Earlier this week I heard on Marketplace that the banner ad started 15 years ago.  On October 27, 1994 the web site Hotwired.com posted banner ads for Volvo, MCI, Club Med and 1-800-Collect. The click rate was 78%!   Those were the days.

In 2007, BusinessWeek reported that the average click rate on a banner ad was 0.2% according to Eyeblaster , a New York-based online ad firm.  According to Advertising Age, the click rate for display ads has dropped 50% in less than two years.

Today’s Wall Street Journal had the following comment by Colleen DeCourcy, chief digital officer at Omnicom’s TBWA:

“Banner ads will be the new junk mail.  More and more, reputable companies won’t be buying up the space around the Web sites you visit.  Clicking these ads will become less and less legitimate as brands will endeavor to do things that add more value to you in the social-media and customer-service space.”