A look at advertising

Setting up your website is the beginning and we find that a lot of people after they have setup their website don't have much of an idea what to do next . It is important that you can get traffic to your website and one way of doing so is by online advertising. Online advertising can be separated into two broad categories - targeted or untargeted . Targeted is when the advertiser can gear their advertising to set parameters be it the users` browser, location or in the controversial one where there is software that learns the user`s habits and then generate ads targeted to them. This kind of advertising has come under fire from privacy groups. The untargeted is geared to the web audience in general.

Let us look at the different types of advertising and their effectiveness . We are going to start of with banner advertising . Banner advertising can be very low cost as well as expensive depending on how it is setup. Earlier research into banner advertising has shown that exposure to banner advertising leads to increased advertisement awareness, brand awareness , purchase intentions and site visits( Dreeze and Hussher 2003) As wide spread use of banners have gone on over the years that is no longer the case. The effectiveness of banner advertising is difficult to measure as if you measure it by the number of click through you will find it rather low as averagely it lies in the 0.5% mark but exposure would have happened the potential customer would have seen the message they might go to the site at a later date there is no way of knowing. There is no evidence to support the assertion that banner exposure has a significant effect on Internet purchasing but more research has to be done in this area. Research points that surfers are so used to banners on sites to such and extent that they avoid looking at them.

Search engine marketing s one place where if you formulate a strategy you will gain results and the beauty of it is there is no set budget you have to spend you set your own budget . Google adsense has really pushed search engine marketing to a new level and its competitors are definately playing catch up

Affiliate marketing is when a provider places small text ads with many different publishers and they are paid by specific parameters be it by traffic or by sales . The result is a lot of traffic from small providers leading to a good campaign.

Pop ups and pop under are one way of advertising but due to their nature they interrupt the website visitor and also regarded as aggressive and hence likely to turn customers away as well as dent your reputation hence they should be avoided.

There are a number of other ways of advertising as well as bringing traffic to your site but one thing is worth bearing in mind . You have to ensure that you market ethically as this will provide you with a stable platform to develop further if you employ underhand tactics they usually provide short term gains but long term problems.