American Express

The second generation came along very quickly. Online advertising agencies started to crop up, managing the banner advertising space for very heavily trafficked sites. If you wanted to advertise on a specific site, you worked with their online agency. To advertise with a number of heavily trafficked sites, you ended up dealing with two or three or four advertising agencies. Almost as soon as banner advertising became mainstream, it started to decline in effectiveness.

Click-through rates dropped through the floor, technology to strip out unwanted ads became very popular, and soon there was all kinds of available advertising space at dirt prices and few takers. Banner advertising was okay for branding, but terrible on generating traffic to your site. Advertisers used many techniques to try to change things. Various sizes and placement techniques were tried. Animated banner ads saw a little increase in click-throughs. Drop-down menu banner ads were somewhat effective.

Many techniques were employed, but with the exception of a few key areas, banner advertising continued to be viewed as generally ineffective.