Banner ad wisdom

Do you ever click on those little rectangular banner ads that people use? Neither do I. But, we have plenty on our sites at Behemoth.

As I was trolling through a new homepage design today I got to thinking about something. How did the small banner ad size come about? I mean...it's dimensions are 160x106 (example to the right). Now the 160 pixels wide seems to make a fair amount of sense. But it's the 106 pixels high that's got me thinking. Why 106? Is there research out there that says that's the best size for optimum impact? Why not round it off to 100 or 110?

I know, I know, it's most likely because somebody's site design back in 1997 only allowed for something to be 106 pixels high. But who was that? And how did they standardize it so that everybody else would use that size from then on?

Yes, these are the things I think of on a long Friday afternoon. I have no desire to do any actual work and yet I don't want to waste any of my PTO. Instead, I'm "researching". Ah the wonderful world of eBusiness.