A banner ad is an advertisement that appears on the Internet. Banner ads vary considerably in size, shape, appearance, and subject matter, but all banner ads take you to the advertiser's Web site if you click on them.

Banner ads are made of hypertext markup language (HTML) that instructs a Web server to call a particular Web page when a user clicks on the ad image, ad text, or ad animation. Banner ads are different from television, newspaper, or radio ads because banner ads take the potential customer directly to the advertiser's Web site. Another difference between newspaper ads and banner ads is the possibility for animation. Banner ads are similar to newspaper ads in that banner ads stay in one place on a Web page.

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