in that case test everything you can,- most applications provide a trial. I tried out some unique flash competors in the past but they all went bankrupt.
For example corel R.A.V.E once created by corel (guess it still is alive some how) but it never saw any real success
http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satelli...=1047022734148
another one called live motion back from adobe in the 2000´s sucked balls
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_LiveMotion
adobe stopped the project because it obvoisly sucked even sales wise - it simply could not compete with macromedias flash back then.
another family is swish and I believe they are still alive
http://www.swishzone.com/index.php
they focused on transition effects and templates for the less demanding user.
SwishMax (odd marketing name)
http://www.swishzone.com/index.php?a...ts&product=max
is little similar to Flash from adobe - it copies quite a few functionalities and lets you even script.
But if you read stuff like this from the software description:
it should be clear that its rather aimed towards less complex and advanced projects, e.g family slide show :D
and then there are a ton of special banner tools but I dont want to even google for them now because I honestly never ever want to touch such crap.
My personal suggestion would be to get a older and cheaper version of flash. You might sigh regarding to learn flash but I can assure you that all you need for a animated banners can be learned within a few days. What eats up time learning usually is actionscript and the advanced interaction part.
1 big reason why applications such as Flash, Photoshop, 3dsmax,... are so popular is because of the shear amount of tutorials and free learning resources on the internet.
lastly another option could be using Silverlight (microsofts fresh attempt at copying flash)- I assume that expression is alot cheaper as the adobe software lineup:
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/
though honestly I must say that hardly any agency or designer uses it