Internet Advertising

Internet advertising is growing fast

Internet advertising is growing at a phenominal rate. By the year 2010 it is estimated that internet advertising in the USA will account for about 10% of total advertising in that country.

Because the Internet is an interactive, a versatile platform and offers rich consumer usage data, advertisers can improve their ad targetability and achieve better results

There are a variety of internet advertising options available...

Banner advertising

With banner advertising, you place your graphical advert (banner) on anothers website. When a customer clicks on your banner they are redirected to your web site.

A banner can be simply a graphic with words, can be interactive and have animations or can even be a video clip.

Costing options fall into the following categories:

• Cost Per Thousand (CPM) - A fixed amount payable for 1000 banner ads displayed, regardless of the number of clicks
• Cost Per Click (CPC) - you pay when someone clicks on the banner advert and is redirected to your site
• Cost Per Action (CPA) - you pay when someone clicks on your banner advert, is redirected to your site and ends up buying from you.

To purchase banner advertising you should approach a media agency. Sometimes you can buy a placement for your banner advert on one individual site.

Banner adverts suffer from poor click rates. To compensate you have to advertise on popular sites which cost more.

Contextual Advertising

Placement is similar to banner adverts, but you text rather than a graphic advert is buried with relevant text on another web site. When the visitor clicks on the text they will be redirected to your site. It is sometimes called Text Link Advertising.

Search Result Advertising

You pay to have an advert with a search engine. When the search results appear, so will your advert which is relevant to the search terms used by the visitor. Google call these advertisers 'sponsors' and the adverts 'sponsored links'.

You pay per click. It can work out quite expensive, but is effective because of the precise targetting. Yahoo offer a similar scheme to Googles 'Adwords', called 'Search Marketing'.

Advertorial

This type of advertising is a mixture of an advert and editorial, hence the name. You publish an article or relevant text about your services or products on another web site. The text is likely to be read, because it hopefully contains useful and relevant information to the viewer. The editorial will contain links back to your site.

This type of advertising has several advantages :

• Visitors are more likely to read an article than an advert
• Having links back to your site will increase you rankings on search engines
• You can detail your products/services more thoroughly
• You can change the editorial whenever you so wish
• The cost is fixed, so you can budget more easily