9. E-Marketing/Web Advertising

Hay, friends do you know that a normal person views at around 3000 advertisements a day. It’s amazing to know how companies try to influence consumers purchasing decisions.

Due to exposure to this high number of ads consumers have become passive to respond to these ads as a result now more and more companies are trying to invest in web advertising.

If we look at traditional advertising like newspapers, televisions are very impersonal, one-way and leaves consumers in a passive position, where as Telemarketing and direct mail ads are more personalised but slow, expensive and hardly any one-one interaction on the other hand internet has introduced the concept of interactive marketing- besides the two way communication and email capabilities vendors can also target specific groups or individuals to promote their sales.

It is fascinating to know that through web advertising vendors can track how many consumers are viewing the ad and how much time is being spent on each ad which helps them to target specific consumers and the other benefit of web advertising is that its not regulated like TV’s or newspaper’s. Recent trend of internet enabled mobile phones helps vendors to advertise even when consumers are on a go or at their office desks.

While more and more companies are placing there ads in internet in form of banner ads, users have become immune to banners and now they simply don not notice them. It is also found through research that click ratio of banner ads has been decreased from 3% in 1990’s to 0.08% in 2004, this drastic fall in viewers has lead vendors to come up with alternative methods of web advertising.

Recent trends show that vendors are using alternative methods of advertising like

• Banner swapping/Exchange: Firms exchange banners with other firms and display on internet.
• Advertising in chat Rooms: vendors frequently sponsor chat rooms and a chat vendor does advertising (ex. Talkcity.com)
• Advertising in newsletters: Ecommerce time (ecommercetimes.com) solicits ads from companies.
• Posting press releases online done by Southwest Airlines.
• Associated ad Display: Displaying the related products or consumers related tastes associated with that product (ex. Amazon.com “customers who brought this book also brought these books”).
• Affiliate Marketing: the revenue model by which an organisation refers consumers to the selling company’s website (ex. Easyjet for hotels).
• Viral Marketing: A word of mouth marketing in which consumers promote services by telling others (ex. Google “recommend a friend”).
• Webcasting: A free internet news service that broadcasts personalised news and information as well as e-seminars.

Apart from the new approaches followed by vendors it is also noticed that most consumers visit websites either to collect information or an intention to buy the product or services due to this reason E- Marketing/Web Advertising works very well.

Reflective report

Earlier I knew that ads are something which is difficult to get away with watching TV, listening to radio or browsing the internet. It is fact that as per the research that a normal individual is exposed to more or less 3000 ads a day, but I never knew that what all different types of strategies goes into preparing those ads for customers on internet.

The explosive growth of Internet technologies has had a major impact on the marketing function for example; interactive marketing is based on using the Internet, intranets, and extranets to establish two-way interaction between a business and its customers or potential customers. The goal of interactive marketing is to enable a company to profitably use those networks to attract and keep customers who will become partners with the business in creating, purchasing, and improving products and services.

I realised that internet made possible to target customers segments more accurately and wider population with low cost. While strategies like interactive advertising gives consumer a chance to be participative and communicate its ideas and beliefs because of which this web advertising helps organisations to promote its sales. It is clear that web Advertising is going to be the futures very important source of advertising because of its strengths and wider scope to reach larger populations.