[Editor's note: this article was written by Charlie Morris in August of 1998. As such, we cannot insure that information enclosed is up to date as of the time you are reading it. Please contact the vendors discussed for updated information on their individual offerings.]

In order to sell banner ads, a site needs to be able to do the following:

• Rotate different banners in the same space.
• Provide email reports of impressions and click-throughs for each banner.

This level of functionality can be delivered by a fairly simple CGI script, and there are several free or low-cost packages out there.

Free Solutions

1. "Random Image Displayer" script at Matt's Script archive
2. Bannermatic
3. Sponsor Rotator
4. CGI Scripts by J.M. Ivler

There are also several cheap shareware packages available, and a few of the medium-priced ad-management packages offer some sort of "lite" version at a lower cost.