends where he had finally gone and they too would follow.

For more insight into social media, here's a collection of articles on the psychology of social networking from Psychology Today.   Which brings me to my original starting point, social psychology, a somewhat scary field of research.  Take a look at some of the original experiments.

Digiday has published information on a new type of advertising termed "Native advertising (Jack Marshall)."  What catches my eye are the links to articles on the right side of the page.

Oh, and by the way, a Science News article from 2007 states that "Subliminal Advertising Leaves Its Mark On The Brain."

-- Marge