There is a fine line between advertising and spam and unfortunately many business owners do not understand the difference between the two.

This is important because while a cleaver, well planted Internet marketing
campaign can help to attract new customers and keep existing customers
loyal, spam is likely to alienate both new customers and existing customers.
This can be extremely damaging to profit margins for the business owners.
This article will take a look at a few basic Internet marketing strategies such
as banner ads, email campaign and message board posts and describe how
each can quickly cross the line from cleaver advertising to spam.
Banner ads are one of the most popular strategies which accompany an
Internet marketing plan. These ads are usually ads which appear at the top
of websites and span the width of the website. It is from this appearance
that they earned the name banner ads but actually banner ads can refer to
ads of a variety of different sizes and shapes which appear in an array of
different locations on a website.
In many cases the business owner purchases advertising space on these
websites but the banner ad may also be placed as part of an exchange or an
affiliate marketing campaign. Banner ad exchanges are situations in which
one business owner posts a banner ad on his website in exchange for
another business owner posting his banner ad on the other website.
These agreements may be made individually between business owners with
complementary businesses or as part of exchanges facilitated by a third
party. In the case of affiliate marketing, an affiliate posts and advertisement
for your business in exchange for compensation when the banner ad
produces a desired effect such as generating website traffic or generating a
sale.