Banner networking is merely an exchange of links on participating sites. You post a banner on your site whilst others post yours on theirs. The agency will provide you with a banner ad together with the accompanying html for display on your site in exchange for reciprocal treatment or commission.

Banner networking is of interest to websites, especially in their website promotion efforts as it helps to expose their products and services to a varied audience with minimal effort.

As a website there are two ways to get involved in a banner network - by exchanging with other partners or by submitting your banners to a network by display by affiliates on their sites.

You can join a banner network with great ease. You only have to go to network and then apply to be a member. You supply the banners and then the accompanying text together with a fee and then you are through. From this point, affiliates who have subscription to that program will go for your banners and then display them on their sites where visitors will click on them to reach your site.

Banner exchanges worth looking into include:

123Banners - http://www.123banners.com 1800Banners - http://www.1800banners.com BannerSwap.com - http://www.bannerswap.com Bpath - http://www.bpath.com Click4Click - http://www.click4click.com Free-Banners.com - http://www.free-banners.com/ Link Buddies - http://www.linkbuddies.com NEObanners - http://www.neobanners.com/ Relmax Flash Banner Exchange - http://www.rfbe.com/ That'sMySite.com - http://www.thatsmysite.com/ etc.

The biggest advantage of this kind of network is the high exposure your site gains. Since most of these affiliates are small websites without heavy budgets in search engine placement, they tend to invest their promotion in other non traditional ways that big websites don't. As such you are able to reach areas where you would not normally go as a big site with considerable budget.

There is however a down side. You lose control over who should place your banner and where it will de displayed. If your banner is placed at objectionable sites with bad content, your website reputation suffers and thus, you can lose credibility. This situation can come about if either the exchange programs places the banner arbitrarily on the members sites or the members themselves chose where to place them.

Another disadvantage is the annoyance that can result from the display of your banner. If the website displaying your ad is not complementing your website theme, then the banner will not be wanted on the page and thus pose some nuisance which can affect the popularity of your site.

For the above reasons, it is a good thing to carefully assess a network before you join. You can look for one that allows you to approve your network partners manually so that you can be able to asses the quality and relevance of their websites before you allow them to place your banners on their websites.

Banner networking boosts traffic by exposing your site to a wide range of website's audience. It must however be tackled with great care so that your banner does not end up at a site with a bad reputation.

Good luck with your website, Reginal