I've gone through my history, which wasn't as extensive as it usually is considering it was a Sunday, and I've clicked onto every site I visited that has banner ads, but the ad wasn't there. With each site I refreshed several times, hoping the ads would rotate and perhaps the HP ad would show up, but that didn't happen. After 10 minutes I gave up and went to the HP website where I found the deal I had seen in the ad.

That's all well and good for HP, but the online publication loses out. While I am just one click, I am representative of perhaps thousands who have seen an ad and later wanted to find it but couldn't. And while HP may get the sale, they don't know that I was motivated to purchase based on an ad I saw on a certain publication, so it still hurts them too. Thus, here are some recommendations for publishers that could potentially aid in the remedy of this issue:

1. Rotate ads evenly. Many of the websites I visited would display the same ad over and over and over each time I refreshed, making it difficult to see the full cycle of ads. Perhaps I was on the right website, and perhaps the ad was in the rotation, but I never got to it because I was being shown a Verizon ad time after time.

2. Set a cookie and show visitors the same ads they saw before. Of course this assumes the visitor is returning for the same reason I did, which may or may not be the case, and if it isn't, then logic would dictate that they not show the ad seen before since it obviously didn't work. I'm not saying this is a good idea, but it's an idea and perhaps one that could be developed into something workable.

3. Have an advertising section. Near to where banner ads are displayed link to a section of the website where all ads are displayed. Google does this with their Adwords listings. At the end of the page there is a link that says "See more ads" and you can click there and see only the ads, without any of the natural search engine rankings. Something similar would have been helpful in my situation. The link itself would take up very little real estate and could be very subtle so as to only be visible to those specifically looking for it.

There are reasons I can think of why a publisher would not be able to implement #1 or #2. #3 however, should be easy to implement and manage and has a very low potential for negative consequences. While not revolutionary, I believe it could result in publishers turning 1% more click-throughs, and with the volume organizations like the Washington Post and LA Time are dealing with that's worth the effort.