I am not likely to click on any banner or any popup I see unless it explicitly states a price for a service or product and it seems worthy to me.
I think that websites could get more clicks if the banners had some very basic info that one could get without even entering the website (also good for sites with long loading times). This could be supported by a browser plugin - microsoft and netscape could also intergrate this feature and possibly make some money by doing so.
One would click on a portion of a banner and it would give you a quick description of exactly what was being offered and how much it costs. Also it would contain an average user rating. One could browse the user comments or see what internet sites or products a specific user gave their thumbs up to.
One could easily cut out banners that do not fit their needs (website would indicate the chategory their service or product fell into). One could also cut out anything advertised that did not fit into a certain price range. One could give priority to sites that were given possitive reviews by trusted users or users with similar tastes.
This banner service could also be used to submit sites that were not given banners on the webpage and those sites could be viewed seperate from the website one is browsing. A user would simply submit his/her username or specific websites that are similar to the one being browsed. This would be a great way to surf around.
The functionality of this is similar to the google toolbar, but not exactly the same (perhaps google could upgrade). The key difference is that it opens up more doors and the information is less arbitrary since you can view the tastes of individual users rather then what is promiced to be a "similar" or "good" website. Also ratings are from 0-100 rather then good to bad.
This should succeed because a website is not looking for their counter to rise, they are looking for genuine popularity or for products and services to be sold (if they are desired).-- dreamquixote, Aug 25 2002 //(perhaps google could upgrade).//Goddamn, boy - you want the whole friggin' net to do it your way.-- thumbwax, Aug 25 2002 Argh, not more bl**dy advertising! FISHBONE! FISHBONE! FISHBONE! (Wish I could make that pop up.)-- DrCurry, Aug 25 2002 I have *never* clicked a banner ad, nor quite probably ever will, regardless of how much extra information/how many "cool" features the banner could have. The concept of banner ads is fundamentally flawed - a large portion of internet users are quite capable of using search engines to find what the want and don't require advertisers to direct them. As such I always see banner ads as an unwanted intrusion into the "user journey" (sorry for the mid-ninties dotcom jargon folks) and as such unlikely to work. This is a sentiment that is born out if you look at the statistics of how much business is generated by banner ads.-- namaste, Aug 25 2002 Sell through business I mean UnaBubba - the advertisers do "sell" a bloody lot of them but they are of little value - its just visual spam, and won't generate many sales. Not many good companies go for the classic banner ad pay-per-click model anymore, there just isn't any proof that this is a worthwhile spend of advertising budget, and a lot of evidence that it isn't. A marketing manager of a UK software company once told me that big companies don't view banner ads as a direct route to generate traffic any more, rather as a means to keep the brand visible. If this is right it doesn't really matter what extra info the banner ad can supply, its only real vaule is to make the company logo visible.-- namaste, Aug 25 2002 Consumer advice? ("Here's how to make a better banner ad")-- phoenix, Aug 27 2002 random, halfbakery