eBizMBA.com & Online Advertising
Tagged Under : Advertising, Money
I’ve become a fan of a new website these past weeks. www.eBizMBA.com is a great site that keeps up with all the various tech industry blogs but categorizes them into various business categories. My most favorite tab is the ‘Advertising and Affiliate Marketing’ area. I am really fascinated with where things are going with online advertising. It has been predicted that online advertising will grow by more than 21 per cent per year to reach $62bn in 2011, making it bigger than newspaper advertising, which is expected to total $60bn in 2011. ft.com
I’ve always wondered if ads were really effective or not in generating actual sales. Sure, they can bring some traffic to a site but how often to people actually purchase a product or service because of an ad? I personally can’t think of anything I have actually spent money and purchased because of an ad. I did hear a friend once tell me that the reason they got a certain burger at restaurant was because they saw a commercial for it. I guess it works for some people. I’ve always thought of advertising as an immeasurable type of investment in a product. You can’t really tell if someone who bought a broom from Wal-Mart did it because they saw a commercial or if they just needed one and found the best one at the best price. However, online advertising does enable companies to track where a user came from, from which ad and what they ended up buying. I just recently interviewed with a new company called burstabit.com and they provide such a service along with some other very unique features. My guess is that online advertising will indeed make huge leaps in the next few years and overtake traditional channels that currently exist. I would definitely love to jump into this industry somehow.
I think advertising affects you much more than you realize. You may not see a direct correlation between an ad and a purchase but many of the products you buy are generally influenced one way or the other by some sort of advertising.
What restaurants do we eat at? Generally the ones we know of - which generally is because of some form of advertising. Even if it was a reference from a friend, they or who they found out about it can often be traced back to advertising. People just don’t generally go to places they have never heard of. Even if you’re looking for new places to try - it’s generally an ad that might spark your interest.
This is just one example - when buying stuff, people generally want to stick with brands they have heard of. This is where impression based advertising and brand awareness come in to play.