The Banner Module and Component that comes installed with the basic Joomla Install is:
very useful
simple
limited
The Banner Module and Component are useful if you want to place a changing graphic image on your site and track some simple usage statistics on it. You can use it to monetize your site and sell banner ads, or you can use it to highlight other features or pages within your site.
Like most Joomla add-ons, there is a component and a module. The Banner Component allows you the set up, assign and prepare basic publishing information about a banner and the associated client. The module, then uses the component information for front end display.
The banner module displays, at random, a new banner every-time the page reloads. You cannot predetermine the ordering, but you can set a banner to display only a selected list of clients. You can copy the banner module a number of times and assign it to other pages and clients. For example, high visibility clients on the Home page, and secondary clients on other pages.
Other behaviors or Features are
upload banners / images (any number)
assign a banner to a client
set the number of times a banner is viewed (impressions purchased)
publish/unpublish
assign a banner to a url when it is clicked
show the number of impressions (views) and click throughs
allows for custom code to be assigned to a banner (e.g. affiliate tracking code)
There are a couple of tips that may help to fix problems or make it more usable.
How to publish a module directly into a Joomla content item.
If you've ever asked, "How can I put a module right into content?"
Here's how:
Joomla has a bot/mambot to load a module into a position. It is called MOSLOADPOSITION.
Just put { mosloadposition name } where:
there are no spaces after the " { "
no spaces before the " } "
name is the module position name that does NOT exist in your template
Steps:
Create a new module position (Site > Template Manager > User Positions). Give it some meaningful name
Publish a module to this position. This can be a 3rd party module or a user defined module.
Enter the mambot code into the content
In your content item enter the following: { mosloadposition user8 } (be sure to remove extra spaces before mosloadposition and after user8, spaces were added intentionally in this example). This will be replaced by the content of the module(s) assigned to that position.