The objective of this research was to test the effect on click-through rates of a variation in the design of a web banner advertisement placed on a number of high-profile New Zealand websites. The variation involved the addition of a mouse pointer image next to the ‘click here’ message on the last frame of the advertisement. Previous studies had found that including a ‘click here’ instruction increased response to banner advertisements but in this study no such effect was found. However, click-through rates for the advertisement varied significantly across the sites examined. More research is therefore called for not only to identify whether a pointer image is able to increase clickthrough rates in combination with other design elements, but also to further investigate the relationship between site content, visitorship and click-through rates.