Banner Ads Now Themselves Have Banner Ads

by Leonard Richardson

Published on segfault.org 03/02/2001

1 original graphic missing

Once the great white hope of Internet content providers, banner advertising has fallen by the wayside. To make ends meet in these lean times, many content providers have begun accepting donations via PayPal, or branched out into more profitable businesses such as baldness cures, faith healing, and bank robbery. Now, into this web of disillusionment steps Remora, a startup proposing to rejuvenate banner advertising by augmenting it with banner advertising.

[IMAGE: A Remora banner.]

"We at always try to stay on top of the latest Internet trends," said Dario Marcos, president and CEO of Remora. "A few months ago, we came across a doozy. We uncovered the unprecedented growth of a new form of content; faster-growing than news, discussion, or even pornography. I'm talking about banner ads. The typical Internet user sees 4719.6 banner ads a day. That number is constant across age, racial, and gender demographics, and scales upward as people spend more time on the web. The facts are clear: banner ads are, by far, the most popular form of content ever created."

Indeed, companies whose business model involves showing banner ads to users have blossomed in recent years like a flowery metaphor, only to to lose enormous sums of money. After extensive research, Remora believes that it has the solution to the enigma of making money on banner ads.

Remora's reciprocal banner ad sponsorship program

"The basic problem," says Marcos, "is that banner ads are expensive to run. Organizations like DoubleClick whose business is to provide the public with banner ads are hemorrhaging cash. It just can't be done by hobbyists anymore. That's why we're stepping in and providing commercial sponsorship for banner ads, in the form of banner ads."

The way it works is simple. An organization which sells banner ads can sign up with RAN to let out a portion of its banner ad space for banner ads. The content of the secondary banner ad is under RAN control. The ad provider gets a small fee for every view of the ad, and a larger fee every time a user "clicks through" the secondary banner ad.

Since so many ad networks are strapped for cash, Remora is offering a reciprocal deal whereby struggling companies get exposure for their banner ads on RAN banner ads in exchange for showcasing RAN member banner ads on their own banner ads. "Also, money is involved," says Marcos.

Analysts are skeptical, saying that the revenue obtainable through putting banner ads on banner ads may not be enough to support Remora's staff of 400. So Remora has an additional initiative in the works, in which the banner ads on the banner ads themselves play host to banner ads. Segfault.org was provided with a recent prototype:

Prototype triply-nested banner

The triply-nested banner ad is still in development. Problems cited with the prototypes include poor legibility and the small space avaliable for click-throughs. Marcos dismisses such concerns, saying that solutions are just around the corner.

"We are confident that the widespread adoption of wideband and Flash will solve all these problems," said Marcos. "Or CSS, or something."