digitalv - 2:46 am on Jan 29, 2010 (gmt 0)

The opinions on this subject tend to lean towards not doing it, I'm one of the few who detracts from traditional thinking and say "go for it".

Why? Simple - because there are two types of visitors to an e-commerce site: those who came there looking to buy something, and those who just came there looking and might not even know how they got there in the first place.

Why turn down one type of visitor in favor of another? Someone who came to your site ready to spend money isn't going to be distracted by an ad, they know what they want and they're going to buy it. If they don't see what they want, or don't like the price, they're moving on - why NOT give them somewhere else to look and make a buck on the 1-2% that are likely to click an ad on their way out.

When you think about it, it's no different than having a physical store in the mall - you have your store, and surrounding it are everyone else's advertisements. People still spend their money if you have what they want. If the concept of ads and commerce didn't mix, no one would have a store in the mall.

I don't run ads on every ecommerce site I manage, but on the ones that do there was no decline in sales resulting from adding the ads, and a few hundred bucks a month per site in ad revenue is just free money from traffic that was "just passing through" anyway.