personally the advertisements detract from your page. overall it looks good but the banners are distracting and I even got a popup on one of the pages. I just put up a new site on
www.1and1.com and they are giving away 3yrs of free hosting, until january, and no, banners, or popups. I switched from the hostgroup.com about 3 weeks ago and have been pleased with their service.
Eric