It's All About Brand Width (washingtonpost.com)

Madison Avenue has figured out that bigger banner ads work better. This is extremely bad news. What I've never understood is why the advertising industry uses a different set of rules for the internet than for television and print media. The whole purpose of ads on regular media is to increase awareness of a brand name or product. But because a consumer could theoretically click on your banner ad and surf directly to your promotional site, suddenly that old advertising model gets thrown out the window? Why? It won't be long before most sites have to use full-screen banner ads that refuse to go away until a set number of seconds have gone by, like commercials. Half of these intrusive pop-up ads crash my web browser as it is. It's funny to me that marketing agencies think that I will want to buy the products they're selling, though, considering the inconvenience, hassle, and annoyance they're creating with their ads. There's a series of cellphone pop-up ads at one site that always crash my machine. Guess what? I've never buying that brand of cellphone.

Online advertising would work if the industry applied the same set of rules that it has for print and television. You're buying increased awareness. Creative banner ads do get noticed, even though most people still won't click them. (How many of you are tired of that 'punch the monkey' one?)