Member Avatar for Young Teck 06

Okay, all my online literate and advertising and marketing people, let's have a poll. I have been debating with another guy at another forum which is more affective: banner ads or text links?

Please help me out and vote here!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by net4nuts

Dani AI

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Short answer: neither format is inherently “more effective” — it depends on the goal. Search/text ads win for intent-driven clicks and conversions; display/banner units win for reach, storytelling and retargeting. Benchmarks show search/text CTRs are many times higher than typical display CTRs, so treat display as an upper‑funnel investment rather than a direct‑response shortcut. WordStream 2025 PPC benchmarks and industry CTR summaries illustrate the gap. (wordstream.com)

This matches the practical points raised earlier by and (branding vs. SEO) and by // (text formats often convert better). Two important rider notes: users develop “banner blindness,” so standard banners get skimmed or ignored; creative, placement and native/in‑feed formats materially change outcomes. Academic and eyetracking work plus recent ad‑format studies back this up — native/in‑feed units often lift attention/CTR while banners can still drive downstream conversions when paired with good targeting. (jnd.org)

About text links and SEO: earned editorial backlinks remain one of the strongest correlates with organic rankings, but buying links that pass PageRank is risky. Large analyses show link signals correlate with higher rankings, and Google’s guidance treats link schemes (buying/selling links that pass ranking value) as spam. If paying for placement for visibility, require rel="sponsored" or nofollow and treat that as paid advertising — not as a shortcut to SEO. (backlinko.com)

Practical checklist (apply immediately):

  • Pick the KPI first (brand lift, assisted conversions, CPA).
  • Split budget: allocate a top‑of‑funnel display/native bucket and a bottom‑funnel search/text bucket.
  • Test creatives, measure view‑through conversions and run brand‑lift or incremental experiments for awareness buys.
  • Use frequency caps, segment by device, and account for ad blockers (significant in many markets).
  • For SEO, invest in content/PR that earns links; avoid paid‑link schemes. (thinkwithgoogle.com)

These tradeoffs explain why the thread shows mixed votes: both formats work when chosen, targeted, and measured against the right objective.

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All 7 Replies

Member Avatar for pulse

:) From my tests and experience, Text ads are more effective.

Member Avatar for Dani

It completely depends what you're trying to accomplish. Banner ads work best for branding once a site is successful and established. They are pretty good at getting some word of mouth going as well. Text links work best to boost SEO. Having inbound text links will convince the search engines that your site is worth investigating - the more backlinks, the deeper the spiders will crawl and the more pages they'll index.

Member Avatar for mddv

It completely depends what you're trying to accomplish. Banner ads work best for branding once a site is successful and established. They are pretty good at getting some word of mouth going as well. Text links work best to boost SEO. Having inbound text links will convince the search engines that your site is worth investigating - the more backlinks, the deeper the spiders will crawl and the more pages they'll index.

That is very true dani. Banners help with branding and text links help with search engine popularity. But they both do the same thing if you do it effectivly and that is drive traffic.

Good Luck

Member Avatar for platnumcn

Of course, it would be text link.

Member Avatar for sanora

Its a proven thing, that text ads are more effective than of banners....

Member Avatar for Dani

My post in this thread from 2005 (back when AdSense was a baby and buying text links wasn't considered so taboo) suggested that text links work because of their SEO benefit. I still think text links work, but now I'm talking about the AdSense kind ... contextual ads that can be much more tailored towards a particular page's content than banner ads ever could. Text ads work better because they tend to be more relevant.

Member Avatar for net4nuts

Well.. i kinda agree with most of the responses here... It totally depends on what you are trying to achieve... both Banner and Text Link ads are equally usefull, provided you use them according to your target viewers, webpage where you are placing ads and the context !

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