There are several ways that tell whether or not your banner ad is worth keeping.

You need to somehow keep track of your page Impressions. This term is the number of times a particular web page has been requested from the server. Advertisers are interested in knowing how many page views they are being offered before they do a banner exchange with you. If you don't have a high rate of page impressions then the banner ad is not doing much for you.

Another thing to do is examine your Click-through rate (CTR). This describes the ratio of page views to clicks. It tells you in the form of a percentage the total number of web visitors who actually clicked on the banner ad. The typical click-through-rate of payment is a measly 1 percent and if you are not even making that then the program is not working for you.

If you are thinking of starting a banner ad click through or pay per click type ad campaign you should make sure that the banner relates to your web content. Otherwise you could confuse both search engine spiders and people looking for you.

It is also a good idea to put banner ads at the top of the page rather than further down. Yet another tip is to link the banner ad to the page on your web page that features the same as it helps raise your rankings in the search engine. The hitch with this and also the reason why trading banners may not be worth your time is that many banner exchanges won't do the trade with you unless you can guarantee that you will place the banner on your home page!