The Internet is becoming a very important part of our lives, especially in business. You cannot imagine a successful business without an Internet presence. Many companies have their own corporate websites and email newsletters, but it is 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, back in 1995. At the beginning of the age of online advertising, the most widely used banner formats were 468×60 pixels, 120×60 pixels, and 88×31 pixels. Several years ago, new ad formats appeared, such as so-called skyscraper ads. We recommend that you visit the Internet Advertising Office to view the universal ad packages.
http://www.iab.net/standards/adunits.asp
Spending on online advertising grows exponentially. According to research by eMarketer, in 2005, advertising spend in the United States will exceed $ 10 billion for the first time. They predict it will hit $ 12.9 billion! This is really great, especially if we know that in 2002, advertising cost $ 6 billion. Three years is not that long, but when it comes to the Internet it is.
There are many sites that have some advertisements. 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 ads. The first banner was posted on the HotWired website in 1994. It is a famous banner with the text: “Have you ever clicked your mouse HERE? YOU’LL! “
In the beginning, the banners had decent click-through rates, sometimes even 10%. Today CTR is typically 0.1% to 0.3% even lower due to banner saturation.
Marketers needed new online advertising models, so they started creating ads with Flash. With Flash technology, marketers can create interactive ads that look like mini home pages, and in most cases those ads have a much better CTR. Ads made in Flash can be seen on many popular portals such as Yahoo! and MSN.
Today, the best results show email advertising and contextual advertising. Email advertising is great if your ad appears in dual subscription email newsletters with targeted subscribers. Good ad campaigns can get a 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 desired keywords, so every time someone performs a search on Google with the selected keyword, their ad will appear in the Google sidebar or at the top from the search results. This is good because a lot of people don’t see them as advertising, they see them as search results, and therefore the CTR is higher. It’s pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, so the advertiser only pays when someone clicks on their ad. AdSense, on the other hand, allows publishers to appear as text only on relevant websites that have a target audience similar to your business. Google AdSense is also great for website owners as they can monetize their website traffic. Recently, it was possible to have Google Ads on RSS. This is very useful for bloggers.
Another good option for PPC advertising is to use services like Overture and AdBrite. Overture allows the bidding of keywords 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 to help you run your next PPC campaign successfully.
Google AdWords Keyword Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox
Keyword suggestion tool
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
Free keyword tracker and search engine ranking
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/ “
Checking the search engine location
http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm “
When you start advertising online, you need to be able to answer several questions.
1) What do you want to achieve?
If you don’t want where you are going, you will 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 may be to get 100 clients, 2000 subscribers to your email newsletter, or anything else. 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 destination sites. Do you want to use online advertising for your brand? So the good use can be a larger banner campaign on popular ad networks. You most likely don’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 quality and visited websites. We have listed several useful free services that can help you determine the popularity of the site.
Google page ranking prediction
http://www.rustybrick.com/pagerank-prediction.php
Alexa
http://www.alexa.com
Link popularity check
[http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/default.htm]
3) Approach out of the box
Don’t be afraid to experiment with your ads. We have already said that there are a lot of ads, so you will have a lot of competitors. You want to get the most out of your ad spend. Test, test, test! 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. Clearly define your offer and call for action. Be sure to include words like “Click here”, “Register now!” And “Free Report” to offer contests for popular devices like the iPod. The great thing is to include engaging questions in your ads, questions that start with “How to …” messages that start with numbers like “7 Email Marketing Best Practices” …
Things to avoid
Although some people may tell you that pop-ups can get you a lot of new subscribers, we recommend that you don’t use pop-ups. Different studies show that people do not like this technique. Don’t make your banner images bulky, it will have a slow load 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 fool their visitors into having a better CTR. Don’t use that technique.