In the early days of the WWW, there was not even a single debate on the superiority of online banner ads. As web emerged as a successful medium for advertising, several entrepreneurs started to bet on the easy and effective transfer of ads from Television, the king of advertising, to the web.

As banner ads started to gain popularity as the right step towards full multimedia video ads, they were extensively used on the net, previously shown on Television. Later it had to face several billion dollars worth of losses and with this many dreams got shattered. Experts were forced to revaluate the part of online advertisements, particularly that of banner ads. or
At this time text ads had started making inroads silently, but with huge impact, into the web. Lastly when Google successfully launched their Adsense contextual ads, text ads could win their place on the web very clearly. But what happened to the banner ads or did they vanish forever?

In a way Adsense too played a responsible role in the resurrection of online banner ads. There is no denial that Adsense employs banner ads lavishly in their programs
Also it should be admitted that banner ad has its own advantages. You can never underestimate the impact of bright colors and powerful images of the banner ads on the viewers. Various studies have clearly revealed that the email advertising created using HTML receives a much bigger response than ordinary text email. This, without any doubt, indicates certain visual advantages which HTML enjoys and consequently banner ads also enjoy over text ads and text email.

Still it should be mentioned that text ads tend to receive much more attention than banner ads in certain situations where the ads are not targeted very specifically and when they fail to attract a particular web site audience. Only if they are highly targeted to a specific audience and very relevant to what is conveyed in the message, banner ads can effectively compete with the text ads.

Yet banner ads are very useful in their own way. They can be very effectively used for promoting and developing the image of most web based businesses on the net. Also they are very useful as an efficient web site promotion tool to improve sales and as an online agent exposing a new business to a large audience.

However, whether it is banner ads or text ads, both have their own merits that are sure to boost online advertising, thereby internet marketing as well.