I only ever look at the ones on the bottom, and I still find artists from it. But the ad really needs to catch the viewers eye.

I personnally keep looking at the banners, because, in my opinion, that's a good way to discover artists. I disabled my adblock on FA for that. I look at all the banners, at least for some seconds, to see if i like the art style of the artist.

I occasionally see stuff out of the corner of my eye, but it's not anywhere near as prominent as I feel it used to be.

I think the banners do kinda work. Even I'll occasionally click on a banner if it looks really promising.

Disabled my adblock just to check, doesn't seem to be any banner anywhere?

Yes! The fa ads appear next to artwork which is the biggest reason people are here xD. I enjoy seeing people's ads and I get the ads myself as well

Them being on the right side of artwork I feel is much better than getting in the way of me trying to click my menu. It's near the fav buttons, and I don't accidentally click them on mobile like how the old format was. Only the ones I'm interested in.

I still use the old theme (why not?) and I have discovered many artists through ads. However I enabled adblock some time ago cause I couldn't handle vore ads.

I look at the banners from time to time if something cute catches my eye. I find it a bit odd that about 2/3 of the banners I click on the artist lists that they aren't taking commissions on their front page...

My ad blocker hides all ads. So no they make no difference to me.

I mostly look at the ones at the top, I have added a lot of artists through them.

Something I don't like is that sometimes I notice an interesting ad right after I click a link and then I cannot find it again easily =(

Nope, I barely notice them now. Since I don't go beyond my watch list. Plus some of my friends who bought ads noticed significant decline in clicks after the design change.

if you ever reach the point where you feel the need to advertise coff dont worry ill just take all the slots so you dont have to spend on ads <3

I use an adblocker. When I did turn it off for a couple months, all the artists I looked at had their commissions closed, so for me it was just like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ no point