Design
Sure you can do it yourself, but perhaps having someone, who does it for a living, do it for you will yield much better results. People respond better to custom designed, professional, clean banners. It’s not only about the looks, but it’s about your conversion ratio as well you want attention and clicks.
Confusing
One of the main problems with banner ads is that it is unclear and confusing. Sometimes designers get carried away and create a banner that has too many colors, or overload it with content which makes it very confusing for the viewer. Stay on point, be simplistic, elegant banner wins the race.
Strong message
If you are not sure how to create a compelling, creative, advertising Ad then hire someone to do it for you. Wasting time and money should not be on your list of accomplishments. Strong tailored message for your special, product, promotion, brand awareness is going to help you generate much better desired results.
Landing page
Make sure that your banners take your visitors to the corresponding, custom designed, landing pages. Taking your users to your home page or something totally irrelevant will result in abandoned pages and poor conversion rates. Also 404 pages don’t count as a landing page, so make sure that your links do work!
Target audience
Know your audience folks. Showing a banner about baby powder on a home improvement website is going to be so irrelevant and confusing that will do nothing for you but waste your money. When you have created your banner, research your audience and potential markets for best banner ad placement, don’t just place it on everywhere and anywhere.