Actionable Marketing Advice

Internet advertising

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In our coverage of Internet advertising we focus on display advertising, still more commonly known as banner ads. These get a bad rap because of low clickthrough rates, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t worthwhile.  We have separate advice on paid search (PPC) marketing strategy.

Internet advertising answers

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Internet advertising quick guide

Internet advertising success factors

Average ad clickthrough rates for non-video formats are just 0.1% meaning that it’s wrong to plan their use primarily for direct response – to get the clicks. Instead, we suggest you think about display ads as a way of creating brand awareness and engagement.

Attribution modeling will show that often display can help generate searches on the brand name or for an offer, so they are best used in this way.

Our 7 Step Guide to success with display ads goes into much more depth on how to make display ads successful, but if we were to suggest just 5 key questions to ask about your campaigns, they would be:

  • Q1. Mix of offline and online media (are we spending enough?)
  • Q2. Are you we using the right targeting options?
  • Q3. Have you optimised reach and frequency
  • Q4. Are we exploiting the full range of ad formats?
  • Q5. Is our creative effective?

Internet advertising definition

Display ads are banner format or video ads placed on other sites with the aim of generating awareness of your site and generating clickthroughs to the advertisers site or a microsite.

Related statistics

Tools & Software

Much of the tools for managing display ad campaigns is provided by the ad networks. If you are a site owner looking to make money from online ads we recommend using Doubleclick for Advertisers (DART) which is free for small businesses.
To assess the effectiveness of display ads beyond clickthrough, we recommend attribution modeling software mentioned in this article.

Best websites on Internet advertising

These are three of the best general sites advising on display advertising:

  • AdAge – A leading US blog and magazine
  • ClickZ – One of the best sites covering marketing campaigns
  • iMediaConnection – A US marketing portal covering online campaigns well

For finding examples of inspiring ad creative, these are the best options which often show ad creative by sector:

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