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Too Many Ad Buttons

Some sites display an incredible number of ad sponsored or cross-promotion buttons on their home page. It's not unusual to see as many as fourteen small 88x31 pixel animated buttons on a home page!

Don't get me wrong. Ad sponsored and cross-promotion buttons are fine, but fourteen on one page is overkill.

Each additional button:

• Increases Web Page Download Time
  For every animated ad button you add to your home page, you increase the page's file size by 2-10 kilobytes.
  
  Let's assume the average file size is 5 kilobytes and there were fourteen ad buttons on one page - like the site mentioned above. That adds 70 kilobytes to the home page. And we haven't even taken into account the text and other graphics on the page!
  
  Admittedly, such sites are rare. But sites with half a dozen buttons are quite common.
  
  
• Increases Page Noise
  Animated buttons catch the attention of the eye. But when you have multiple brightly colored, quick flashing, animated buttons displayed next to each other, all the movement adds to the page noise. This will tire the user's eyes and annoy the user.
  
  
• Decreases the Effectiveness of Other Ads
  Web users have become accustomed to ignoring ad banners. It would be fair to say that users are even more likely to ignore half a dozen brightly colored, quick flashing, animated ad buttons placed next to each other. As a result, all your advertising click-through rates are likely to suffer.

I recommend that you don't display any animated ad buttons on your home page. But if you have to, I suggest you only display one or two ad buttons at the very most. Also make sure the graphics are optimized and don't add too much noise to the page.

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