I remember the days when the Internet was new and companies were charging an average of $35 to run advertisers' banners on their web sites for 1,000 impressions.

Boy, times have changed.

In the early days, advertisers use to enjoy click-thru rates of about 15% on their banners.

Today the average click-thru rate is only 0.5%. So why hasn't the average price to purchase banner impressions dropped at the same level?

Major web sites depend on banner revenue to continue operating, and as long as their are big advertisers such as IBM, Dell, etc. who can afford these overinflated prices, the costs will remain unrealistic.

What happened to the banner market? It started to drop drastically to a point that authors were writing articles that the banner industry was dead.

With an average click-thru ratio of only 0.5%, advertisers could not afford the steep price for banner impressions. Likewise, web sites selling banner ad space could not afford to sell banner impressions at a discounted price.

But things are changing now.

Advertisers do not want to pay for unguaranteed results anymore. They want to pay only for performance. Companies that provide advertising are now realizing that selling advertising is not a one way transaction anymore.

Companies have to become partners with their advertisers if they want to truly succeed. I saw this trend about a year ago and that is why I offered to critique my advertisers classified ads.

Many of my advertisers were submitting poor copy and I knew that their ads were not going to perform well in my ezine. I figured that if I rewrite their ads or offer suggestions on improving their ads, they will get a better response.

Of course some of my customers wrote great classified ads and I didn't edit them, but the sad fact is that majority of my advertisers do not know how to write an effective classified ad.

Not only did this differentiate my ezine from other ezines, it showed my customers that I cared enough to see them get results.