Understanding advertising media - Essay Example

Understanding Advertising Media Introduction Even though the Internet has been exponentially becoming more popular since the start of the 90's thereis evidence that it is not a successful advertising medium. The purpose of this paper is to examine why the former occurs. The paper is divided in three sections: firstly there is given some information on the Internet and its history since its spreading as a commodity, second examples of advertising techniques through examples are scrutinized, and finally the reasons that advertising through the Internet is not working are given. A small conclusion follows at the end of the paper as a summary to the detailed discussion. History and Definition Internet defines a small network provided that the 'i' is not capitalized. "The Internet" however, defines the Internet of internets and is the immense global network spread all over the globe. A formal definition can be summarized as "a global networks that links thousands of computers by data lines and wireless systems". According to the Wikipedia web site the predecessor of the Internet is called "ARPAnet" (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), and was originally employed as one can easily conclude for military purposes by the U.S in 1969. The Internet catalyst today, the core of the Internet in other words, is the NFS (National Science Foundation). Even though the Internet provides a lot more services other than those known to the wider audience such as Telnet and FTP, the paper focuses to the advertising medium of the Internet, namely the WWW (WorldWide Web). The WWW is a hypermedia information system that links computer-based resources around the world. That is includes a lot more than the familiar to most of us microcomputers, namely servers and mainframes and other sharing resources or intangible resources liek database systems that reside in the electronic mediums we are familiar with. Such resources become available to us through the web browsers. Browsers enable words or icon to display text, video, graphics and sounds on computer screen. The most famous browser to most of us is more likely the Internet Explorer but others like Opera and Mozilla have been catching up in popularity. 90% of the users and using the Internet for email exchange and 77% and 69% for general information and surfing respectively. 46% only are using it for their work and 27% and 26% for stocks' quotes and job searching respectively. Trading and banking are low in the pyramid with 12% and 7% respectively. Apparently the Internet has not become integrated to every day activities yet and its potential remains unknown to the wider public possibly due to ignorance or fear due to inexperience with its working and safety mechanisms. The Internet facilities are mostly used by higher education level persons, at a younger age of 18,5 and high level income. Details of Internet users' activities can be viewed at the Stanford University Web Site at Advertising Format Advertising techniques employed are the banners displayed on web pages, the key words entered in search engines, sponsors for web sites and emails send to users, and viral marketing with the use of email addresses a person acquires through the recipient lines of an email. Other common techniques include mobile marketing and a variation like PPS, Kiosk and Podcasts. The most famous search engine is inarguably Google. With ongoing update on any moment, the Google web site enables chat with MSN, AOL, and Yahoo instant essaging system without any program or Java applet. Banner rates are set on 5 CPM. The second most popular search engine is Yahoo! with ongoing frequency at any moment that does not charge the customers, while more than 80% of users reach UK Online consumers through partners including: MSN, Yahoo, Lycos, AltaVista and others. There are of course of rates for this service. Another advertising technique has found applicability through the most popular chat client program. MSN Messenger works on ongoing updates at any moment and enables chat with MSN,AOL, and Yahoo instant messaging system without any program or Java applet. Banner rates are set on 5 CPM. Hotmail is the last example to be examined here. It is a popular web site offering free web based email services. The web page goes on ongoing updates and advertisers are offered high quality targeting. It targets the UK Web audience and the off site banner rates are set on 4 CPM. Specific, targeted, banners are charged 1 extra CPM. Failure Justification Internet advertising benefits conclude to increasing the coverage of targeted audience, getting feedback in real time, reaching niche markets, low production costs, fast up-date of banners, accountability and finally street credibility. Disadvantages on the other hand include impersonal communication with the customer, low hit frequency, security concerns on buying due to not being familiar with security measures, limited independent auditing. Sites and advertising techniques might prove to be expensive to build & maintain and finally Internet advertising is a branding medium meaning that the contact with the customer is left on someone outside the company that is producing the product. According to Robert X. Cringely (1999), there are some facts that need to be thoroughly discussed and explain the reasons that Internet advertising is not working. First of all, Banner ads are billboards, the worse thing; banner ads are little billboards. The Internet user is exposed to thousands of such advertisements every day and it is barely ever the case that they will pay any attention whatsoever to such small billboards. Secondly, site design might have been poorly programmed and might be of bad quality which of course make the users never again even visit the site, or it might the case that there are no resources to monitor the site which will never pay off the desired. Thirdly, the advertisements might not work but this does not sum up to that the web site has failed in performing the desired. What needs to be taken care of here is to redesign the advertising techniques and adopt some others that might be more effective or might be of more interest to the audience that visits the site. The web site owners might need to advertise products more familiar to the site visitors. Finally, Robert X. Cringely concludes that there are not too many couch potatoes in web to be found. Users are active persons that spend to little time on a web site to see every small detail of it, thus it is evident that advertising will not pay off the expected. In general Internet advertising targets an audience exposed to a huge amount of information, therefore catching the eye of the visitor requires sophisticated advertising techniques. References Cringely, Robert X, (1999), 'Why Internet Advertising Doesn't Really Work, But We Pretend It Does', viewed 22 August, 2006, Stanford University, 'The More Time People Spend using the Internet', viewed 22 August, 2006, ' Wikipedia,org, 2006, 'The Internet', viewed 22 August, 2006, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet Read More