Web advertising.Dominant advertising strategies - Essay Example

Web advertising Introduction The web advertising industry has expanded and continues to evolve almost every day. According to a recent projection from Jupiter Communications, global online ad spending is expected to expand from $7 billion in 2000 to almost $28 billion by 2005. Online ad spending represents almost 6% of total advertising expenditures in 2005, up from 2% in 2000 (Flores, 2000). This is due to the fact that web advertising is distinct from other mediums in a way that it enables consumers to directly get interested with the advertisement. A consumer can click with his or her mouse on the ad for more information, or take the next step and purchase the product in the same online session (Sung, 2000). Web advertising also gives advertisers the opportunity to specifically target an audience, enabling them to target advertisements that are customized to each consumer's buying patterns or interest (Sung, 2000). Dominant advertising strategies Ever since, advertisers have been using time-tested strategies in gaining attention from their consumer, these strategies include (Common Advertising Strategies, 2006): 1. Ideal Kids. The kids in commercials are often a little older and a little more perfect than the target audience of the ad. They are, in other words, role models for what the advertiser wants children in the target audience to think they want to be like. A commercial that is targeting eight year-olds, for instance, will show 11 or 12 year-old models playing with an eight year old's toy (Common Advertising Strategies). 2. Heart Strings. Commercials often create an emotional ambience that draws consumers into the advertisement and makes them feel good. The McDonald's commercials featuring father and daughter eating out together, or the AT&T Reach Out and Touch Someone ads are good examples. Consumers are more attracted by products that make us feel good (Common Advertising Strategies). 3. Amazing Toys. Many toy commercials show their toys in life-like fashion, doing incredible things. Airplanes do loop-the-loops and cars do wheelies, dolls cry and spring-loaded missiles hit gorillas dead in the chest. This would be fine if the toys really did these things (Common Advertising Strategies). 4. Life-like Settings. Barbie struts her stuff on the beach with waves crashing in the background, space aliens fly through dark outer space and all-terrain vehicles leap over rivers and trenches (Common Advertising Strategies). 5. Sounds Good. Music and other sound effects add to the excitement of commercials. Sound can make toys seem more life-like or less life-like, as in a music video. Either way, they help set the mood advertisers want (Common Advertising Strategies). 6. Cute Celebrities. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sell pizza. Spuds McKenzie sells beer. "Joe Cool" camel sells cigarettes. All of these are ways of helping children identify with products either now or for the future (Common Advertising Strategies). 7. Selective Editing. Selective editing is used in all commercials, but especially in commercials for athletic toys like frisbees or footballs. Commercials show only brilliant catches and perfect throws. Unfortunately, that's not the way most children experience these toys (Common Advertising Strategies). 8. Family Fun. "This is something the whole family can do together!" or "This is something Mom will be glad to buy for you." Many commercials show parents enjoying their children's fun as if the toy will bring more family togetherness (Common Advertising Strategies). 9. Excitement! Watch the expressions on children's faces. Never a dull moment, never boring. "This toy is the most fun since fried bananas!" they seem to say (Common Advertising Strategies). 10. Star Power. Sports heroes, movie stars, and teenage heart throbs tell children what to eat and what to wear. Children listen, not realizing that the star is paid handsomely for the endorsement (Common Advertising Strategies). Different web marketing media buys According to the Internet Advertising Board (IAB), only 56% of advertising spent online in 1999 was for banner ads (this was nearly 95% in 1997), 27% for sponsorship advertising, the rest being spilt between interstitials, e-mail advertising and other types of advertising (Flores, 2000). Banner advertising is effective because web advertising usually begins with banners. Banner is rectangular graphics located at the tops or bottoms of home pages and other well-trafficked pages of a Website. Because the clicking the banner is an essential factor in web advertising, what elements composed in the clicking the banner is main element in web advertising (Sung, 2000). Banner advertising usually cost around $20.00 to $25.00 per month. While ad banners remain the predominant advertising vehicle on the Web-accounting for approximately 54% of total online advertising revenues (Sung, 2000), other common web advertising media includes: Search Marketing, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, Classifieds and directories, and Viral Marketing. Search Marketing Advertisers, both big and small, do agree that search enables their brands to be put in front of their customers at the very start of their active interest. 87% of internet users identify search as their primary means of locating websites (qtd. from Introduction to Search marketing, n.d.), advertisers who do not realized this consumer behavior are most likely to get invisibility online. There are two main ways that advertisers do to ensure traffic to their site from a search engine (Introduction to Search marketing, n.d.): the paid for search (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO). Paid for Search or PPC (Pay per Click) allows an advertiser to bid on certain keywords so that a short description and URL for their site appears in the paid listing section - normally in a sectioned off area to separate it from natural search - when consumer searches for these terms. The advertiser pays a certain price each time someone clicks on their link. What advertisers pay and their succeeding listing depends on how much they are prepared to bid for the term and on the search engine's own ranking policy (Introduction to Search marketing, n.d.). The rates are counter either on pay per click or pay per impression basis. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process whereby a website can be 'optimized' to be 'search engine friendly' in order to improve its position in the natural rankings. Sites appear in the natural listings (as opposed to the paid listings) because a search engine has indexed them as being of relevance to the keywords searched on by the user (Introduction to Search marketing, n.d.). In addition to search being a formidable direct response tool, most search engines offer online tools to monitor search trends, which advertisers can use to gain a better understanding of their customers and the market demand. Specialist search marketing agencies can handle the whole search marketing process and also do this kind of detailed keyword research for their clients (Introduction to Search marketing, n.d.). Affiliate Marketing Affiliate marketing is a common technique of propagating a website in which the affiliate is rewarded on a 'pay for performance' model for each customer provided. An affiliate (a web site owner or publisher) displays an online advert (such as a banner or link) on their website on behalf of a merchant (the brand or advertiser). When the consumer who log on to the affiliate's website and clicks on this advertisement and goes onto perform a specified action (usually a purchase) on an advertisers site then the affiliate receives a commission. For the advertiser, affiliate marketing is an additional tool for driving traffic to their own website and boosting sales. An advertiser can employ an affiliate network to build an affiliate campaign that, according to their marketing goals, will put their product in front of specific surfers on selected websites. Networks continue to add to their score of affiliates (websites) in order to keep meeting the audience and sales targets as specified by the advertiser (Introduction to Affiliate Marketing, n.d.). Email Marketing Email is a personal and professional communication system that has revolutionized the way people interact and has made paper correspondence a thing of the past. Being the foremost online activity (BMRB Internet Monitor, Q3 2005), email is widely utilized by advertisers as a channel to reach consumers. The convenience and interactive possibilities of the email has helped it become a grown-up marketing medium, integrated vastly within campaign strategies and with its own legislation to protect the consumer. Email is a two way medium that can be personalized and micro-targeted; permission based email marketing leads to the acquirement of quality and profitable customers and is also ideal for relationship building. Authorization to send emails, can be gained from registration incentives on websites through the use of online promotions. The ever increasing sophisticated systems that specialists use to handle email campaigns provided advertisers the flexibility to extend their campaigns from simple messages to complex HTML based creative. Email marketing services also offer built in measurement tools that allow marketers to fine tune their campaigns and to see how many and who has opened their message, what they have read and are the succeeding steps (Introduction to email marketing, n.d.). Classifieds and directories Today, people are increasingly reaching for their mouse for job listings rather than the newspaper. Recruitment sites are achieving large amounts of traffic as users are finding the research and application process is made as pain-free as possible online. Employers who wish to advertise their job openings have a number of jobsites and online listings from which to choose and all can put their adverts in front of the kind of audiences they are seeking (Introduction to classifieds and directories). Homes, cars, jobs are now all far easier to find online than offline. The online format also facilitates the users search, pinpointing their needs faster as they are able to search by categories. The user also has access to huge information that would not be possible offline-all helping them in their decision making process. The ease in which consumers can now find this information on the internet has seen a growth in the number of directories online. The ease and accessibility of online listings benefits the time-poor consumer and provides companies with an easy-to-use channel by which to gain new business (Introduction to classifieds and directories, n.d.). Viral Marketing Viral marketing is simply word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online, with advertisers able to reach huge social networks in a moment. By making use of the power of peer-to-peer advertising, products are able to raise their awareness and achieve valuable dwell-time through attracting the full attention of their audience for minutes rather than seconds. This is certainly the main power of web advertising, when compared with most other conventional media. The success of viral marketing is often based upon the concept of 'cool' - if a recipient enjoys the content of an email they will pass it on to their friends or colleagues. Moreover, if something is seen as specifically enlightening or helpful the same rule applies. Advertisers can make a buzz around a new product or service at a relatively low cost, by propagating a wisely constructed campaign to a specific and targeted database of internet users, which may include funny videos, entertaining microsites, games, special offers, interesting stories or images that can be passed around the internet community (Introduction to Viral marketing, n.d.). Measuring the effectiveness of web advertising Since web advertising is new, there is a lack of standardization for measuring web advertising effectiveness. Until now, there have been different definitions for the same terms, a lack of comparability, and completely unique systems that do not allow for scalable auditing. However, in general terms, the effectiveness of web advertising can be measured in terms of awareness, product/service recall, attitude changes, and purchasing behavior. Among others, quality audience measurement of web advertising is the first step for ensuring the long-term viability of the Internet advertising market (Measuring Internet Advertising Effectiveness, n.d.). Currently, web advertising can be measured down to the last detail and in real-time, making it faster and clearer to see which components are proving more useful and fine-tune those areas that are less helpful. Tracking the number of persons who have clicked-through to a microsite or dedicated landing page used to be the primary indicator of an online campaign's success. Now there are countless of metrics to choose from that can provide a more rough comprehension to the success of a web advertisement. Internet tracking gives advertisers riches of data, that can appear overpowering, but by selecting a few key metrics linked to the campaign objectives, ROI can be quickly and easily monitored (Introduction to online measurements, n.d.). Surveys and tracking is how internet users are often being measured. There are two common tracking methods-Web-centric and user-centric. The Web-centric method uses log files on a Web server to calculate the number of people who have visited the site. This method usually undervalue the real number of visitors because of a network practice called "caching," by which Internet service providers store copies of popular Web pages on their own servers for speedy access. The user-centric method needs the installation of proprietary metering software on a computer in a sample household or office. The software automatically tracks the computer usage and Web sites that are visited on a continuous basis. The information is combined with the user's demographics to create visitors' profiles for different web sites. Telephone surveys also are used to assess the number of Internet users. For instance, a survey conducted in 2001 by the UCLA Center for Communication Policy found that 72.3 percent of Americans had online access, up from 66.9 percent in 2000 (Li, 2002). There are further metrics specific to certain online marketing tools. Email Marketing, for example, can be tracked right from the time it is sent to the succeeding action of the addressee. The advertiser can quantify the email's open rate, click through rate from the email to a dedicated webpage and conversions once they have landed on a website. As a key tool of customer retention and relationship building, tracking email responses can also be an important quantifier of the life time value (Introduction to online measurements, n.d.). Impact of the Child Online Protection Act The Child Online Protection Act (COPA) is a law in the United States of America, passed in 1998 with the purpose of protecting children from implicit sexual contents on the web. However, the law was blocked by the courts and has never taken effect. Because it only limited commercial speech and only affected US providers, the effect on the availability of the regulated material to minors if the law was enforced was unlikely to be significant. Several US states have since passed similar laws (Child Online Protection Act, 2006).The law was part of the aim of US lawmakers against the propagation of internet pornography. Parts of the earlier and much broader Communications Decency Act had been struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court; COPA was a direct response to that decision, narrowing the range of material covered (Child Online Protection Act, 2006). COPA required all commercial distributors of "material harmful to minors" to protect their sites from access by minors. "Material harmful to minors" was defined as material that by "contemporary community standards" was judged to appeal to the "prurient interest" and that showed sexual acts or nudity (including female breasts). This is a much lower standard than obscenity and covers all hardcore and softcore pornography (Child Online Protection Act, 2006). The major impact of Child Online Protection Act on advertisers (Government Regulation and Industry Self-Regulation, n.d.): 1. The law applies to operators of a commercial Web site or an online service directed to children under 13 that collect personal information from children or operators of a general audience Web site that have actual knowledge that they collect personal information from children (Government Regulation and Industry Self-Regulation, n.d.). 2. A privacy notice must be posted on the homepage and wherever information is collected. The notice must be clear, prominent, clearly written and understandable (Government Regulation and Industry Self-Regulation, n.d.). 3. Before collecting, using or disclosing personal information from a child, an operator must obtain verifiable parental consent from the child's parent. Until April 2002, the FTC will use a sliding scale approach to parental consent in which the required method of consent will vary based on how the operator uses the child's personal information (Government Regulation and Industry Self-Regulation, n.d.). 4. Schools can act as parents' agents or as intermediaries between Web sites and parents in the notice and consent process (Government Regulation and Industry Self-Regulation, n.d.). 5. Although not explicitly stated in the regulations, companies may collect and use children's information in the aggregate as information in this form is not covered under the law (Government Regulation and Industry Self-Regulation, n.d.). Gathering information about consumers Web advertisers and merchants as well use a variety of ways in order to collect essential information about consumers and visitors to websites, which includes the following (Ahuja, 2004): Self-divulgence of information for purchases. Customers may voluntarily provide personally identifying information to Web merchants when buying goods on line. Typical information provided would include names, addresses, credit card numbers, phone numbers, and merchandise ordered. This information allows advertisers to develop highly detailed, personalized profiles on customers that can be used to aim promotions at them in the future. Some Web sites require visitors to register in order to access the site. User surveys and online contests are other devices used to collect personally identifying information (Ahuja, 2004). Anonymous profile data. Even first-time, anonymous users to a Web site reveal a certain amount of information about themselves. A Web advertiser or merchant can identify and track the types of browsers visitors are using, their operating systems, countries of origin, and Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, which give up the identity of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs), or the companies from which they access the Net. For individuals arriving at sites by clicking on hypertext links on other sites, the originating Web site addresses are transmitted to the new site. The above information allows Web merchants to measure the number of visitors to the different sections of a site, determine what links drive the most traffic through, and make the site more useful to its visitors (Ahuja, 2004). Cookies. Cookies are devices that track visits to Web sites by storing information on visitors' hard drives. Web sites subsequently use this information to keep track of when users visited the site before, what they viewed, and the amount of time they spent viewing the site. Information collection via cookies is often not obvious to consumers. Notably, visitors are not personally identified through cookies unless they registered by name at the site before or otherwise personally identified themselves. However, if people have registered by name at Web sites, the servers can track their online actions and use previously deposited cookies to link these data to their names and addresses. The information collected can then be sold by Web merchants to advertisers and other interested parties. Both Netscape and Microsoft Explorer Web browsers can be set to notify computer users when Web sites want to deposit cookies, and the users can accept or refuse (Ahuja, 2004). Monitoring newsgroups and chat rooms. More sneaky information-gathering devices include collecting e-mail addresses and IDs in newsgroup postings or chat rooms and creating demographic profiles based on participants' online habits and postings. Moreover, Web merchants can buy e-mail addresses and information on customer preferences from other merchants, much like direct marketers currently do (Ahuja, 2004). However, privacy advocates anxious about the capability of marketers to track consumer surfing and buying patterns which could lead to abuses. "Before the Internet, direct marketers did not have capability to know every article consumers were reading," said Tara Lemmey, president of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet public policy group. "There is a fine line between targeting and stalking, and the advertisers and direct marketers have crossed the line." Graphic Gathering information about consumers is certainly not new. After all, credit reporting agencies and direct marketing firms has kept detailed files about consumers' payment histories and buying patterns for decades. The credit reporting firm Equifax Inc., for example, was founded in 1899 and kept credit information about individual consumers on index cards before computers were invented (Kleinbard, 2000). Making money from advertising The entities who are profiting from advertising are the advertising agencies and the producers of the product. However, the main beneficiaries of advertising are the producers themselves. For this is what advertising is all about-making money. The purpose of advertising is simple: to make potential buyers aware of products or services-and to get them to act! That act may be inquiring for more information, calling for an appointment, coming by your store or sending in an order by mail. The results ofthese actions should, of course, ultimately be a sale (Advertising Pretty Slick!, n.d.). More precisely, there are three generic objectives of advertisements: communicate information about a particular product, service, or brand (including announcing the existence of the product, where to purchase it, and how to use it), persuade people to buy the product, and keep the organization in the public eye. Most advertising blends elements of all three objectives (Advertising, 2006). Consequent benefits from advertising include attracting new sales personnel or retailers and thereby improving employee pride and morale (Advertising Pretty Slick!, n.d.). Additionally, advertising can: establish and maintain an awareness and positive image of your company, products or services, develop a need for products or services, develop sales leads, persuade customers that your products or services are the best, and promote events (Advertising Pretty Slick!, n.d.). References "Advertising." (2006). Wikipedia Foundation Inc. 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