Why banner ads don't work

- Hit 3 ducks and win a prize
- Apartments.com
- Hit 3 ducks and win a prize
- Hit 3 ducks and win a prize
- Hit 3 ducks and win a prize
- Hit 3 ducks and win a prize
- Hit 3 ducks and win a prize
- Hit 3 ducks and win a prize
- Hit 3 ducks and win a prize
- Chello.nl
- AT&T wireless

Banner ads. The main reason I see why they wouldn't work is that
I'm not stupid enough to go to a "you are a winner" site. Or to a
site which only advertises apartments in the US. Or to a site for
a Dutch broadband provider which will tell me they don't serve my
area, but only after giving them all the data they need to spam me
until the end of time.

Somewhere back in time, people told that banner ads could be easier
targetted. There are places where this works. Slashdot for example,
where there are seriously interesting banner ads leading to places
that are dangerous to my credit card like Thinkgeek or banner ads
for interesting hard- and software.

But in general, and I notice this especially on unitedmedia, the
banner ads are quite stupid and aimed at their very general of
visitors, a somewhat higher-educated American. Although "you are
a winner already" sounds more like aimed at a dumber person, the
rest seems to aim at people with enough income to be able to
contemplate the idea of an apartment in a city.

No, I have not used the doubleclick 'opt_out' option for the browsers
that I am seeing this on. The 'smart targetting system' could by
now have figured out that I don't live in the US (nor plan to start
doing so), that I am smart enough not to react to "you are a winner
already" and that I know that chello.nl is not going to deliver cable
to my city this century.

Seeing all this, I am not surprised banner advertisment isn't selling.
The advertisers are telling that they deliver to the right audience, but
what I see is a lot of very misdirected stuff.

Maybe only the operator of a niche-group site can select advertisers for
him/her self and have fitting advertising. I had no problem finding a load
of pet-related advertisers via commission-junction for pussy.idefix.net.