Just a fairly simple question for the seasoned advertisers. Do you find that you get more traffic using text or banner advertising? I've heard that text is always better then I've heard that you should use banners as people are more interested. Of course, I will be using both medias, I just wonder which to concentrate on a bit more than the other.

Depends on your target market and what you intend to receive out of the advertising.

You can say more on a banner about yourself and it's ideal for branding and brand awareness, however if you're just looking at selling a specific niche, say "clown shoes", then a link saying "clown shoes" is probably better.

It also depends WHERE you're advertising. If your text ad is being lumped in with 5 or 10 other text ads, it's pretty much wasted. It would only be useful for SEO at that point, if at all.

For web hosting, we get better results with banners than we do with text (MOST TIMES), but it depends on the market.

I guess Banners are always advantageous ove text ads, banners can attract one and all, people tend to color full objects as banners can be animative ,colorful and also a complete resumption of the product to be sold can be seen through the banner. Some times Text ads can also prove the magic, however it completely depends upon the type the user or the viewer.

Text ads can be very awefull some times.

My preference is banner advertising, but both will work in the correct context.

My vote is banner advertisement, but it can be costly! You must weigh the cost to see if its worth paying for that kind of advertisement. Also the banner must be simple and attractive, otherwise people will just ignore it.

So I could pretty much just stay away from those paid directories and such? People have told me those are good, I guess mainly for traffic but I wondered if a million links in one place wouldn't be just another "bad thing" you know?

Personally? Yes. If they're throwing their "love link" then it's minimal if they have a number of links on the same page. And if they're not throwing "love link" (not using NOFOLLOW tags) then what's the chances that your site is going to be clicked on with so many other links on the page? Really, they do limited results if anything It does get you another backlink (as long as google doesn't think you PAID for the link and get blacklisted), but that's about it.

FFA links are another that is just something that doesn't work. What works are links that are relative to your business linking back to you. You'll get more points at google if a web designer is linking to a web hosting company, than you would if say a site devoted to how chalk is made and then suddenly they're linking off to a hosting company.

At the same time, google is a computer, it's not a people policed network, so there are some things you can get away with, but it all depends if you want to go with Blackhat SEO or WhiteHat SEO. You're much safer gong whitehat with a shade of gray every now and then

I go for text link over banner.

simple reasons, I can advertise more with text link than banner, its space saver, flexible and I think much better for SEO.

Banner increase traffic than text link,
but text is better for SEO.

Ah! Thank you, I see things a bit more clearly now. I prefer whitehat as I like to think I am a fairly honest person but the idea getting to be a bit gray once in a while without others thinking poorly of me is nice.

If you're advertising on forums, a banner might be a better idea as it's more eye catching and if your host has an interesting mascot like HostGator does, it will probably grab the user's attention more than a text ad.

Banner seems to be more effective for quite popular website and as said by Conor it's good for branding.

Thanks so much guys. I think I am finally starting to understand this all a bit more than what I thought I would. It helps when I can ask a question and you all give me multiple outlooks on what my options are.

Text is better for SEO and things of that nature. I would rather have a banner I think. By having a banner your able to focus on the overall design of the banner and how to make it eye-catching for your overall audience.

for SEO is better text. For users is better banner