Plenty of your competitors will be only too glad to take the third-party served business, despite all the headaches. We're lucky to be in a niche area with a limited inventory of ad impressions. My guess is that the answer would be yes. My recommendation would be to minimize the portion of revenues generated by IAB standard banners as much as possible. I just ran the numbers, and banners only represent 14 percent of ClickZ's overall online sales year to date.
Banners are a commodity, hence diminishing in value on a daily basis.
The value they contribute to the advertiser is subject to reasonable debate, and this medium could stand for more experimentation and use of alternative ad models. Meanwhile, why don't we publishers take some positive action within our businesses to free ourselves of this burden. Andy's favorite magazines are Industry Standard and Fast Company. He goes for restaurants with character and quality and has a marked preference for red Zinfandels. Some affectionately call Andy an acquired taste.