Banner exchange programs - are they worth it?

This seems like the right porum to post this in, mods feel free to move it to your convenience.

I recently took a closer look at banner exchange programs like 1800banners.com and others that are similar.

Now I have two questions:
1) Is it worth it to put those banners on your page in order to get your displayed on other pages at a ratio of say... 2:1 (you get one impression for every 2 banners your page displays)?

2) The banner exchange websites make money out of the sale of unused banner impressions (if for every 2 banners you display you only getcredited one impression, the remaining impression goes to them and they can sell it). Would it be worth it to buy banner impressions from those networks? The prices are really low (on 1800banners.com I've seen they're 30 cents per 100 impressions and lower), but the traffic is totally untargeted, so you get a very low clickthrough rate.

I'm asking those of you who might have previous experience with this, as well as anyone else who'd like to have a say.

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I have used a lot of these programs in the past, here is how it goes:

Most of these programs drive very untargeted traffic, so you wont get as much exposure as you wish, but they allways give you some traffic for free, which is ok.

I have used linkbuddies, and I think it is the best program of all these, as you can target your banners to categories, and there is a better CTR.

As for buying CPMs from these networks, is not something I would recommend you. They have very low prices, but the result don't worth it.

i wouldnt purchase credits at linkbuddies, just build them up and sell them back. they send crappy 30 second visitors to ur site and i dont know about u but i want the visitors who sign up and stay for 30 mins

I think if u want to get something from banner exchange, you should have alredy enough visitors per day. So u can make more popular

yeah ur definately right about that

I wouldn't bother, as most people here said, you just get unwanted traffic. If you must do a banner exchange, I would recommend you just ask some relevant-site webmaster if they would like to exchange banners, and not using some program.

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i use a contextual type of banner exchange modelled after the adwords campaign. i have to say that it works since it is targeted. if anyone wish to check this exchange program out:

http://mezx.com

Banner exchanges were good a while back, but I think many people have caught on to that one and aren't clicking them as much anynmore.  Text links seem to bring in more traffic so I'd purchase some text links instead of banner exchanges.

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