It used to be said that a company couldn’t make money by advertising on the web. I believe the tide is changing on this.
It is said that no reads or clicks on the banner ads that you see placed on websites. While you and I may not click on them, someone does. If no one did, they would not exist. How many people do click depends on who you talk to.
In today’s Wall Street Journal there is an article about how on-line advertising in China is gaining traction. This may not seem like a big deal but there are a lot of people in China who are now using the web. Remember, the web is global. It has no boundaries. The article says that marketers are looking at web advertising as a lower cost way to reach their customers. With the current state of our economy I bet marketers here in the U.S. are going to give online ads and other web marketing another look.
If you decide that you want to look to the internet as your new way of marketing, don’t just depend on banner ads. In traditional advertising you don’t always buy just one media or just one channel on TV. Banner ads should just be a part of the digital marketing mix. Just like traditional marketing, you are looking for the right reach & frequency. You want to reach as many of your potential customers as possible.
Today’s internet gives us marketers many more choices then ever before. Besides banner ads, we have email, viral, social, blogs, search engines, websites, and more that are being invented everyday. Today’s web marketing was made for data mining. Every time you click on something, read something on the web or your email there is a good chance that someone on the other end has collected data on you.
There are two stories in today’s online version of Ad Age about traditional TV spots going viral. Why is this happening? Marketers now know that creating video content that creates buzz is all the rage. They are taking traditional advertising and sharing it with online marketing. Produce a TV spot that will get people talking and then move it to the web where it will gain traction for free. I believe this would define the term “getting the most bang for the buck”.
