Online Media Planning – Overview

There are two sides to online advertising, a legitimate one and an illegitimate one. The legitimate side of online advertising includes search engine advertising, desktop advertising, online advertising directories, advertising networks and opt-in e-mail advertising. The illegitimate side is dominated by spamming or spam mails popularly known as Bulk mails.

Because of the ability to track results of online advertising at a more granular level than what is available through traditional advertising, varying ways have developed for the advertisers and publishers to do business. The three most common ways in which online advertising is purchased are CPM, CPC, and CPA.

• CPM (Cost Per Mil) is paying for exposure of their message to a specific audience. CPM costs are priced per thousand.
• CPV (Cost Per Visitor) is paying for the delivery of a Targeted Visitor to the advertisers website.
• CPC (Cost Per Click) advertising is also performance based and is common in search marketing, where it is often known as Pay per click (PPC). In this scheme, an advertisement may be displayed (and assumedly viewed) many times, but the advertiser pays based only on the number of user clicks. This system provides an incentive for publishers to target ads correctly (often by keyword), as the payment depends not upon the ad being seen but upon the viewer’s responding and following the hyperlink.
• 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 for the media on the basis of only the number 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 the situation: it is sometimes considered to be a lead, a sale, or a purchase.

Banner Adds

Traditionally, ad banners have been the most common unit of advertising on the Web, and cost anywhere from FREE to $5,000 to more than $150,000 per month depending on the amount of traffic and page views the Web site receives, or the CPC or CPA the advertisement receives.

It is called an ad banner because it is in the shape of a banner, usually placed at the top or bottom of a Web page. Now the term “ad banner” loosely refers to any form of online ad, including small rectangular boxes known as buttons and large vertical boxes known as skyscrapers.

Online advertising is a big industry: Spending for online ads was about $300 million in 1996, and it grew to $5.4 billion in 2000 (even though the click-through rate is less than 1% and more than 50% of surfers say they never click on banners. The standard size for each type of online ad is set by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB).

E-mail marketing

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating commercial or fundraising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

• Sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or old customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business.
• Sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing old customers to buy something immediately.
• Adding advertisements in e-mails sent by other companies to their customers.
• E-mails that are being sent on the Internet (E-mail did and does exist outside the Internet, Network E-mail, FIDO etc.)

Researchers estimate that US firms alone spent $400 million on e-mail marketing in 2006

Contextual adds

Many advertising networks display 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 hyperlinks in an article which are sponsored by an advertiser. When a user follows the link, they are sent to a sponsor’s website.

Contextual adds

Many advertising networks display 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 hyperlinks in an article which are sponsored by an advertiser. When a user follows the link, they are sent to a sponsor’s website.

Pay per click

Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising technique used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines.

Advertisers bid on “keywords” that they believe their target market (people they think would be interested in their offer) would type in the search bar when they are looking for their type of product or service. For example, if an advertiser sells red widgets, he/she would bid on the keyword “red widgets”, hoping a user would type those words in the search bar, see their ad, click on it and buy. These ads are called “sponsored links” or “sponsored ads” and appear next to and sometimes above the natural or organic results on the page. The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad.

Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO), a subset of search engine marketing, is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (“organic” or “algorithmic”) search results. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results, or the higher it “ranks,” the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.

As a marketing strategy for increasing a site’s relevancy, SEO considers how search algorithms work and what people search for. SEO efforts may involve a site’s coding, presentation, and structure, as well as fixing problems that could prevent search engine indexing programs from fully spidering a site. Other, more noticeable efforts may include adding unique content to a site, and making sure that the content is easily indexed by search engines and also appeals to human visitors.

Ad serving

Ad serving describes the technology and service that places advertisements on web sites. Ad serving technology companies provide software to web sites and advertisers to serve ads, count them, choose the ads that will make the website or advertiser most money, and monitor progress of different advertising campaigns.