Concept of E-Advertising

Online advertising is a marketing strategy that involves the use of the Internet as a medium to obtain website traffic and target and deliver marketing messages to the right customers. Online advertising is geared toward defining markets through unique and useful applications. Since the early 1990s there has been an exponential increase in the growth of online advertising, which has evolved into a standard for small and large organizations.

Online advertising is also known as Internet advertising.

A major advantage of online advertising is the quick promotion of product information without geographical boundary limits. A major challenge is the evolving field of interactive advertising, which poses new challenges for online advertisers.

Online advertisements are purchased through one of the following common vehicles:

  • Cost per Thousand (CPM): Advertisers pay when their messages are exposed to specific audiences.
  • Cost per Click (CPC): Advertisers pay every time a user clicks on their ads.
  • Cost per Action (CPA): Advertisers only pay when a specific action (generally a purchase) is performed.

Examples of online advertising include banner ads, search engine results pages, social networking ads, email spam, online classified ads, pop-ups, contextual ads and spyware.

Various Means of Advertising

E-mail

The advent ages of e-mail are its low cost and the ability to reah a wide variety of targeted audiences. Most companies develop a customer database to whom they send e-mails. E- mal is emerging as a marketing channel that affords cost-effective implementation and better, quicker response rates than other advertising channels.

Banners

Web banners or banner ads are advertisements that are embedded into web pages similar to the way advertisers pay for space within a magazine. Web banners are designed to drive traffic to a website and account for 54% of total online advertising revenue [2]. Web banners and pop-ups can be the useful tools for online advertisers; however new web browsers provide the web surfer with options to prevent pop-ups and turn off images from selected (or all) websites. Beside that, similar to the protection of computer against the virus here come the anti-spyware or anti-adware software, such as Spyware Blaster and Lavasoft Ad-Aware.

Skyscrapers

These are extra-long ads running down the right or left side of a web site.

Banner swapping

Banner swapping is nothing but a direct exchange of links between web sites. To be precise, company A may agree to display a banner (in the form of a link) of company b in exchange for company B displaying company A’s banner.

Effectiveness Tracking

This is an upstart Dynamic Logic designed by a pioneering service to help traditional advertisers gauge the impact of their marketing by placing tiny files, called cookies, on viewers’ computers. This helps them track where people go after seeing their ads.

Online Promotion Tools and Techniques

Inline with the traditional offline marketing approach of mixing advertising, marketing, and promotion techniques, online marketing is made up of more than just advertising. Site layout and features, editorial content (on the organizations site, as well as cross promotion and/or a media campaign targeting online authorities in related fields similar to an offline media campaign), sponsorships, competitions, giveaways and integrated online/offline campaigns are all designed (in effective websites) to work together, complementing each other and to ensure not only return traffic to an e-tailers site, but to ensure consistent brand messages are sent to consumers.

Email marketing is the most utilized form of direct marketing in the online environment. Email is an effective format for marketers to use as it provides a quick and efficient way to communicate both commercial messages to a specified audience, allowing customized mass communication.

Search Engine Marketing

People commonly use links and searching tools on a portal site to search for information on the internet. Typing in the words or phrases related to what they are looking for and waiting for the search engines to list out the relevant sites. Thus Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a highly effective method of driving highly targeted visitors to one’s web site. SEM is based on search engine optimization (SEO), search engine submission, link popularity, and log file and traffic analysis. These basics allow positioning of one’s site for maximum search engine visibility.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay per click (PPC) or also known as cost per click (CPC) is the amount or commissions that the advertisers will pay to the affiliate for each click on their ad banners. Pay per click advertisements are commonly used in web portal and affiliate programs, for example Google AdWords and Hits4Pay respectively. In web portals, it is mostly in the form of text ads which are placed near the search result.

Rich Advertising

Rich (media) advertising was a concept dreamed up to help marketers reach consumers jaded with traditional static advertising. With click through rates (CTR) averaging at a startlingly low 0.5% (Miletsky, 2002), it became evident that banners that entertained or surprised viewers with their interactivity before they were even clicked had a definite edge (Mand, 1998). Flash, Shockwave, Real Audio/Video, pull-down menus, search boxes and applets allow for new levels of interactivity.

Interactive media

Interactive media offers marketers many opportunities not readily available in traditional offline sources. For example companies are now able to offer flash-based demonstrations or tutorials of their products online. Advances in computer and video gaming has allowed companies to not only buy space within games to promote their product or brand (for example a billboard within popular driving game “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas) but to have games integrate their product and to build components of the game around their product - although this has raised discussions regarding maintaining the integrity of a game so it does not become purely an advertising vehicle which will turn gamers off (See advergaming; gamevertising). Expanding interactive media technology has become a catalyst for and product of collaborative approaches in forming or redefining products and services in the marketplace, resulting in innovative ideas becoming reality on a daily basis (Adegoke, 2005).

RSS Advertising

RSS is stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication which is a XML- based format to syndicate content among different websites. RSS advertising is the integration of RSS into online advertising. According to Pheedo, by integrating online advertising into an RSS feed, a new online advertising technique, it has achieved measurably better results than e-mail for its client. RSS advertising can avoid from Spam, email filtering and pop-up blocking system

Concept of E-branding

A know and respected brand name can present to potential customers a powerful statement of quality value, and other desirable qualities in one recognizable element. Branded products are easier to advertise and promote, because each product carries the reputation of the brand name.

Elements of Branding

The key elements of a brand are differentiation, relevance value. Product differentiation is the first condition that must be met with to creat a product or a service brand. The company must clearly distinguish its product from all others in the market. This makes branding for commodity products such as salt, nails, or plywood difficult, but not impossible.

If a brand has established that it is different fro competing brands and that it is relevant, and inspires a perception of value to potential purchasers, those purchasers will buy the product and become familiar with how it provides value. Brands become established only when they reach this leavel of purchaser-understanding.

In traditional marketing, branding campaigns are designed to embed a company or a product name in your consumer psyche. Firms often use a combination of persuasive, emotional advertising campaigns and public relations to encourage a link between a positive “feeling” and a product. If it works, it can make you want to spend your hard-earned money as fast as possible. Online companies are putting branding to work with remarkable success. Research shows the brand names of seven Internet companies are already recognized by more than 50 million US adults, giving them ‘mead-brand’ status. According to Opinion Research Corporation International, the following Net names are top-of-mind with Americans: America Online, Yahoo, Netscape, and Amazon. Com, price line. Com, Info seek and Excite Ineloquent conducted a research and asked 10,000 randomly selected Internet users

Spiral Branding

The Internet does indeed open new possibilities and new dangers for anyone who ignores the signs. The advent of Internet sites and mailings make possible a new form of marketing called spiral branding.

There are two reasons. First, as consumers, it pays to be aware of the tactics marketers are using to influence us. Second, many of us will need to understand and use these techniques ourselves, in our own businesses.

The word “spiral” describes the accelerating benefits of a positive feedback loop. Bill Gates, for instance, often talks about the upward spiral of his Windows business. Since there are more software, customers purchase more Windows machines and since there are more customers, developers build more software which attract more customers. And so goes the cycle.

The keys to spiral branding are:

  • Use each media for its best purpose (for instance, don’t try to create a television experience on the web)
  • Do it fast (get something up now and fine-tune as you go along).
  • Iterate constantly (make improvements each time around the spiral).