Some say to blend in a white banner with a white site. Is that the better option? I chose a red text banner with smaller black text in a blue / white mix background on a white background site. They say red grabs people's attention more.
Simply put - if you want to grab people's attention, use image banners. But if you want to make money off your ads, use text ads and blend them with your site. The point is to get past what's called 'ad blindness' - many people specifically ignore any ads and ad-like elements of your site so your goal is to display ads as if they were part of the natural content of your website and induce more clicks by doing that.