Flash banners are a great way to get attention drawn to your website. They provide animation on a normal static page. There are multiple ways of creating these: buy Flash, hire someone, use a free software, or buy a software piece online.

Buy Flash - if you are a student you can get an amazing discount.

Hire Someone - http://www.werdna-fx.com = thats me :)

Free Software or Paid - I would gather as much information as you can and do a demo. The ones I have seen have been pretty generic and not very professional looking. Make sure you can try it before you buy it. Otherwise its better to just higher someone to make a quick one for you.