Internet Advertising

Here on our website we provide a discussion about the current Internet advertising methods available. We will look at both traditional Internet advertising and experimental Internet advertising methods. Here we also provide the most current news about Internet advertising, and for those who want to expand their knowledge further, we provide an Internet Advertising Book Store.

So if you are a webmaster, Internet marketer, or any individual who has an interest in what the current Internet advertising methods are, then this web site should provide the information that you need. So lets get down to the nuts-and-bolts of Internet advertising by examining the different forms which exist online today. Lets start by looking at traditional Internet advertising.

TRADITIONAL INTERNET ADVERTISING MODELS

Banners

Active banners in the form of animated gifs are by far the most popular form of advertising available today to the webmaster. These ads do not require any sort of plug-in, therefore most browsers can present them simply as a gif file, or they can be rendered when the browser reads a JavaScript for that ad. Although banner type ads still work, visitors are more and more consciously or sub-consciously blocking them from their attention while viewing a page. Commonly referred to as “ad blindness”.

SPAM

SPAM stands for “Sending and Posting Advertising Messages”. Many people believe it stands for “Stupid Pointless Annoying Message”. Click-through-rates (CTR) have dropped for SPAM over the years, but the fact of the matter is, SPAM is still an efficient way to get an advertising message to a prospective customer. But it is important to remember that in todays current Internet advertising environment, there is much more efficient methods to advertise your product online. Another point to remember about SPAM is that technology and legislation has teamed up to decrease the level of SPAM. This deleterious effect on SPAM will likely continue.

Fancy SPAM

Fancy SPAM, also known as rich mail SPAM, allows graphics, video and audio to be included in the e-mail message. CTR for this type of advertising is better than normal run-of-the-mill text SPAM. Even with this improved CTR, other forms of Internet advertising are more effective.

Pop-Ups

Pop-Ups are really the least effective form of Internet advertising. When these first became available for webmasters many years ago, they were quite effective. Today, most website visitors hate them and the CTR for these type of ads has steadily decreased over time.

Pay-Per-Click

Today search engines offer what is called pay-per-click advertising. In this type of advertising, a company, or in this case a bidder who represents the company, will bid on a particular keyword or keyword phrase. If you are the highest bidder for that keyword or keyword phrase, and a visitor to the search engine performs a query using that keyword or keyword phrase, your advertising will come up on top of that search result page. Search engines maintain a special designated area on the page for these type of ads. This way the visitor who is placing the query will not confuse these ads with the normal organic results of the query. These type ads tend to do very well and have a healthy CTR.

Content Based Advertising

With this type of advertising, the type of advertisement which comes up on the page, is solely dependent on the content of the page. These content based ads may be in a text or image format. Because these ads are content based, the CTR tends to be relatively high compared to other forms of advertising. For example, potential pilots who are on a site which provides a directory of flight schools would mostly click on an ad that is for a particular flight school. There are many sources for content based advertisement.

As all webmasters know, the king of content based advertising is Google. They provide, to accepted websites, content based Internet advertising in both text and image format. It should also be noted that Google also provides non-content based advertising through their referral ad program. These referral ads are actually selected by the webmaster, they may be in text or image format, and the pay out is dependent on the website visitor to take some form of action, the extent of that action needed being dependent on the advertiser. Usually the action involves ordering a product, filling out a form, or similar activity. While content based advertising is dependent on the number of clicks on that advertising, referral ads are not dependent on the number of clicks on the advertisement.

Innovative Script

This group of ads are at the cutting edge in terms of Internet advertising. Usually these ads invite some form of action by the visitor in order to complete the presentation. A couple of these ads can be seen on this page. Mouse over at the top right corner of this page and you will see an example of what I call innovative script. Statistically, these type ads have shown to be very effective. Another type of innovative script type ad can be seen in the form of the Chitika ad in the center of this page. What is interesting about the Chitika ad is that it will only appear if you have recently performed some search engine queries about “Internet Advertising”, or have been to other sites about “Internet Advertising”. Internet advertising is the primary keyword phrase of this page. These ads are called targeted ads and only will appear if a particular topic appears in the visitors cache. Hence the term targeted. When you set up the Chitika ad, you set the primary keyword phrase or topic, and that ad will come up if that primary keyword phrase or topic is found in the visitors cache.

So you may or may not see a Chitika ad in the center of this page, and whether it comes up or not depends on where you have been on the Internet and what you have searched for at the search engines. Pretty cool! This ad also invites some form of interaction by the visitor to the site. Combining innovative script type ads which are relevant to the content of the page seem to be very effective in terms of Internet advertising.

By the way, if the Chitika ad did not come up on the page, to see what it looks like copy and paste “#chitikatest=Internet Advertising” without the quotes, to the end of the URL in your address bar, hit Enter followed by Ctrl and R, and you will see the ad.

For completeness, I have also included a short list of the type of Internet Advertising which can be considered experimental. These type of ads are not currently within the mainstream of Internet advertising, but are worth mentioning because they may do very well and will then become more readily available to the webmaster.

EXPERIMENTAL INTERNET ADVERTISING MODELS

Banner Exchange

A banner exchange program is a program designed to allow marketers/advertisers to exchange banners to enable marketers/advertisers to promote their sites without the advertising expense. A program typically allows a marketer to display one advertisement, across the network, for every two advertisements it hosts on its site. The attractiveness of this is that it does not cost the marketer/advertiser anything.

Shockwave Ads

Shockwave ads are graphic intensive and tend to appeal to visitors and generally are not susceptible to ad blindness like their predecessor the banner ad. In the future these may become part of the mainstay of Internet advertising, but probably not until broadband is used by most of the Internet public. The reason for this is because these shockwave ads are bandwidth hogs and slow down the loading of the page. Another draw back is these ads require the shockwave plugin, which to date, is not incorporated into all browsers.

Interstitial Ads

Interstitial ads are Internet advertising that appear in a separate browser window while another page is loading. These ads, as the name implies, appear before the loading of the new page, therefore between pages, hence the name interstitial. Newer concepts called superstitials or metastitials attempt to be more acceptable to consumers by being more subtle and more interesting with the use of rich media components such as video. The drawback to these ads is that in general they tend to be intrusive and therefore these may really never enter the mainstay of advertising. But it is also important to remember that all ads to some degree are intrusive and whether or not interstitial ads are accepted by the general Internet public remains to be seen.

DHTML Ads and Floating Ads

These are the type of ads that float across the screen and or remain in place when scrolling down the page. Personally I think that these ads are way to intrusive and most people are bothered by them. It is important to remember that ads need to be presented to the visitor in a gentle way without pushing the information at them in a bombastic manner. If ads are presented properly, they can add to the overall information gathering experience of the visitor.

Internet Advertising Conclusion

So there we have it. These are the ads which are currently available to webmasters. It is important to build an understanding in terms of where the best on-page locations are for the ads and which colors work best for ads. All of this information can be readily found online. For example, Google provides to it’s publishers, a heat map which provides information in terms of which positions work best for ads. Google, and many others, have done extensive studies regarding which type of ads work the best. But it is also important to remember that what works well for some websites will not work well for others. Therefore, it is imperative to test and retest which ads produce the highest CTR.