While it seems that each advertising format has its followers, banners and text links are actually complementary and their effectiveness depends on their location on a website.
Because a strong percentage of web surfers only check a site’s home page before quickly moving on to another site, it is crucial to catch their attention right away in order to convert sales: in that case, banners are usually a better tool. However, visitors who browse through several pages of a site tend to pay more attention to content, thus making text links an effective format on secondary pages—especially when they blend in content.
While, you certainly need the right combination of text links and banners to maximize your conversion rate, what for sure doesn’t work is the multiplication of banners on a page, would it be for the same affiliate program or for different programs. Not only does “banner blindness” tend to occur whenever too many banners are featured on a page but, in addition, it gives a site an amateurish look & feel, which will break conversion rates.