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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 Page s, Banner Ad s, Advertising Network s 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 advertsing. As a complement to television advertising, online directories allows the viewer to view the commercials of a number of brands for a particular product or service. 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 any of the 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:

  • ), 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 as Performics , 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 Network s 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 Hyperlink s 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 Trojan s. 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.


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