What is Web Advertising? Common Media, Cost-effectiveness

What is Web Advertising?

Web advertising refers to the practice of promoting a product, service, or brand through online channels. It includes a variety of tactics such as display advertising, social media advertising, search engine advertising, and email marketing.

Display advertising involves placing banner ads or other graphical ads on websites that are related to the advertiser’s product or service. Social media advertising involves promoting content or ads on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Search engine advertising involves placing ads on search engine results on pages based on specific keywords or phrases. Email marketing involves sending promotional emails to a list of subscribers.

Web advertising is often used by businesses to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to their website, generate leads, and ultimately increase sales. Some of the benefits of web advertising include its ability to reach a global audience, its cost-effectiveness compared to traditional forms of advertising, its ability to target specific audiences based on demographics and interests, and its ability to track and measure the effectiveness of campaigns in real time.

Just like in traditional advertising and promotion, the objective of Web advertising is to communicate the offerings of a website efficiently and cost-effectively to both existing and prospective customers. Web advertising is done using computers or electronic devices that connect customers to the Internet.

In comparison to traditional advertising tools, which are in passive mode, Web advertising offers an interactive mode to customers, putting them in the driver’s seat. For this reason, Web advertising needs to be information-rich and user-friendly.

The growing importance of Web advertising can be attributed to the following reasons:

• A growing trend among customers to surf the Internet
  
• The advent of search engines that link customers with websites through keywords
  
• Increased access to the Internet
  
• The widespread growth of e-commerce

Common Media of Web Advertising

Web advertising is done using various media, such as banner advertisements, video and audio, and pop-ups. Let us discuss the most common media for Web advertising:

• Text and Banner Advertisements
  
• Site Sponsorships

Text and Banner Advertisements

In online advertising, text and banner advertisements are the widely used mediums for informing customers about a company’s offers. Half of the revenue of companies comes due to online ad revenues.

On a webpage, banners are usually visible at the top as rectangular boxes. They contain a short text or graphical message to promote a product or service. If a user clicks on the banner, the target page of the organization is opened. This target page is generally the homepage of the advertiser. Organizations, in general, prefer online text and banner advertisements as they can be customized according to the market segment.

Site Sponsorships

Another medium of online advertising is the use of site sponsorship. It mainly involves supporting an event, activity, person, or organization either financially or by providing products or services.

Search engines such as Google have ‘sponsored links’ that connect to a marketer’s website or webpage. The sponsored links are paid sites hosted by content providers. For example, Google AdWords, an online advertising service that displays advertisements along with Google results for a search query.

Similarly, Google AdSense is a program that enables content writers or publishers to put up their advertisements on Google websites to earn high revenues. More often, Web advertisers take the help of content providers or search engines to host sponsored links. This is similar to buying an ad space or having a listing in the Yellow Pages.

Sponsorships are advantageous as they help in building a sponsor company’s brand by displaying it on the sponsored site. This further helps in creating value for the visitors of that site.

Cost-effectiveness of Online Advertising

The traditional way for organizations to advertise their products and services is through Yellow Pages, local newspapers, and media, such as television and radio, which are very expensive. In comparison, the Internet has been a cost-effective medium for the practices of advertisement and promotion. There are various reasons for online advertising being cost-effective:

• More People Can Be Reached at the Same Time
  
• Cost is Less Than That of Traditional Advertising
  
• Implementation is Faster

More People Can Be Reached at the Same Time

Online advertising enables organizations to reach more people online than through any other form of advertising, without using a huge advertising budget.

Cost is Less Than That of Traditional Advertising

Some forms of online advertising are free, while other sponsors or search engines charge advertisers only when people click on their links or visit their websites. Since online marketing is done only through the Internet, it saves the cost of advertising on different media. The same advertisement can be displayed to various market segments, with slight changes.

Implementation is Faster

Online advertising can be implemented very quickly due to widespread Internet connectivity, unlike traditional advertising. It helps the organizations reach a targeted segment much before a traditional advertisement.

Consequently, the Internet has begun to replace traditional forms of advertising. When used effectively, web marketing can improve an organization’s influence on customers and persuade them to buy its products and services in large numbers.