Online Advertising
Online advertising is a form of product promotion that utilizes the World Wide Web (www) and the internet to attract customers. Examples of online marketing include context-based advertisements on blogs, search engine pages, advertising networks, social network advertising and e-mail marketing. Majority of these advertisements are placed on websites by an ad server.
Types of online advertising:
Email advertising:
This is a form of online advertising in which advertisements are circulated by a publisher/ author to opt-in recipients via email blasts. The advertisers can either purchase a restricted/classified advertisement space or sponsor an author’s email advertisement individually.
Display advertising:
This is a type of online advertising where advertisements are featured on the web pages in numerous standard forms including leader boards, banners and skyscrapers. They are mostly used for branding and they utilize eye-catching artwork to attract the attention of people visiting the web pages they are featured on.
Behavioral Targeting:
This is a form of online advertising that is based on the online behavior of an internet user. These advertisements are based on various online factors such as browsing history, recent online purchasing, and also demographic information such as gender and age. For example if one visited an automotive website he/ she may see advertisements that are selling mortgages.
Affiliate Marketing:
This is performance based type of online marketing in which advertisers reward one or more publishers/ affiliates based on the number of customers/ visitors that have been brought about due to the marketing efforts of the affiliate. The more traffic the affiliate garners to the advertiser the more the affiliate gets paid.
Affiliate marketing was invented in 1994 by CDNow.com and its success was seen 1996 when Amazon.com launched its Affiliate program known as Associate program. This online company used the affiliate program to market low cost brand and at the same time created an opportunity for smaller websites to earn additional income.
Social network advertising:
This is an online advertising technique that targets the social networking sites such as Facebook, tweeter and Myspace. The major advantage of this form of advertising is that the advertisers can freely take advantage of the demographic details of the user to properly target their advertisements.
Social network advertising can be classified into: direct advertisements based on one’s network of friends; direct advertisements placed on one’s social network site and indirect advertising through creation of groups.
Semantic Advertising:
This type of online advertising employs semantic analysis methods to advertise goods and services. This involves accurately interpreting and classifying the meaning and main subject of a web page and then using targeted advertising spots to populate it. By linking relevant content to advertising the changes of a viewer’s showing interest on a product or service is increased.
Benefits of Online Advertising:
Wider Coverage:
Online advertising gives an advertisement wide coverage which helps it to reach many people. By reaching reach many people one is able sale more products and hence more profit.
Targeted Audiences:
Online marketing helps one to reach more of the targeted audience as compared to offline marketing and this will in turn translate to more sales and higher profit margin.
Affordable:
Online marketing is more affordable as compared to the traditional forms of advertising. With a low cost of advertising one is able to advertise more products and at the same time reach many people.
Online advertising is one of the best forms of product/ service marketing. With its numerous options and options every business should go online in order to reach many people.
