The Internet is becoming a very important part of our lives, especially in business. Successful businesses cannot be imagined without an Internet presence. Many companies have their own corporate websites and email newsletters, but it’s not enough. Online advertising is the next logical part of every integrated marketing campaign to spread the word about your business.
Online advertising is much more different than it was in the early days of the Internet, way back in 1995. At the beginning of the era of online advertising, the most commonly used banner formats were 468×60 pixels, 120×60 pixels, and 88×31 pixels. Several years ago, new ad formats appeared, such as the so-called skyscraper ads. We recommend that you visit the Internet Advertising Bureau to view Universal Ad Packages.
http://www.iab.net/standards/adunits.asp
Spending on online advertising is growing exponentially. According to research by eMarketer, in 2005, advertising spend in the US will be over $10 billion for the first time. They forecast it to hit $12.9 billion! This is really cool, especially when we know that in 2002, advertising was $6 billion dollars. Three years isn’t a long time, but when it comes to the Internet, it is.
There are many sites that have some ads. These are usually smaller or larger animated images called banners. Online advertising is so oversaturated that many studies show that people developed the ability to filter the ads. The first banner was published on the HotWired website in 1994. It is a famous banner with the text: “Have you ever clicked HERE? YOU’LL!”
In the beginning, the banners had decent click-through rates, sometimes even 10%. Nowadays, the CTR is usually between 0.1 and 0.3%, even lower due to the saturation of the banners.
Marketers needed new online advertising models, so they started creating Flash ads. Using Flash technology, marketers can create interactive ads that look like mini landing pages, and in most cases those ads have a much better CTR. Flash ads can be seen on many popular portals like Yahoo! and MSN.
Today, the best results show email advertising and contextual advertising. Email advertising is great if your ad appears in double opt-in email newsletters with targeted subscribers. Good ad campaigns can get 5-10% CTR on email newsletters, even higher in some cases.
Google made a revolution in online advertising by introducing contextual advertising models in its AdWords and AdSense services. AdWords is based on a model where advertisers can choose the keywords they want, so that every time someone does a search on Google with the selected keyword, your ad will appear in the Google sidebar or at the top of the search results. This is good because many people do not see them as advertising, they see them as search results and therefore the CTR is higher. It is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, so the advertiser only pays when someone clicks on their ad. AdSense, on the other hand, allows publishers to have their ads appear as text only on relevant websites that have a similar target audience as your business. Google AdSense is also great for website owners as they can monetize their website traffic. Recently, it became possible to have Google ads in RSS. This is very useful for bloggers.
Another good option for PPC advertising is to use services like Overture and AdBrite. Overture allows keyword bidding and many popular sites like Yahoo! and MSN use the Overture service for their sponsored search results. AdBrite allows you to choose the websites you want to advertise on.
We have listed several useful free services that will help you make your next successful PPC campaign.
Google AdWords Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox
keyword suggestion tool
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
Free search engine ranking and keyword tracker
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/”
Search engine location check
http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm”
When you start with online advertising you have to be able to answer several questions.
1) What do you want to achieve?
If you don’t want where you’re going, you’ll never get there. You have to know what you want to achieve with your online advertising campaign. It’s like when you make projections in your business plan. You will have to make your internet marketing plan. Your goals could be to get 100 clients, 2000 subscribers to your email newsletter or anything in between. Just be specific and clearly define your goals to achieve them.
2) Where to advertise?
This is the next logical step. Depending on what your goals are, you will choose your target sites. Do you want to use online advertising for your brand? So good use can be a larger banner campaign on popular ad networks. Chances are you won’t have a great CTR, but a lot of people will see your ad and it’s profitable. If you want a better response rate, it’s good to advertise in email newsletters. If you want to get customers with minimal risk you should use PPC advertising on search engines or affiliate programs based on pay per sale.
You won’t choose the same places to advertise if you want to reach newbies and decision makers. You have to know what you sell and to whom. Market segmentation is essential.
You have to choose visited and quality websites. We have listed several useful free services that can help you determine site popularity.
Google Page Rank Prediction
http://www.rustybrick.com/pagerank-prediction.php
Alexa
http://www.alexa.com
Link Popularity Check
[http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/default.htm]
3) Innovative approach
Don’t be afraid to experiment with your ads. We have already said that there are many ads, so you will have many competitors. You want to get the most out of your advertising dollars. Try, try, try! Get creative and use technologies like Flash or DHTML to make your ads stand out from the crowd.
4) Words sell
You have to choose a good message for your ads. To clearly define your offer and call to action. Don’t forget to include words like “Click here”, “Sign up now!” and “Free Report” to offer contests for popular devices like the iPod. The good thing is to include interesting questions in your ads, questions that start with “How…” messages that start with numbers like “7 best email marketing practices”…
things to avoid
Although some people may tell you that popups can bring you a lot of new subscribers, we recommend that you do not use them. Different studies show that people do not like this technique. Don’t make your banner images bulky, they will have slow loading time. Not everyone uses broadband. Optimize them to have a good loading time. Some people make their banners look like Windows dialog boxes or put a combo box image on their banners to trick their visitors and have a better CTR. Don’t use that technique.