On the topic of 3rd party utils, if you are looking for a banner rotation program that uses MySQL, is free, and seems to have most of the wanted features, check out:

http://www.adcycle.com/

(you need the 'www' or you get metagopher)

I'm just playing with it now,and if it looks good, I'll try to make some specific instructions for using it with LinkSQL.

It's a work in progress.