What is Online Advertising

Online name marketing also refers to Internet advertising. Internet marketing, advertising on the Internet or web-based advertising, is a method of advertising and marketing that utilizes the Internet to advertise goods and services to the public and users of platforms. Online advertising can include email marketing and SEO, search engine advertising (SEM) and the use of social media for marketing a variety of kinds of display advertising (including banner ads on the web) and mobile-based advertising. Advertising is increasingly delivered through automated software systems that operate across multiple sites, platforms and media services, also known as programmatic advertisements. As with other online advertising forms, it is often a partnership between an editor, who inserts advertisements into their online content, and an advertiser, who supplies the advertisements to be featured within the publisher's content. Other possible participants are advertising agencies to create and display the advertisement copy and an ad server that technology delivers the advertisement and monitors statistics, as well as advertising affiliates that perform independently of the advertiser. The majority of online advertising practices are considered to be controversial, and as a consequence, they are becoming more and more controlled. Many internet users find online ads to be disruptive and have shifted to blocking ads for many reasons. Ad revenue from online ads could not substitute other publishers' revenue streams. A decline in ad revenue has prompted some publishers to block the content they publish behind paywalls.

Different types of online ads

Display ads

Advertising displayed on display conveys its message visually by using graphics, logos, text, photos, videos or any other graphic. Display advertisements are widely used across all online platforms, including websites and search engines, the social media platform, mobile apps and emails. Google and Facebook dominate display advertising on display sites that have evolved into a focus according to estimates that they accounted for 70% of all US digital advertising revenues in 2016. The aim of display advertising is to generate more users, clicks or greater popularity for an advertising brand or company. The majority of display advertisers target their audience with specific characteristics to enhance the impact of their ads.

Web banners for advertising

Banner ads or Web banners typically display graphical advertisements on web pages. A lot of banner ads are distributed through a central ad server.

Banner advertisements can make use of rich media that incorporate animations, video, audio forms, buttons or other elements that interact, made possible by Java applets HTML5, Adobe Flash and various other software. Frame advertisements were among the earliest form of banners on the web. The term "banner ads" is typically a reference to traditional frame ads. Web publishers integrate frame ads by putting aside specific space on the website. The Interactive Advertising Bureau's Ad Unit Guidelines provide standard dimensions of pixel sizes for ads.

Pop-ups/pop-unders: The pop-under advert is displayed in a new web browser window which appears above the original browser window. A pop-under advertisement opens the browser in a separate window that is placed under the initial browser window. Web-based authorities like Google are urged to avoid pop-under ads and similar technology, which states that they "do not endorse this type of practice".

Floating advertisement: A floating ad, also known as an overlay ad, is a kind of rich media advertisement that is overlayed over the site's content. Floating ads can disappear or be less intrusive after a time limit.

Expanding ads: An expanding ad is an ad with rich media frames which expands and contracts in response to the fulfilment of a specified circumstance, like a predetermined length of time a person spends on a website and the user's click on the advertisement or the moving their mouse over the advertisement. Expanding ads enable advertisers to include more information in an ad's space that is limited.

Trick banners are an ad for banners in which the copy mimics an element on the screen that people typically see, for example, an operating system's message or an application's most popular message, to encourage clicks on ads. Trick banners usually don't mention the advertiser on the ad's first page, which is why they're an example of bait-and-switch. They typically have more clicks than average, however, tricked customers might be angry at the advertiser for misleading them.

News Feed Ads

"News Feed Ads", also known as "Sponsored Stories" or "Boosted Posts", generally appear through social platforms that provide an ongoing stream of info announcements ("news feed") in a format that is regulated (i.e. in small, similar-sized boxes that have a similar design). The advertisements are interspersed with news items that are not promoted, and the people are reading. These advertisements could be comprised of any kind of kind, including an advertisement for a website, fan page, app, or a particular product.

A few examples include Facebook's "Sponsored Stories", LinkedIn's "Sponsored Updates", and Twitter's "Promoted Tweets".

The format of display ads falls into its own class because, unlike banner ads, which are easily distinguished, News Feed Ads' style blends nicely with the news feeds that are not paid for. This online advertising format produces a much higher click-through rate than traditional display ads.

Delivery models and sales advertising

How advertisements on the Internet are displayed may involve a variety of people. The website's publisher chooses and shows the ads in the most straightforward scenario. Publishers that have their own advertising departments can employ this approach. In addition, ads can be contracted out to an advertising agency that is contracted with the publisher and distributed from the agency's servers. Ad space might be available to bidders in bidding markets with an ad exchange or real-time bidding, also known as programmatic marketing.

Advertising through programmatic channels

Programmatic advertising is the process of automating the selling and distribution of digital advertisements on platforms and websites using software rather than human decision-making. Advertising is targeted and selected to the right audience via ads servers that typically use Cookies, distinct computer identifiers that determine which advertisements to show to the specific user. Cookies can determine if users leave a site without purchasing anything, and the advertiser is able to later target the user again with ads on the website that the user has visited.

Since advertisers collect information from various websites regarding a user's online activities and interests, they can build an accurate profile of the user's preferences to offer more targeted advertisements. This type of aggregation is known as behavioural targeting. Advertisers may also focus their efforts on their target audience using contextual display ads that are related to the content of the website on which the ads are displayed. Retargeting, behavioural targeted, and contextual ads are all designed to boost the return on investment of an advertiser or ROI over non-targeted advertisements.

Advertisers can also show advertisements based on the potential location of the user through geotargeting. The user's IP address transmits some information about the geography (at least the country or general area). The information about the geographic location of an IP can be augmented and refined by other proxy servers or data to narrow the possibilities of places. For instance, for smartphones, marketers could often use the phone's GPS receiver or the locations of nearby mobile towers. Cookies and other data that are persistently stored on the device of a user could assist in narrowing a user's location even more.

Interstitial advertisements: An interstitial ad appears before the user can access the requested content and sometimes when the user is waiting for content to be loaded. Interstitial ads are a type of interruption-based marketing.

Text ads The text ads display hyperlinks that are text-based. Text-based ads can be displayed separately from the main content or be embedded using hyperlinks that link individual words or phrases to the website of the advertiser. Text-based ads can also be distributed via text or email marketing. Text-based advertisements typically display quicker than graphic ads and are more difficult to block with ad blocking software.

Ways of Advertising

Mobile advertising

Mobile advertising refers to ads distributed via wireless mobile devices, such as smartphones, feature phone tablets, or smartphones. Mobile advertisements can be in the form of displays that are static, rich media advertisements such as messages via SMS (Short Message Service) and MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) advertisements or mobile search advertisements as well as advertisements on mobile websites, or advertisements in mobile games or applications (such as interstitial advertisements, "advergaming," or applications sponsorship). Groups representing the industry, such as Mobile Marketing Association, have attempted to establish standard mobile ad unit specifications, much like the IAB's efforts to standardize all online ads.

The growth of mobile advertising is rapid because of a variety of factors. Mobile devices are becoming more prevalent on the market, and connectivity speeds have improved (which, among other things, allows richer advertising on media to be delivered efficiently). Screen resolutions have increased, mobile publishers are getting more adept at integrating advertisements, and people are increasingly using mobile devices. The Interactive Advertising Bureau predicts continued growth in mobile ads due to the use of targeting based on location and other technology features that are not accessible or applicable on personal computers. In July 2014, Facebook reported revenue from advertising for this quarter which was $2.68 billion, an increase of 67 per cent compared to last year's second quarter. Of this, mobile advertising revenue made up approximately 62 per cent, which is a rise of 41 per cent compared to the prior year.

Marketing via email

Email advertising is an ad copy consisting of an entire email or a part, or a portion of an email. Marketing via email may not be solicited, and in this case, the sender could offer recipients the choice to unsubscribe from future messages or be sent with the user's approval (opt-in). Companies may request your email address to send you periodic updates about new sales or products.

Chat-related ads

In contrast to static messaging Chat, advertising refers to real-time messages being delivered to users of specific websites. This is achieved via live chat software or other tracking software installed on specific websites. The people behind the site frequently drop advertisements on users who are browsing around the websites. It is actually an additional form of mailer advertising but distinct because of the time frame.

Online classified advertisements

Online classified advertising is a form of advertising that is posted online as categorical listings of specific items or services. Examples include job boards on the Internet, real estate listings on the Internet, automotive listings on online yellow pages, and auction-based online listings. Craigslist and eBay are two of the most prominent suppliers of classified ads on the Internet.

Adware

Adware software is installed and will automatically display advertisements on the user's computer. The advertisements may be shown in the program itself or integrated into web pages that are visited by the person using it or appear in pop-ups or pop-unders. The adware that is installed with no user's consent is a form of malware.

Marketing through affiliates

Affiliate marketing is when advertisers arrange third-party affiliates to attract prospective customers. Third-party affiliates earn a commission for sales made by their promotions. Affiliate marketers drive visitors to their affiliate networks. When you take action completed by the user, an affiliate receives an amount of commission. The desired action could be the submission of an email or a phone call taking on the Internet or filling out an online order that is completed.

Marketing content

Content marketing is any form of marketing that involves sharing and creating media and publishing content to attract and keep customers. The information is presented in various formats, including blogs, videos, news white papers, ebooks, case studies, infographics, how-to guides, and much more.

Given that the majority of marketing is the use of some media and the like, it's almost (though not totally) unnecessary to refer to "content marketing" as anything more than marketing. There are, however, different types of advertising (in-person marketing, telephone-based advertising or word-of-mouth marketing and so on.) in which the term "brand" is more helpful in determining the kind of marketing. But, even they are typically presenting the information that they market as information in a manner which is distinct from conventional print, radio and television or film, or online media.

Online marketing platform

An online marketing platform (OMP) integrates a platform on the web that brings together the advantages of a directory for businesses, locally-based search engines, search engine optimization (SEO) tool and the customer relations management (CRM) package, and the content management system (CMS). eBay along with Amazon are both used for online marketing and logistics management platforms. Retail online marketing is also carried out on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and much other Social Media. Major IT companies have purchased platforms for online business marketing like Marketo, MarketBright and Pardot (Eloqua-Oracle, Neolane-Adobe, Unica-IBM and). Contrary to TV marketing, where Nielsen TV Ratings can be relied on for viewing metrics, Online advertisers don't have an independent entity to validate claims about viewing by the major online platforms.

Methods of compensation

Publishers and advertisers use many methods for calculating payments. In 2012, advertisers calculated 32% of their online advertising transactions using a cost-per-impression model and 66% based on the performance of the customer (e.g. cost per click, cost per purchase) and 2% on hybrids of impressions and performance techniques.

CPM (cost per mille)

Cost per Mille, commonly called CPM, signifies that advertisers are paid for every thousand times they display their messages for potential clients (mille refers to the Latin word that means thousand). In the online world, ads are typically known as "impressions." The definitions of an "impression" differ between publishers. Additionally, some impressions aren't paid for because they aren't an entirely new experience for an actual client. Advertisers may use technology, such as web bugs, to determine if an impression is being delivered. The same is true for revenue. It can be measured in terms of Revenue per Mille (RPM).

Publishers employ various strategies to increase page views, including splitting content across several pages, repurposing who has written content, using sensational titles and publishing tabloids or sexual content. CPM advertising is vulnerable to "impression fraud," and advertisers who would like to attract visitors to their websites aren't able to determine if per-impression payouts are an accurate indicator of the results they seek.

CPC (cost per click)

CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) means that advertisers are paid each when a user clicks the advertisement. CPC advertising is effective for advertisers who want to drive traffic to their sites; however, it's not a reliable measure when it comes to advertisers who want to create brand recognition. Its share of the market has risen every year since its inception, surpassing CPM to control the market with two-thirds of all online advertisement compensation strategies.

Similar to your impressions, not every click is worth the money to advertisers. GoldSpot Media reported that up to 50 per cent of clicks on static mobile banners were accidental and led to being redirected to leave the site in a matter of minutes.

CPE (cost per engagement)

Cost per engagement attempts to measure not only that an ad was loaded onto the webpage (i.e. that an advertisement was displayed) however, but it also tracks whether the user actually saw and/or engaged with the ad.

CPV (cost per view)

Cost per view video advertising. Each of Google and TubeMogul supported this standard CPV measurement for the IAB's (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Digital Video Committee, and it's gaining a significant level of support from the industry. CPV is the main measurement used in YouTube's advertising Campaigns in conjunction with the Google AdWords platform.

CPI (cost per install)

The CPI compensation system is unique to mobile apps as well as mobile ads. In CPI ads, brands are charged a fixed cost only once the app is downloaded.

CPL (cost per lead)

Cost per lead is a method of compensation that means that the advertiser is paying for a specific sign-up from an individual interested in the advertiser's offer.

Attribution of the value of ad

In the field of marketing, "attribution" is the measure of the effectiveness of specific advertisements in a buyer's final purchase decision. Multiple ads can result in a customer "clicking" or taking another action. A single action can result in a revenue payment to multiple sellers of ad space.

Other forms of performance-based compensation

CPA (Cost Per Action, also known as Cost per Acquisition) or PPP (Pay Per Performance) advertising refers to the advertiser paid for the number of people who do a particular action, like making an order or filling out the registration form. Performance-based compensation also includes revenue sharing, in which publishers get a portion of the revenue earned by the advertiser through the advertisement. The risk of performance-based compensation is transferred from the advertiser of unsuccessful advertising to publishers.

Fixed cost

Fixed cost compensation is when advertisers pay a set amount for the delivery of their ads online, typically over a predetermined time frame, regardless of the visibility of the advertisement or how users react to it. One example can be CPD (cost per day) which is an unaffected cost to publish ads for the day regardless of impressions served or clicks.

The benefits of online advertising

Cost

The low cost of electronic communications reduces the price of advertisements online as compared to offline advertisements. Advertising online, especially on social media, offers an affordable way for advertisers to reach out to large, established communities. Online advertising can yield better results than other forms of media.

Measurability

Online marketers can gather data about their advertisements' performance, including the size of potential viewers or the actual response from the audience to their advertisement if the advertisement brought in sales or not, and whether the ad actually appeared in a user's view. This can help online marketers optimize their advertising campaigns as time passes.

Formatting

Advertisers have myriad methods of delivering their advertising messages, including the capability to communicate audio, images, video and even links. Contrary to most offline online, online ads can be interactive. For instance, some ads let users type in queries or allow users to connect with the advertiser via social media. Online ads could even feature games.

Targeting

Publishers can give advertisers the opportunity to target custom and narrow markets to display targeted ads. Advertising on the Internet can use geo-targeting in order to show ads that are relevant according to the location of the user. Advertisers can tailor each advertisement to a specific person based on their prior preferences. Advertisers can also determine if the user has seen an ad before to avoid repeated exposures and provide sufficient time intervals between exposures.

Coverage

Advertising on the Internet can reach almost every market in the world, and online advertisements influence offline sales.

Speed

When the design for an advertisement is completed Once ad design is completed, online ads can be rolled out immediately. The online delivery of advertisements does not have to be tied to the publisher's publication schedule. Additionally, online advertisers are able to change or modify ad content faster than their offline counterparts.

Besserges

Security issues

According to a US Senate investigation in 2014, consumers' privacy and security issues are due to the online advertising infrastructure. This is due to the possibility that malware could be distributed through online advertisements and malware to be introduced and activated with no adequate security or screening. Ransomware gangs have been spotted employing carefully-targeted Google search advertisements to send victims to websites which contain malware.

Banner blindness

Eye-tracking research has shown that Internet users are often unable to see pages that may contain advertising (sometimes known as "banner blindness"). This problem is much more evident on the Internet than in offline media. However, studies have suggested that the ads "ignored" by users can influence them subconsciously.

False advertising on behalf of the advertiser

There are a variety of ways advertisers may be overcharged for their advertisements. For instance, it is when a publisher or other people click (manually or by automated methods) on the CPC advertisement without a legitimate purchasing intent. For instance, fraud caused by clicks could occur when a rival click on ads to reduce their rival's budget or when publishers try to make money.

Click fraud is particularly connected to pornographic websites. In 2011, porn websites that were scamming launched a myriad of hidden pages on each user's computer and forced the computer to visit hundreds of paid hyperlinks without the user's understanding.

Similar to offline publications, online impression fraud is a possibility when publishers understate the number of impressions they've provided for their clients. To stop impression fraud, various associations of the publishing and advertising industries are working on ways to accurately count online impressions.

Clients heterogeneous

Since different users use various operating platforms, web browsers, and hardware for computers (including mobile devices and various screen sizes), advertisements on the Internet may be displayed differently to users based on the way the advertiser intended, or they might not appear properly or at all. A 2012 comScore study found that, on average, 31% of advertisements weren't "in-view" when they were rendered and never had the chance to be visible. The rich media ads cause more compatibility issues since certain developers might utilize different (and unique) applications to create advertisements (e.g. The comparison of HTML 5 with Flash).

In addition, advertisers can face legal issues if legally required information isn't shown to users, regardless of whether the reason for this is technological inequalities. For instance, in the United States, the FTC has issued a set of guidelines that state it is the responsibility of the advertiser to ensure that ads show all required disclosures and disclaimers regardless of the user's technology.

Ad blockers

Ad blocking, also known as filtering, refers to the fact that advertisements are not visible to the user as the user utilizes technology to block advertisements. A majority of browsers block unwanted pop-up ads automatically. Other programs or browser extensions can stop ads from loading or block certain elements of web pages with the behaviours of advertisements (e.g. autoplay of video and audio). About 9% of web page visits come from ad-blocking websites. Some publishers also have 40%or more of their customers using adblockers.

Anti-targeting technology

Specific web browsers have privacy settings that allow users to keep their personal information from advertisers and publishers. In addition, advertising companies aren't able to utilize cookies to serve specific advertisements to browsers that are private. Major browsers have included Do Not Track options into the headers of their browsers, but the rules are currently only implemented in the honour system.

Privacy is one of the main concerns.

The use of personal information of users by advertisers and publishers has raised concerns among consumers about their privacy. Sixty per cent of users polled said they would employ Do Not Track technology to prevent all information collection when given a chance. According to Gallup, most Google users and Facebook people are worried about privacy when they use Google and Facebook.

A lot of consumers are sceptical about internet-based behavioural targets. By monitoring users' online activities, advertisers are able to comprehend consumers very well. Adverts frequently employ technologies like Web bugs or respawning cookies to better identify their customers' behaviour. According to a 2011 survey conducted by Harris Interactive, over half of Internet users had a negative impression of online behavioural advertising, and forty per cent feared that their personally-identifiable information had been shared with advertisers without their consent. People are often irritated by advertisements that target their interests based on sensitive data such as health or financial status. In addition, some advertisers associate the MAC address of their user's devices to their "demographic profiles', allowing them to be targeted (regardless of the authenticity of the profiles) regardless of whether the user deletes their browsing history and cookies.

The credibility of advertisers

Scammers are able to profit from consumers' problems in confirming an online identity authenticity, which can lead to tricks such as the phishing scam (where scam emails are similar to emails from a reputable business owner) and trust schemes such as scams like the Nigerian "419" fraudulent. It is estimated that the Internet Crime Complaint Center received 289,874 complaints during 2012, more than half a million dollars in losses, most of which were triggered by fake ads. Consumers also risk malware, i.e. the danger of malvertising, when they interact with advertisements on the Internet. The Cisco 2013 Annual Security Report revealed that clicking on ads is much more likely to create a virus on a user's computer than browsing through the Internet to browse porn. In August, for instance, 2014, Yahoo's advertising network encountered cases of infection by an ad-hoc version that is a variant of Cryptolocker ransomware.

Spam

The Internet's cost-effective method of distributing advertising is a contributing factor to spam, particularly by spammers who are large-scale. Numerous efforts have been undertaken to combat spam, ranging from blacklists to regulatorily-required labelling to content filters, but most of those efforts have adverse collateral effects, such as mistaken filtering.