What's in a name?

Seth Godin's post On becoming a household name is quite insightful. Much of the time, people choose products or services simply because they're familiar with it—thus ignoring the value or appropriateness of the product itself. Though I often wonder about the efficacy of banner ads, I certainly see his point: once you stop seeing the ads as drivers of web traffic and start seeing them simply as brand name builders, they take on a whole new meaning. In such a light, brand "skins" (such as the often-changing background on gossip site Perez Hilton) or page takeovers (in which all the advertisements on a webpage are from the same company) become particularly powerful. Even if the viewer is not actively engaging with the ad—something he/she isn't likely to do, due to his/her distraction by the site content—he/she is still subconsciously absorbing the brand name displayed on the advertisements.