When clients slap 3rd party benners on their website...

[Nightwing]

Ciao from Latitude 53.92705600 Longitude -1.38481600

Ive got a naughty cluster of clients who are slapping third banner ads on their home pages for reasons that only marketing executives understand. So here i am on the SEO side Ive added _balnks and no do follows on the rogue banners but i'm looking for a plausible argument to sh@t a client up into not doing this.

So my question is please:
"What is the number 1 reason why a client should not place third party banners pointing too non relevant sites (eg a web site focused on furniture placing a bed fred banner on their home page)"

Let the games begin!
Ciao,
David

[EGOL]

Looks like nofollow ads to me.

Nothing wrong with it.  I show ads on almost every page that I have published.

Rankings are great so I think that it is good for SEO.

Almost every large commercial site on the web shows ads.

[Nightwing]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for ansers thus far, to help out this is the offending site:
http://www.thirskracecourse.net/

grazie tanto,
David

[MagicDude4Eva]

There might be an underlying business model (i.e. paid advertising or affiliate scheme) for displaying 3rd party banners. As long as you nofollow the banner links there is no SEO damage and you will "only" suffer the churn from customers.

On a technical level you can implement Analytics click-tracking on the banners and then show your clients if the click-through is high or not and then motivate the use of banners accordingly.

[DougRoberts]

...and possibly draw visitors away from your site and your conversion goals (unless your goal is to earn revenue from advertising....)

Main problem is the damage they can do to credibility/quality as Chris says.

[Chris.Menke]

They lower the visitor's perception of the quality of the site and the value they may get out of it.