iPedia Free Information Center

Information about Online Advertising

Online advertising is a form of advertising utilizing the Internet and World Wide Web in order to deliver marketing messages and attract customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, advertising networks and e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam.

But convergence is also driving the evolution of other forms of online advertising, resulting in information/content that is not limited by geography or time. The emerging area of interactive advertising presents fresh challenges for advertisers who have hitherto adopted an interruptive strategy. But it is quite clear that given a choice, television audiences would prefer uninterrupted viewing of content.

Online video directories for brands are a good example of interactive advertising. These directories complement television advertising and allow the viewer to view the commercials of a number of brands. After this, if the advertiser has opted for a response feature, the viewer may choose to visit the brand’s website, or interact with the advertiser through other touch points - email, chat or phone. Response to brand communication is instantaneous, and conversion to business is very high. This is because in contrast to conventional forms of interruptive advertising, the viewer has actually chosen to see the commercial.

Purchasing variations

The three most common ways in which online advertising is purchased are CPM, CPC, and CPA.
  • CPM (Cost Per Thousand) is where advertisers pay for exposure of their message to a specific audience. CPM costs are priced per thousand. The M in the acronym is the Roman numeral for one thousand.
  • CPV (Cost Per Visitor) is where advertisers pay for the delivery of a Targeted Visitor to the advertisers website.
  • CPC (Cost Per Click) is also known as Pay per click (PPC). Advertisers pay every time a user clicks on their listing and is redirected to their website. They do not actually pay for the listing, but only when the listing is clicked on. This system allows advertising specialists to refine searches and gain information about their market. Under the Pay per click pricing system, advertisers pay for the right to be listed under a series of target rich words that direct relevant traffic to their website, and pay only when someone clicks on their listing which links directly to their website.
  • CPA (Cost Per Action) or (Cost Per Acquisition) advertising is performance based and is common in the affiliate marketing sector of the business. In this payment scheme, the publisher takes all the risk of running the ad, and the advertiser pays only for the amount of users who complete a transaction, such as a purchase or sign-up. This is the best type of rate to pay for banner advertisements and the worst type of rate to charge. Similarly, CPL (Cost Per Lead) advertising is identical to CPA advertising and is based on the user completing a form, registering for a newsletter or some other action that the merchant feels will lead to a sale. Also common, CPO (Cost Per Order) advertising is based on each time an order is transacted.
  • Cost per conversion Describes the cost of acquiring a customer, typically calculated by dividing the total cost of an ad campaign by the number of conversions. The definition of "Conversion" varies depending on the situation: it is sometimes considered to be a lead, a sale, or a purchase.

Rich media advertising

The display advertising portion of online advertising is increasingly dominated by rich media, generally using Adobe Flash. Rich media advertising techniques make overt use of color, imagery, page layout, and other elements in order to attract the reader's attention. Some users might consider these ads intrusive or obnoxious, because they can distract from the desired content of a webpage. Some examples of common rich media formats and the terms of art used within the industry to describe them:
  • Banner ad: An advertising graphic image or animation displayed on a website, in an application (such as Eudora), or in an HTML email. Banner ads come in numerous standard sizes defined by the IAB, but originally (in the mid to late 1990s) were only rectangular GIF images 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels high. Media types and sizes have since become much more varied.
  • Interstitial ad: The display of a page of ads before the requested content.
  • Floating ad: An ad which moves across the user's screen or floats above the content.
  • Expanding ad: An ad which changes size and which may alter the contents of the webpage.
  • Polite ad: A method by which a large ad will be downloaded in smaller pieces to minimize the disruption of the content being viewed
  • Wallpaper ad: An ad which changes the background of the page being viewed.
  • Trick banner: A banner ad that looks like a dialog box with buttons. It simulates an error message or an alert.
  • Pop-up: A new window which opens in front of the current one, displaying an advertisement, or entire webpage.
  • Pop-under: Similar to a Pop-Up except that the window is loaded or sent behind the current window so that the user does not see it until they close one or more active windows.
  • Video ad: similar to a banner ad, except that instead of a static or animated image, actual moving video clips are displayed.
  • Map ad: text or graphics linked from, and appearing in or over, a location on an electronic map such as on Google Maps.
  • Mobile ad: an SMS text or multi-media message sent to a cell phone.
In addition, ads containing streaming video or streaming audio are becoming very popular with advertisers.

Email advertising

Legitimate Email advertising or E-mail marketing is often known as "opt-in e-mail advertising" to distinguish it from spam.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a form of online advertising where advertisers place campaigns with a potentially large number of small (and large) publishers, whom are only paid media fees when traffic to the advertiser is garnered, and usually upon a specific measurable campaign result (a form, a sale, a sign-up, etc). Today, this is usually accomplished through contracting with an advertising network or affiliate network, such asPerformics, Hydra Network, Commission Junction/BeFree, Primeq, LinkShare or Motive Interactive.

Affiliate marketing was an invention by CDNow.com in 1994 and was excelled by Amazon.com when it launched its Affiliate Program, called Associate Program in 1996.

The online retailer used its program to generate enormous volumes of low cost brand exposure and provided at the same time small Websites a way to earn some supplemental income with their Sites.

Refer to Affiliate marketing to find out more about this advertising model and compensation structure.

Contextual advertising

Many advertising networks display graphical or text-only ads that correspond to the keywords of an Internet search or to the content of the page on which the ad is shown. These ads are believed to have a greater chance of attracting a user, because they tend to share a similar context as the user's search query. For example, a search query for "flowers" might return an advertisement for a florist's website.

Another newer technique is embedding keyword hyperlinks in an article which are sponsored by an advertiser. When a user follows the link, they are sent to a sponsor's website.

Ads and malware

There is also class of advertising methods which may be considered unethical and perhaps even illegal. These include external applications which alter system settings (such as a browser's home page), spawn pop-ups, and insert advertisements into non-affiliated webpages. Such applications are usually labeled as spyware or adware. They may mask their questionable activities by performing a simple service, such as displaying the weather or providing a search bar. Some programs are effectively trojans. These applications are commonly designed so as to be difficult to remove or uninstall. The ever-increasing audience of online users, many of whom are not computer-savvy, frequently lack the knowledge and technical ability to protect themselves from these programs.

See also

References

Advertising is paid, one-way communication through a medium in which the sponsor is identified and the message is controlled by the sponsor. Variations include publicity, public relations, etc..
..... Click the link for more information.
Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government
..... Click the link for more information.
World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked, hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, a user views web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigates between them using hyperlinks.
..... Click the link for more information.
Marketing is a social process which satisfies consumers' wants. The term includes advertising, distribution and selling of a product or service. It is also concerned with anticipating the customers' future needs and wants, often through market research.
..... Click the link for more information.
A search engine results page, or SERP, is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the keywords have
..... Click the link for more information.
A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking them to the web site of the advertiser.
..... Click the link for more information.
advertising network (also called an online advertising network or ad network) is a collection of (often unrelated) online advertising inventory. When it is clear that the environment involved is the Internet, companies who run or administrate such networks are also
..... Click the link for more information.
Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.
..... Click the link for more information.
E-mail spam, also known as bulk e-mail or junk e-mail is a subset of spam that involves sending nearly identical messages to numerous recipients by e-mail. A common synonym for spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE).
..... Click the link for more information.
Interactive Advertising is the use of interactive media to promote and/or influence the buying decisions of the consumer in an online and offline environment. Interactive advertising can utilise media such as the Internet, interactive television, mobile devices (WAP and
..... Click the link for more information.
Cost per mille (CPM), also called cost ‰ and cost per thousand (CPT), is a commonly used measurement in advertising. In Latin mille means thousand, therefore, CPM means cost per thousand.
..... Click the link for more information.
Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website.
..... Click the link for more information.
Cost Per Action or CPA (as it is often initialized to) is a phrase often used in online advertising and online marketing circles.

CPA is considered the optimal form of buying online advertising from a direct response advertiser's point of view.
..... Click the link for more information.
Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website.
..... Click the link for more information.
Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses (merchants/advertisers) in which an affiliate (publisher) is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts.
..... Click the link for more information.
Cost per conversion is an advertising and marketing term, describing the cost of acquiring a customer, typically calculated by dividing the total cost of an advertising campaign by the number of conversions.
..... Click the link for more information.
Player support only: GNU/Linux (Intel, x86) and Solaris (Intel, SPARC) [1]
Genre: Multimedia Content Creator
License: Proprietary EULA
Website: Adobe.com's Flash page Adobe Flash, or simply Flash
..... Click the link for more information.
Technical terminology is the specialized vocabulary of a field. These terms have specific definitions within the field, which is not necessarily the same as their meaning in common use.
..... Click the link for more information.
A web banner or banner ad is a form of advertising on the World Wide Web. This form of online advertising entails embedding an advertisement into a web page. It is intended to attract traffic to a website by linking them to the web site of the advertiser.
..... Click the link for more information.
Eudora is an e-mail client used on the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems. It also supports several palmtop computing platforms, including Newton and the Palm OS. The software was named after Eudora Welty because of her short story "Why I Live at the P.O.
..... Click the link for more information.
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)

File extension: .html, .htm
MIME type: text/html
Type code: TEXT
..... Click the link for more information.
IAB can mean:
  • Internal Affairs Bureau
  • Internet Architecture Board
  • IATA airport code: McConnell Air Force Base – Wichita, Kansas, United States
  • Internet Advertising Board
  • Interactive Advertising Bureau

..... Click the link for more information.
Graphics Interchange Format

A rotating globe in GIF format. The gradient blue areas of this image transition choppily, a common artifact produced when dithering is not employed.
File extension: .
..... Click the link for more information.
On the World Wide Web, interstitials are web pages that are displayed before an expected content page, often to display advertisements or confirm the user's age. The concept of interstitial advertising was first launched in 1997 by Typo.net founders Timothy L.
..... Click the link for more information.
SMS or sms may refer to:

Computers and technology
  • Short message service, a form of text messaging on mobile phones
  • Scalable Modeling System, a directive-based parallel programming tool developed by the NOAA to solve problems defined on

..... Click the link for more information.
This article relies largely or entirely upon a .
Please help [ improve this article] by introducing appropriate of additional sources. ()
This article has been tagged since October 2007.
..... Click the link for more information.
This article relies largely or entirely upon a .
Please help [ improve this article] by introducing appropriate of additional sources. ()
This article has been tagged since October 2007.
..... Click the link for more information.
Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing.
..... Click the link for more information.
E-mail spam, also known as bulk e-mail or junk e-mail is a subset of spam that involves sending nearly identical messages to numerous recipients by e-mail. A common synonym for spam is unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE).
..... Click the link for more information.
Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses (merchants/advertisers) in which an affiliate (publisher) is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts.
..... Click the link for more information.


This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.
Herod_Archelaus


page counter