First, my site isn't fully up, so there is no url. Still testing and building.

My question is outside of word of mouth adver. (which I know is most supplemental) I wanted to know has banner exchanges (etc) been a good tool in increasing traffic to your site?

I wanted to maybe add 2 or 3 petite banners on my page, but won't necessarily do it for the heck of it if it has little return. Making money off of them is the least of my concerns, drawing people in from them is the MAJOR point.

banner exchanges by and large arent worth it, unless you can get extremely targeted displays.

My site is a member of a banner exchange that only allows other sites with the same topic as mine (abandonware) to join, which gives me ads that are about as targeted as possible.

Even so, i look upon my being in this exchange as more for the recognition i get from users (ie: a user hears the name of my site, and has seen the banner before, is more likely to visit it as its somewhere they "know") than for direct hits, which are just a bonus.

Link exchanging will be more beneficial, as it will improve your rank in various search engines, including google.

Even if an ad exchange did increase traffic, that doesn't mean it would get signups.

Originally posted by Avail
Even if an ad exchange did increase traffic, that doesn't mean it would get signups.
Yep, spot on. Unless the folks came to your site via word of mouth referral from a friend or through a highly targeted search engine keyword, then IMO, it's just wasting your bandwidth.