GreatDane's Free Stuff!

LinkExchange - This banner service is the biggest and best-known of its type. Link Exchange is not the most innovative banner exchange around, but they are perhaps the most reliable. You get one exposure of your banner for every two hits to your page. Banners must be 400 X 40 pixels in size (to get a free banner, go here or here). Note: LE recently started a "Deluxe" program, which requires a larger (468X60) banner that must "be placed on the first screen view of the pages they are on." In exchange, LE says you'll get better exposure and "increased visibility" among other advantages.
SmartClicks - An innovative banner service that goes above and beyond most other link exchanges in many ways in that you can target your banner to a specific audience. We've used SmartClicks for several months and have generally been impressed, particularly with their targeting control panel and stats. Along with Link Exchange, SmartClicks is one of the Web's most reliable banner services.
GSAnet.com - Banner services are a dime a dozen these days, but if you're looking to get the most exposure for your Web site, GSAnet.com is hard to beat. This service offers you some of the best ratios of any major link exchange. If you display their banner at the top of your site, you'll get an impressive 1-to-1 ratio of displays for your banner. Our initial verdict after using this service for several months is that it is a good, solid service. Note: with this service, you must display their banner at the top of your page.
Four Corners Effective Banners - Just signing up for a banner service is only a small part of promoting your site. In order to draw hits with your banner, you need an effective design. This site is the best we've seen for offering tips on making a banner that people will want to click on. They even display a list of the Web's most successful banners, so you can get an idea of what works.
Penny Web - This is a banner service that claims to let you "promote your site at no risk with guaranteed visitors" and to "generate income by hosting banners." Our own experience with Penny Web was disappointing. We get a lot of traffic here at The Free Site, but apparently not enough to generate income with Penny Web. We never received a cent for our participation with this program. Their "host reports" site that purports to give you your account's current data was cumbersome and difficult to get meaningful information from. Their tech support was not helpful. Our advice: be wary of any banner service that claims to pay you.
Cybermeals - This commercial ad banner service claims to pay you for displaying their large (486 X 60 pixels) banners on your pages. We tried this service for several months on a page that receives around 1,000 hits per day. The results were disappointing, to say the least. Cybermeals wound up generating a grand total of 10 cents for us in November, 1997 on one of our pages that generated 33,000 hits that month. In October and December, we were paid zero. Oh well, 10 cents is better than nothing. Be wary of this service.
The Banner Generator - OK, so you've signed up for a banner service. What's next? Well, for one thing, you're gonna need a banner. (Duh!) That's where these guys come in. This site's the place to go for information on getting a banner for your site. Free and paid banner design services are available.
Banner Power - New banner service that allows you to either earn advertising credits or cash. Their banners are a larger-than-usual 468 by 60 pixels. (Animation is OK, but the size should not exceed 11,000). Each time you display two banners, a banner promoting your site will be displayed on another member's Web site.
Paramount Banner Network - This banner exchange accepts banners that are a larger-than-average 450 pixels wide and 70 pixels high (GIF or JPG format) and no larger than 14,000 bytes in size. GIF animation is OK. If you go with Paramount, check out Wired 2000's offer of 1,000 free banner impressions. Go here for more information
123Banners - An up-and-coming link exchange with around 4,000 members. The concept is simple: by joining, you agree to display advertising banners for other members, and they agree to display banners for you. You can decide what type of sites to advertise on and advertise for so you don't need to worry about inappropriate material showing up on your pages. You get one exposure of your banner for every two banners displayed on your site (similar to Link Exchange).
BannerWeb - New banner service that allows you to submit up to 10 banners simultaneously and have the most effective ones shown the most often, automatically. Note: this service is currently in "beta test mode."
BannerSwap - This banner service also offers a 2-to-1 ratio. Our own experience with this link exchange was disappointing. We often had far lower click-through ratios that we've had with other link exchanges (using the same banner).
TradeBanners Network. - This service is similar to Link Exchange. We tried it for several months and found them to be a competent service. However, our banners consistently got lower click-through ratios than on Link Exchange or SmartClicks (even with the same design!)
LinkTrader - This banner exchange offers a higher-than-average 70-to-30 ratio. Banners must be 400 by 50 pixels. Our results with this banner service were less than ideal. Despite the higher ratio, we had few hits through LinkTrader than through Link Exchange, using the same banner. Your own mileage may vary. Incidentally, LinkTrader recently began offering free E-mail accounts, as well.
Net-On's Banner Exchange - A small Sweden-based link exchange that offers you a generous 4:5 banner exposure ratio. Animated gifs are OK. They accept banners of varying sizes, which can be a drawback, as you can't take advantage of the HTML size tags to speed up loading of banner images. Sometimes their banners don't load quickly which can hold up your page at times. They still have a ways to go before they can be considered in the top rank of banner exchanges.