Detailed Review of E-Bannerx Banner Exchange Service

E-Bannerx is a free banner exchange with a 2:3 ratio. They allow 6 different sizes of banners, and several formats, including Flash and HTML. For a free banner exchange, E-Bannerx offers a high level of targeting, allowing users to assign keywords to banners and choose to display certain banners on certain kinds of sites. E-Bannerx also offers statistics, and tracks both incoming and outgoing impressions.

In addition to their free service, E-Bannerx allows members to sell their impressions in a "Trading Room", or to transfer impressions between different accounts. E-Bannerx has an affiliate program, but it is based on paid advertising and is independent of the free banner exchange.

We tested E-Bannerx for a one month period. Their banner code was placed on a high traffic page, and an independent tracker was used to determine how many times the E-Bannerx banner was displayed. A Great Traffic Exchange banner was also entered into the E-Bannerx system, and its progress was monitored.

The results of the experiment appear below. Whenever possible, we have made efforts to document our data with screenshots. Some shots have been cropped to remove identifying information about the testpage, but none of the numbers have been altered in any way. We have also tried to be thorough in our reporting; not all sections of this review will be relevant to everyone, so feel free to skip around.

For a free banner exchange, E-Bannerx has an amazingly good user interface. In addition to basic statistics about impressions earned and banners displayed, E-Bannerx gives its users detailed stats about such things as Browser Used, Screen Resolution, Geographic Origin, and visits/clicks by hour of the day (the image below is just a snippet of a full report for incoming banners):

Users can also create different "Ad Zones" for different ads--each ad zone generates its own unique report.

As well as providing detailed reports for incoming impressions, E-Bannerx gives its users a large amount of information about outgoing banners:

By clicking on the "Reports" button, the user can get the same kind of information as E-Bannerx provides for incoming ads.

Unlike a lot of free exchanges, E-Bannerx gives its users a lot of choices about banner types. In addition to providing 6 different banner sizes, E-Bannerx supports jpeg, gif, png, swf, and html banners. Users have the option to target their banners to certain categories, and they can weight certain banners so that they show more often than others.

All banners uploaded to the exchange are stored on the E-Bannerx servers, so your bandwidth won't take a hit. E-Bannerx approved most our banners within 24 hours.

As mentioned earlier, E-Bannerx banners are available in 6 different sizes. Most of the banners on the exchange are for smallish sites, and there is not a huge amount of variety--it appears that there are 10-12 sites on the exchange that have far more credits than anyone else.

E-Bannerx approves all banners before they are allowed to circulate--we never had any problems with offensive/pornographic banners.

Based on the data from our independent tracker, our test page got 3,580 unique views:

Given that our trackers shows 3,580 views and E-Bannerx reports 4,614 impressions, it appears that E-Bannerx is actually overcounting our impressions by a significant margin. Based on this data, E-Bannerx's error rate is -22%. Bank error in your favor, collect 1034 impressions!

When we earned impressions, E-Bannerx converted them very quickly. The exchange claims that it has 18,000 members and serves 70 million impressions a month. Based on our experiences, this seems quite possible--our impressions never stuck around for longer than a few hours.

In addition to all the features related to the actual exchange, E-Bannerx offers some other options that are unique enough to warrant a mention.

One major feature is the E-Bannerx "Trading Room." In this forum, users can buy, sell or trade their extra impressions. While the going rate can't compare to a lot of pay-per-impression services, the "Trading Room" might be a good way to unload come extra credits if your site generates huge amounts of traffic.

Additionally, E-Bannerx offers users the option to transfer credits from one account to another.

In terms of their interface and the quality of their service, we had no problems with the E-Bannerx exchange. However, they do have one little flaw; they use commas in very odd places, which makes it difficult to interpret some of their data. For example, here is the basic impressions-earned window:

Does the comma mean (impressions,clicks)? Is it being used in place of a period to indicate 2.64 credits? When the numbers get higher and there are thousands involved, things get even more complicated. E-Bannerx should ditch the commas and use a more standard form of notation.

E-Bannerx has an excellent interface with extremely detailed statistics
E-Bannerx provides a large selection of sizes and formats, as well as targeting options
With an error rate of -22%, E-Bannerx actually gives you more impressions than you earn
All E-Bannerx impressions converted quickly, usually within a few hours
E-Bannerx has advanced features that allow you to sell or transfer excess impressions

With a traffic reporting system that errors in your favor and a wealth of information provided for both incoming and outgoing banners, E-Bannerx is a excellent option for anyone seeking a free banner exchange.

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