While internet advertising is developing extremely fast, simultaneously, internet users are developing an increasing blindness to online ads.
Nevertheless, for many types of businesses, online advertising gets the best bang for their buck, by far.
Here, we look at the advantages of internet advertising as well as the disadvantages.
Advantages of Internet Advertising
1 There’s more focus on end user
When you invest in online advertising, you have a far better ability to pinpoint and focus on any particular online segment that you wish.
You can filter out your targeted customer group based on their age, their location, their interests, their sex, their level of income and more besides.
What’s more, if you utilize search engines and/ or Facebook for marketing, you can target keywords (and rank them in search) which are closely related to the wants and needs of your target customer.
2 Low cost
Because you can pay for internet advertising on a per-visitor basis (depending on the format that’s available to you or which format you prefer – you can pay on a per-view basis, too), you are not compelled to spend your money when someone simply looks at your ad.
The idea here is that only those visitors that are interested enough in your ad will click on it, at which time you pay for the click.
3 Consumer interaction
After clicking on your online ad, there’s an array of opportunities for customer interaction.
The customer can get in touch with you, they can find out more information, they can consult with your dealer if you have one, or they can order the product or service directly from you.
Once they’ve made their purchase, they can share their buying experience on Facebook, leave online reviews, make a video of it and post it on YouTube for others to see.
All of this activity can motivate other customers to buy, or, if reviews are bad, it can do quite the opposite.
4 Stats are accurate
Your advertising campaign is very much under your control.
You are aware of the exact cost to you, and you are able to dictate your daily advertising budget to fit in with your costs.
If your ad/s are not working as well as you thought they would, you can make quick alterations to your ads – swap over images, alter ad wording, etc., or you can target different keywords.
Disadvantages of Internet Advertising
1 Decline in ad clicks
With respect to advertising banners, there’s no doubt that over the previous five years or so, there’s been a persistent decline in clicks.
This is caused by end-user “ad blindness” more than anything else.
Nevertheless, ads on Google search and on Facebook, for example, still tend to perform particularly well.
2 Not everyone spends time online
Some people, believe it or not, don’t spend much, or even any, time online.