Segments of online advertising
Online advertising comprises three segments:- Search;
- Classified;
- Display.
Search advertising
In
search advertising, advertisers pay fees to internet companies to list and/or
link their company's site domain name to a specific search word or phrase
(includes paid search). Search categories include:
- Paid listings – Text links appear at the top or side of search results for specific keywords. The more a marketer pays, the higher it will be placed on top of a search results page. Marketers only pay when a user clicks on the text link.
- Contextual search – Text links appear in articles based on the context of the content, instead of a user-submitted keyword. Payment only occurs when the link is clicked.
- Paid inclusion – Guarantees that a marketer’s URL is indexed by a search engine. The listing is determined by the engine's search algorithms.
- Site optimization – Modifies a site to make it easier for search engines to automatically index the site and hopefully result in better placement in results.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
An
important aspect of search advertising involves employing SEO technique. SEO
refers to the process of improving a website’s visibility or ranking on the
organic/unpaid or algorithmic search results page. The premise here is that the
higher or more frequently a website appears on a search engine’s results list,
the more visitors it will be able to attract. This strategy is based on
evidence that a typical user does not go beyond the first two or three pages of
a search result.
As
a marketing strategy, SEO involves carefully studying search engines'
methodologies and people’s search needs. Optimizing a website could involve
editing its content and HTML and associated coding to increase its relevance to
specific keywords and remove barriers to the indexing activities of search
engines. A second technique involves increasing the site’s number of back links
or inbound links.
SEO
techniques are classified into two broad categories: white hat SEO and black
hat SEO. A SEO technique is considered to be white hat if it conforms to the
search engines' guidelines and involves no deception. The objective is to
ensure that the content a search engine indexes and ranks a website on is
ultimately the content which a user will see. White hat SEO is a more effective
marketing tool since it aims at delivering quality content to the audience.
Black hat SEO attempts to improve rankings in ways that are disapproved of by
the search engines and involve deception. Also called "spamdexing",
this involves tactics such as link farms, keyword stuffing, article spinning,
and cloaking. These techniques degrade both the relevance of search results and
the user experience of search engines, since the content displayed on the
websites is in no way related to the search string’s key words. Search engines
penalize website employing black hat techniques by either reducing their
rankings or by completely de-listing them from their database.
Classified advertising
In
classifieds and auctions advertisers pay fees to internet companies to list
specific products or services (e.g., online job boards and employment listings,
real estate listings, automotive listings, auction-based listings).
Display advertising (banner ads)
Display
advertising typically includes static or animated images as well as interactive
audio or video media, as seen in the banner ads on the tops or sides of many
popular websites. These include:
- Rich media – Advertisements that incorporate animation, sound, and/or interactivity in any format. They can be used either independently or in combination with Flash technology and with programming languages such as Java, JavaScript, and DHTML. They are deployed via standard web and wireless applications including email, static (e.g. .html), and dynamic (e.g. .asp) webpages, and may appear in ad formats such as banners, buttons, and interstitials. Interstitials are included in the rich media category and represent full- or partial-page text and image server-push advertisements that appear in the transition between two pages of content. Forms of interstitials can include splash screens, page takeovers, and pop-up windows;
- Digital video commercials – TV-like advertisements that may appear as in-page video commercials or before, during, and/or after a variety of content in a player environment, including but not limited to streaming video, animation, gaming, and music video content. This definition includes digital video commercials that appear in live, archived, and downloadable streaming content.
