For it transpired that web users abhor banner ads. Some even download software which automatically blocks ads. And of those who endured the pestilence, very few clicked through to the site advertised. The conclusion is that banner ads are less effective than other media, such as hoardings and billboards, on which advertisers spends billions of dollars annually. The truth is that online banner ads are judged a failure simply because they come with a performance measure that other advertising media cannot offer.
Nobody knows how to measure the effectiveness of offline advertising with that kind of precision.
And if they did, perhaps they would come to even more pessimistic conclusions about it. Having decided that banner ads don't work, the advertising industry is tooling up to produce new kinds of online ads which will be even less effective. You do not have to be a rocket scientist to predict what will happen when these new 'interactive media units' start to consume our bandwidth. Stand by for a stampede to sites offering ad-blocking software, such as AdWiper, AdSubtract, Adfilter, Guidescope, Webwasher and the magnificently titled Internet Junkbuster Proxy. The advertising industry will then retreat again to its intellectual laager, convinced that this Internet lark will never catch on - leaving the field open for the first agency that has the imagination to work with the grain of the Net and the creativity to devise advertising genres which intrigue rather than irritate their target audiences.