Before you fall in love with the promise of interactive ads or more robust animation, you need to be sure that any alternative technology for banner ads remains reasonably accessible and fast. One of the more promising emerging alternatives to the GIF animation is Macromedia Flash. Flash's ability to deliver more robust animations in real or near real time make it an appealing alternative. In 1997 Flash outpaced even Shockwave by almost 10 million with 23.6 million downloads. Macromedia reports 4.1 million downloads of the Flash player in January 1998 alone.
Flash offers several appealing things for Web-based advertising.
For example, full screen animations with streaming audio, which emulate standard television ads, are even possible with Flash, compliments of Macromedia's new partnership with Real Networks in the form of Real Flash. However, smaller Flash-based ads are far more viable. The ad plays once, like a television ad, and then the small window is closed using JavaScript. Location Location isn't everything, but it helps. Early Webmaster wisdom presumed that the best place for a banner ad was at the top of a Web page.