Which advertising format works best for you?

Is advertising on the web dying a slow death?

[edit_g]

There are very few sites now where a serious marketing department (<self snip> enlargement and "click the monkey" types aside) will buy advertising. Out of all the traditional online advertising methods, which ones do you think work the best now? Do any work at all for you?

I'm not looking for a "webmaster attitude to online advertising when surfing" answer. I have a pop-up blocker, I know how we feel, what I want to know is what do you feel still works!

Animated Gif Banners
HTML Banners (with forms, searches, etc)
Videotrailers
Flash Banners
DHTML Banners (also known as slide in/expandable banners)
Java Banners
Textlinks
Content Integration
Keyword sensetive advertising on SE's
Rich Media (tangozebra floaters, etc)
Pop Ups
Pop Unders
Sitewide Sponsorships
Interstitials
Superstitials
Skyscraper

What experience have you had with the different formats? What works, what doesn't?

[jeremy goodrich]

Text links - naturally.

Keyword buys on PPC search engines - yep.

Pop unders - provided they are targeted to the content of the site (eg, what the surfer was looking for when they got to your site in the first place) work perhaps 1/2 as well as text links - which is surprising to me.

As for the rest, any banner or "super banner" that resembles a regular advert - even a "targeted one" is far inferior to a well placed, contextualized text advert. Though my banner experience is based on a statistically insignificant amount of data, and should be taken with a grain of salt ;)

[mylungsarempty]

I recently encountered a site where between page loads, you watched a commercial... like on television. This is going to be the future of web-ads, i'm sure. You click a link to a page, and before seeing the page you're trying to see, you're shown a commercial. After the commercial plays, you're redirected to the page you were looking for. Remember when televisions first entered the homes of average americans? "Commercials" were little more than the host of the show taking a moment out to tell you what company sponsored the show. It just kept getting more and more elaborate, and now we sit through over half an hour of commercials in an hour long block of programming. This is the direction the web will head.

[edit_g]

These are Interstitials. They're quite restrictive for the user experience IMO - but if the user really wants the content then it can be a good way.

[chiyo]

Textlinks
Content Integration
Keyword sensetive advertising on SE's

these work best for us. We have a niche b-b readership however - not consumer.

[Jenstar]

Textlinks here.

Also, something you didn't mention in your list is newsletter and exine ads. Niche opt-in newsletters can provide some pretty significant traffic, if you target the market right. It requires some hunting to find the best ones (in terms of subscriber numbers and great content that subscribers actually read, and hence, would read your ad within the newsletter) but they can convert quite well.

[lazerzubb]

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