Online Advertising – Part 1: Introduction

9Dec Lateef Mauricio Web Strategy No comments

Just as we see products and services being advertised to us in the offline world, by passing a billboard, flipping on the radio, receiving junk mail at home, the internet has become quite the marketplace. You see ads everywhere you go online these days – whether it’s checking your web-based e-mail, using a search engine, or visiting your favorite websites, you will find that ads are being displayed mostly everywhere you can go online. Just like in the real world, these are paid advertisements – but in many ways they are much more effective than traditional offline advertisements.

When you advertise online you can control variables much tighter to focus on specific audiences, offering the ability to avoid mass marketing and instead focus on niche marketing campaigns that are fine-tuned to target specific markets and ensure higher success rates.

You also benefit from being able to analyze performance in ways that are impossible with offline advertising by using analytics software that tells you how many people have viewed your ad, how many people clicked on it, and how many people clicked on your ad but weren’t impressed by your website and took a hike without purchasing anything.

There are many places you can advertise online, here we’ll cover the major ones: