Banners aren’t a bad thing, as long as they arent over done. A few well placed banners are more powerful than loading every empty spot of your page with one. Think of it this way, when YOU browse to a site and see banners, banners banners..what do you generally think to yourself?
Someone else in this forum said in another post..(not verbatim) EVERYONE has seen a banner before, they are nothing new.
Now on my site, I do have a few banners down the left side, but every one of those is just for my forum freerolls and thats it.