I'm Jim Coutu and I'm the president of GatorData, Inc. We are a software development company based in Lutz, FL. (just north of Tampa) We released Banner Maker Pro in October 1999 and Banner Maker Pro for Flash in October 2005.
We originally came up with the idea for Banner Maker Pro when we were looking to make a banner for a website. There weren't any easy to use utility to make banners. There was Adobe's Photoshop, which is an excellent tool, but that has a very long learning curve.
All I wanted was a program where you could easily select the size, add text, images, and shapes and then select the animation. I couldn't find a program that did this, so I made one. That was thirteen years, eight versions, and thousands of customers ago.
Customers have told me that they can make a banner in the time it takes Photoshop to load. Try it!