Here is a gallery of banner ads that I have run or will run, the click-through percentage and a synopsis for each of the banners I have created.

In case you don't know what a click-through percentage means, I'll include the Diaryland explanation of it:

A click-through percentage is the percentage of times people click on the banner when they see it. An average percentage is about 2.0 % or a bit more, and anything over 3.0 % is quite good. Some banners get as high as 4 or even 5 %, and those are exceptional. Don't worry if these number don't sound too hot to you, they really are amazing.

Commercial banners you see on normal websites get about a 0.1 % click-through these days, if that, but diary banners have gotten huge click-through rates since we first offered them on this site, and that's why people love them so much and get so many readers from them.

A 2 to 5 % click-through rate is rather decent in terms of e-commerce ad campaigns. Of course the results are slightly skewed since 100% of the users who see those ads are diaryland users themselves and those who read other diaries are likely to click on a diary that may be of possible interest to them.

My main beef with the diaryland banner system is that they show up on the utilities page where you do stuff like add entries and change your template and the like. When the servers are running smoothly, banner ads should pop up normally.

When the servers are running slow however most people, especially the ones with the free accounts, have to constantly refresh until the server lets up and allows you to either add an entry or change your template. The majority of the ads that show up are Diaryland's own "GOLD" membership promotion.

That's all well and good, but when diaryland bloggers are burning through paid ads because they are refreshing their browser rapidly because they are frustrated with a server that won't allow them to update, that is rather uncool. I say, the refresh page due to server slow-down should only show Gold ads and nothing else so the the ad counts don't get wasted. But enough with my rant, on with the banners...

• This banner was inspired by the Matrix in the scene when Morpheus seemingly hacked into Neo's computer and communicated to him via screen. I thought it would make a rather cool first banner.

click-through = 1.8 %

• This one is following the "subliminal" theme of Fight Club. I made the ad similar background to the FC special edition DVD packaging. Now granted you aren't a hummingbird, so if you didn't catch the subliminal flashes, they are "SEX" and this.

click-through = 1.7 %

• Another FC inspired banner of Tyler asking you to "click me has hard as you can...".
  
  "Somehow this reminded me of Tyler's and my first fight" -Narrator

click-through = 1.9 %

• No ad campaign is complete without including the the 7 deadly sins. Visiting and reading my diary would of course be the 8th deadly sin. ;) For some reason this banner got the best click-through percentage thus far. I guess sinning is more common than I thought. =p

click-through = 2.8 %

• I never actually ran this ad nor do I have any intention to. It's basically a parody of that banner ad about some "great tribulation taking place right now: click here to find out more". It turns out to be some religious diary. Since parodying someone's obviously staunch beliefs is in bad taste and that kind of thing is frowned upon by the diaryland admin, this ad has been shelved. Besides, nobody will probably remember the original ad anyway and the full beauty of the parody will totally be lost of the object of the parody no longer exists. I put it here only for the sake of posterity...

click-through = N/A

• This one is rather simple, a rip-off of the popular Gatorade campaign running as we speak. Hopefully most people will pick up the sexual innuendo that I'm trying to get across, if not it's still a cool rip-off of Gatorade. ;)

click-through = 1.7%

• OK, I'm slightly embarrassed because this particular ad totally exposes my geek-ness. It's basically a parody/tribute of  cheezy, badly translated Video Game port from Japan to the US Sega Genesis console called Zero Wing that hit a very long 15 minutes of fame and spawned the geek rallying call "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US".

WHAT YOU SAY!!! If you don't get what it is all about then read this and watch the cheezy voiceover video that started it all and the backlash and if you still don't get it after seeing all that, you should probably be happy because you don't have a single geek bone inside your body. Please click the X on the top-right corner and go in peace and live long and prosper, just not in your base because it belong to us now.

click-through = 1.2%

Afternote: FOR GREAT JUSTICE! This banner is an enigma, clearly the lowest click-through percentage of the lot. WHAT! For a moment I thought "SOMEONE SET UP US THE BOMB". But for some reason those who clicked this particular banner took the next step and made some sort of contact via comments, notes or guestbook. I see the geek-ness runs strong in diaryland and few geeks if any can ignore the sheer power of the "ALL YOUR BASE" taunt. For the rest of the mortals, I suppose they simply just didn't understand just how 1337 the banner truly was. =p 

• I think this one is my favorite banner, since it's not a inspired by any other movie or ad campaign, it is easily the most original one I have thus far. It's semi-autobiographical in that it is basically an amalgam of the times I've gotten drunk approached a hot chick and struck out. Wait, that's all the time, not just when I'm drinking... =/ Anyway, situations have been slightly exaggerated for dramatic and humorous effect, but the end result is basically the same, Derrick basically has no game whatsoever. =p

click-through = 1.8%