Online Advertising

 One of the main advantages of information technology is the ability for companies
throughout many different industries to advertise their products and services via the
Internet. Almost every website contains advertisements surrounding the site's primary
content. Often these sites feature links from which, with a single click of their mouse,
people can find information about the company whose ad they have clicked on. By
making information so easily accessible, advertisers may benefit from a much larger
volume of traffic to their own sites and thus greatly increase the chances of someone
taking advantage of their goods or services. Companies are even able to communicate
with or reach out to people all over the world, thereby increasing exposure to their ads
without having to pay an exorbitant amount of additional advertising costs.
 Example Facebook is the biggest player in social media. Boasting an enviable user base and a
sophisticated platform, Facebook is an attractive option for advertisers hoping to increase their
visibility.

Facebook Advertising Reach

When it comes to audience reach, Facebook is the undisputed king of the hill.

 1 billion registered users (33% of ALL internet users worldwide)

Facebook Advertising Formats

Facebook ads are broken into three categories:

 Online sales
 Local stores
 Mobile apps

Technology is Changing the Advertising

 It is sometimes difficult to grasp the vastness of the Internet as it links country with
country, culture with culture, buzzing metropolis with distant one-horse town. Even
more amazing is the fact that something so seemingly endless could become the
 vehicle through which an entire industry is transformed to become more
personalized.
 Such is the case with the advertising industry. With access to consumer information
that is, in some ways, easier to collect over the Internet, and more sophisticated
technology, companies are customizing their ads toward specific audiences, and even
zapping ads to cell phones and Palm pilots. Web surfers can interact with ads in
greater depth, and they can benefit directly from an ad’s personalized message.
 For example, Excite@Home’s Enliven business unit, which provides interactive online
advertising, has launched an updated version of its popular rich-media technology in
the past two years. The technology ties multimedia banners to a database to create
constantly fresh banner ads on the Web. The updated product can customize ads to
match a user’s PC setting. So on one level, for example, Procter & Gamble can use
Folgers Coffee banners tailored to the time of day, while on a more intimate level,
customers who are known to frequently buy Rich French Roast might be sent e-mails
or see ads promoting that particular product.
 These technological changes, which only promise to become more advanced as
bandwidth increases and provides more richly-textured opportunities for advertisers
to tell their stories, are fundamentally changing the way advertisers relate to their
customers. Customization has serious implications for the marketing business and
the greater objective of brand development.
 “The Internet has become more and more a part of the communications community
in the past seven to eight years, more dramatically in the last three or four,”
remarks Richard Gillespie, president of Gillespie Advertising in Princeton, N.J. “The
delivery of the message has been made easier. Rather than sending out junk mail
and trying to gain a 1% to 2% response rate, the more I know about the person I’m
communicating with, the more valuable I can make that information. Rather than my
invading your space with generic messages, I can send you communications that
have value to you. The power has moved from the deliverer of the message to its
recipient.”
 These empowered recipients, the consumers, are reportedly responding well to the
targeted approach. “People give you a lot of credit for advertising that goes out and
finds them in their lives,” says Evy Nabers, director of fusion marketing at Brand
Buzz, a division of advertising agency Young & Rubicam that started a year ago.
Brand Buzz’s objective is to combine a number of disciplines including database
marketing and Web marketing, in order to find the best way to get a message to a
consumer, whether on line or in person. “The more targeted you can get, the
better,” says Nabers.
 All media have seen a greater ability to send disparate messages to disparate
people, says David Schmittlein, deputy dean of the Wharton School and a professor
of marketing. The second part of this equation, he says, is knowing the appropriate
messages to send. That is derived from the collection and retention of information
about a consumer, which Schmittlein says the Internet world has learned to do
successfully from the field of direct marketing. “Customized direct marketing and
direct mail led the way in demonstrating the value that exists in retaining customer
information,” he says. “The most valuable pieces of information with respect to
purchase propensities and what matters to customers turn out to be – did they buy
something before, when did they buy it, how much did they spend on it and what
were the particular product attributes that characterize what they bought. If you
know those things, you’ve got a great basis for customizing ads.”
  Schmittlein says a great experimentation is going on with respect to a customer’s
willingness to be contacted, the results of which have yet to be seen. Good
marketers, says Gillespie, will know “when not to cross a line.”
 While firms like Gillespie and other large advertising agencies are waving their
interactive banners furiously, Leonard Lodish, a Wharton professor of marketing,
says that customization is “an uphill battle” in the advertising business. “The
advertising fraternity has not been very rational,” Lodish says. “Advertisers still
believe old wives’ tales like you need to advertise during the Super Bowl to be
successful. Advertising agencies are not taking the necessary risks. They need to be
more entrepreneurial and experiment more. The Web is the perfect application to do
that.” Lodish also points to traditional direct-response marketers, like L.L. Bean, as
being the most savvy when it comes to reaching out to Web-based customers.
 Advertisers will have to nurture their entrepreneurial spirit and put it to good use
over the Internet, especially with the arrival of technologies like personal video
recorders, which could drop TV ad viewership by as much as 50% by the end of the
next decade, according to Forrester Research. As customization software and similar
technologies become even more sophisticated and advertisers tap into the vastness
of the Internet, they will learn to capitalize on the vastness of its possibilities for
directly reaching consumers.

Importance of Information technology in

2. One of the most obvious changes in advertising in the last 80 or so years is the shift from illustration
to photography.  Although photography was indeed frequently used, mostly in personal hygiene and
beauty products, the photos were usually of a person or couple posing and were not nearly as common
as illustrations of people and products.  Cameras at that time were more unwieldy and slower than
today’s models, so options were more limited.  During the 40s and 50s, photography’s use in advertising
dipped as the austerity and nostalgia of illustrations and paintings became preferred.  In the 60s and
70s, its use increased drastically, and has been the predominant graphical element since.
3. Another conspicuous change is the vividness of color and quality of ink used for advertising.  The
middle of the 20th century had a definite “technicolor” vibe while the early part of the century was
softer and more reminiscent of pastels or paints.  Modern advertisements have a more photo-realistic
coloring and lighting, due in large part to the predominant use of actual photographs, but mostly due to
the improvement in printing technology and ink.

ALL

The term advertising refers to a type of communication through which audience or consumers
are persuaded to take some action. It is a medium for showcasing a product, its features so that
consumers have the urge to  buy  it. From the inception of this crucial marketing tool, advertising
has had traditional forms starting with print media comprising newspapers, magazines, fliers and
leaflets apart from outdoor advertising which covers hoardings and billboards and broadcast
advertising which includes television, radio and the Internet.

Of all these, it is the Internet that is surfacing as a real champion. Though the traditional forms
still have a good percentage of loyal followers, online advertising is growing in leaps and bounds
since 2001. Survey has put forth some interesting figures like advertising on Internet showed an
increase of nearly 18% between the years 2001- 2006 thereby generating revenue of nearly
$21.2B in the year 2007 which was a great jump of 26% as compared to 2006. Of this, consumer
related advertising was nearly 55% of the revenue.

Statistics therefore reveal that the growing trend of advertising is leaning heavily on Internet.
Advertising products and services through the Internet are more effective and efficient for surely
it saves on a lot of time. Advertisements are immediately published which is not restricted by
time or any geographical boundaries thus reaching global consumers at large.  It has brought
business to the finger tips by which a product can be viewed, liked, order placed and even paid
for it online.

Moreover, Internet advertising gives the advertiser the scope to measure the effectiveness of the
advertisement as well. The advertiser can have a sound knowledge of how many times the
advertisement given by him or her is clicked and how many visitors are coming to the site and
even making a purchase through the Internet. Moreover, big names like Google and Yahoo have
taken advertising through Internet to a different pedestal. By charging advertisers for the clicks
rather than the impressions, they have successfully attracted the advertisers towards their pay-for
performance model.

The use of Internet as the advertising medium also has a direct impact on the investment that the
advertiser does. Internet allows the customization of the advertisements both encompassing
content and posted websites. Take for example, Google AdSense, AdWords and Yahoo! Search
Marketing which gives the opportunity to display the ads on the search result page or in specific
web pages. Internet also helps those who have a limited budget as advertisers have the scope to
bid for advertisements on Google on the basis of how the advertisement turns out to be. This
stands for the fact that the advertiser is charged only for the number of clicks on the posted
advertisement.

Internet has also made advertising more targeted. There are certain programs like Google’s
AdWords and AdSense which match up the advertisers with the content that the targeted market
concentrates on. Moreover, Internet advertising has various ways of placing an advertisement. It
comprises contextual ads on search engine results page, blogs, email marketing, advertising
networks, online classified advertising and Social Network advertising.

Internet has thus added new dimensions to advertising. It is a common belief that what sees
more, sells more and Internet has just made advertisements visible to the common eye more.

 Ads are typically more effective when they are viewed by the audience they target.
 Before Internet advertising, local media outlets served as a conduit for advertisements
tailored to a particular geographical population.
 Today online advertising outlets can use IP addresses to target a geographic location through
any online medium, perhaps to the detriment of local media.
 Targeting allows online advertising outlets that are not geographically constrained in their
reach to increase profits when advertising space is limited, and online outlets may be able to
charge different rates for ads targeting different localities.
 Despite this, online advertising outlets may be rather slow in adopting targeting technologies.