Vista Review

Author: Dejan Bizinger

Internet is getting very important part in our lives, especiallyin business. Successful business can’t be imagined withoutInternet presence. Many companies have their own corporate websites and email newsletters but it is not enough. Onlineadvertising is the next logical part of every integratedmarketing campaign in order to spread the word about yourcompany.

Online advertising is much more different than in early Internetdays, back in 1995. At the beginning of online advertising agethe most used banner formats were 468×60 pixels, 120×60 pixelsand 88×31 pixels. Several years ago new ad formats appeared likeso called skyscraper ads. We recommend you to visit InternetAdvertising Bureau to see universal ad packages.

http://www.iab.net/standards/adunits.asp

Online advertising spending grows exponentially. According to aresearch made by eMarketer, in 2005. advertising spending in USAwill be more than $10 billion dollars for the first time. Theypredict that it will reach $12.9 billion dollars! This is reallygreat especially if we know that in 2002. advertising was $6billion dollars. Three years is not so long time, but when itcomes to the Internet it is.

There are many sites that have some ads. Usually they aresmaller or larger animated images called banners. Onlineadvertising is so oversaturated that many studies show thatpeople developed ability to screen out ads. The first banner waspublished on HotWired web site in 1994. It is a famous bannerwith text: “Have you ever clicked your mouse right HERE? YOUWILL!”

At the beginning banners had decent click-thru rates, sometimeseven 10%. Today, usually CTR is between 0.1-0.3% even lowerbecause of banner saturation.

Marketers needed new online advertising models so they startedmaking ads using Flash. Using Flash technology, marketers areable to make interactive ads that look like mini home pages andin most cases those ads have much better CTR. Ads made in Flashcan be seen on many popular portals like Yahoo! and MSN.

Today, the best results show email advertising and contextualadvertising. Email advertising is great if your ad appears indouble opt-in email newsletters with targeted subscribers. Goodad campaigns can get 5-10% CTR in email newsletters, even higherin some cases.

Google made a revolution in online advertising introducing thecontextual advertising models in their services AdWords andAdSense. AdWords is based on a model that advertisers can choosedesired keywords so every time someone makes a search on Googlewith their selected keyword their ad will appear on Google sidebar or on the top of search results. This is good because manypeople don’t see them like advertising, they see them as searchresults, and therefore, CTR is higher. It is Pay Per Click (PPC)advertising so that advertiser only pays when someone clicked ontheir ad. AdSense, on the other hand, allows publishers thatthey ads appear like texts only on relevant web sites that havesimilar target audience like their business. Google AdSense isgreat for web site owners, too, because they can monetize theirweb site traffic. Recently, it became possible to have Googleads in RSS. This is very useful for bloggers.

Another good choice for PPC advertising is using services likeOverture and AdBrite. Overture allows keyword bidding and manypopular sites like Yahoo! and MSN use Overture service for theirsponsored search results. AdBrite allows you to choose web siteson which you want to advertise.

We have listed several useful free services that will help youin making your next successful PPC campaign.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordSandbox

Keyword Suggestion Tool http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Free Search Engine Ranking & Keyword Tracker http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/”

Search Engine Placement Check http://www.marketleap.com/verify/default.htm”

When you start with online advertising you have to be able togive answers on several questions.

1) What do you want to achieve?

If you don’t want where you are going, you will never get there.You have to know what you want to achieve with your onlineadvertising campaign. It is like when you make projections inyour business plan. You will have to make your Internetmarketing plan. Your goals can be to get 100 clients, 2000subscribers to your email newsletter or anything else. Just bespecific and clearly define your goals in order to achieve them.

2) Where to advertise?

This is the next logical step. Depending on what your goals areyou will choose your target sites. Do you want to use onlineadvertising for your branding? Then the good use can be largerbanner campaign on popular ad networks. It is most likely thatyou won’t have some great CTR but many people will see your adand it is cost-effective. If you want better response rate, goodthing is to advertise in email newsletters. If you want to getclients with minimum risk you should use PPC advertising onsearch engines or affiliate programs based on pay-per-sale. Youwon’t choose same places to advertise if you want to reachnewbies and decision makers. You have to know what you sell andto whom. Market segmentation is essential.

You have to choose quality and visited web sites. We have listedseveral useful free services that can help you to determine sitepopularity.

Google Page Rank Prediction http://www.rustybrick.com/pagerank-prediction.php

Alexa http://www.alexa.com

Link Popularity Check http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/default.htm

3)Out Of The Box approach Don’t be scared to experimentwith your ads. We have already said that there are many ads, soyou will have many competitors. You want to get the most fromyour advertising dollars. Test, test, test! Be creative and usetechnologies like Flash or DHTML in order to make your ads standout from the crowd.

4) Words sell

You have to choose good message for your ads. To clearly defineyour offer and to call on action. Don’t forget to include wordslike “Click here”, “Register Now!”, and “Free Report”, to offercontests for popular gadgets like iPod. Good thing is to includeinteresting questions in your ads, questions that start with”How To…” messages that start with numbers like “7 EmailMarketing Best Practices”…

Things to avoid

Although, some people can tell you that pop-ups can bring youmany new subscribers, we recommend you not to use pop-ups.Different studies show that people don’t like this technique.Don’t make your banner images bulky, it will have a slow loadingtime. Not everyone use broadband. Optimize them to have goodloading time. Some people make their banners look like Windowsdialogue boxes or place a combo box image on their banners inorder to mislead their visitors and to have better CTR. Don’tuse that technique

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/advertising-articles/online-advertising-in-a-nutshell-3035.html

About the Author
Dejan Bizinger is a Contributing Editor for Infacta. Infacta is email messaging services company providing powerful, yet easy-to-use award-winning Group Mail, software for sending highly-personalized email messages and Group Metrics, software for email tracking. For more information visit: http://www.infacta.com

Author: Danny Wirken

Online advertising isn’t quite the same as advertising anywhere else. On the web, ads are everywhere. In fact it is safe to say that the Internet is one gigantic billboard.

Online advertising also differs from regular advertising in that glitzy, gimmicky logos or images or even taglines don’t cut it. Usually, the people who use the Internet are looking for specific items of information and just tune out the various gimmicks that companies use for their commercials.

This may be because when the net was young and still mostly dial-up, the ads were banner types which were pretty but really heavy. Though broadband has now replaced dial-up, Internet users prefer ads that are light and easy and preferably unobtrusive to their research.

What is the same, whether you advertise online or offline is that people connect with people. In general, they respond better to ads that appeal to their values or feature something they can relate to. They relate better to commercials that feature people.

For example, if your product is about health care, they are more likely to respond to a doctor than to anyone else. If your product is about basketball shoes, they are more likely to respond to a basketball player. Basically, you choose a spokesperson that your prospective buyers will believe or listen to. The only exception to this rule seems to be celebrities. For some reason, people will believe almost anything celebrities say, whether or not they themselves are suited for the product or not.

Now, hiring a celebrity to endorse your product can be a really expensive thing. Most celebrities charge high, after all you are trying to ride on to their popularity. Their manager will make sure that they get the most out of being your commercial model.

Unlike regular advertising, however, there is a way to cash in on the popularity of celebrities without having to pay an exorbitant rate. They are called celebrity fan sites. These are sites about a celebrity that may or may not be owned or maintained by the celebrity who is featured. Usually these sites are run by a fan of the celebrity, hence the term celebrity fan site.

Here is a truth that artists who last long in the industry know. The fans control their world. The acceptance of the public of their image, their composition, their design, their performance determines how much money they will earn.

The fans are also the ones who search the Internet the most about information about their favorite, and some not so favorite celebrities. Celebrities are among the highest searched items on the net. Over 40 million queries about them are made a day.

Thanks to search engines, these celebrity fan sites get quite a bit of exposure. They talk about their favorite singer, actor, model, or athlete. They have interesting information that attracts even more fans of their favorite star.

That’s a lot of traffic that businesses can utilize. All the companies need to figure out is which ones of the many celebrities will their target group be likely to visit. This will help you get the necessary exposure that your product needs.

One way to look at it is as sponsorship. A lot of TV shows or segments are sponsored by various companies. They allow these TV shows or segments to stay on the air. In exchange, these shows flash their logos of their sponsors during commercial breaks.

Online advertising has an advantage here. Unlike TV where the sponsor has to wait for their commercial spot, online advertisers have their ads constantly on the page on specified areas. Visitors can see them all the time as they surf the celebrity fan site. Depending on the agreement, some sites will even allow the advertiser to have their ads on various pages of the site, so no matter where they travel on the actual site, they still see your product on display in a prominent area.

Putting an online ad on celebrity fan sites is a lot less expensive than paying for airtime on television. The cost is a lot lower and you get more exposure since you are not limited to just your national public. Keep in mind that the Internet is on a global scale.

These celebrities have fans all across the world. The celebrity fan sites, being on the net, have a global reach. If your business caters to the international market here is another reason why you may want to place your ad on a celebrity fan site.

People like to be in touch with people. They like to know what’s going on with their favorites. So of course, they will look up news on their idols and voila! When they visit the sites about their favorite star, there’s your ad. Isn’t that great exposure?

People often idolize celebrities because they see something in these people that they would someday like to achieve, whether it is a physical, mental, social or maybe just a financial thing. They long to be as beautiful or as smart or as attractive to the opposite sex. Some may just long to be as fit or as skilled an athlete. Whichever aspect it is that they admire in these stars, if your product is something that can help them come close to achieving that goal, they may just click on your ad.

You will need to do some research to find the best celebrity fan site on which to place your ad. You do want to get the most for your money and there are hundreds of celebrity fan sites out there. You are looking for the one that attracts the most number of fans who are also part of your target market.

If you find the celebrity fan site you like, make sure to check out the contact details of the site owner right away. Most of them will have a link on their site marked as “contact us”. Once you get in touch with them, you just need to negotiate for a prime spot on their site. Don’t wait too long! Other businesses want that spot.

Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/communication-articles/advertising-on-celebrity-fan-sites-40179.html

About the Author

http://www.theinternetone.net/CategoriesInternetadvertising_1.html

Microsoft is running an ad campaign called Mojave. They tell testers that they are testing the new version of Windows (after Vista) code named “Mojave”, and then they actually show them Vista instead. Then the users “all love it (yay!)” – and Microsoft is like “we pwned you – Vista rocks”!

Idiot Microsoft – Vista STILL SUCKS!