Tracking the growth of Internet Advertising

 

 

Internet advertising is a growing world. More and more companies and corporate houses are harnessing the power of Internet in one way or the other. While some are setting up their own websites, others are trying to reach out to their audience by featuring their services and products on popular search engines like Google and Yahoo. Then, there are other corporate houses that choose to advertise their offerings on other popular websites like Orkut and Youtube to attract the eyeballs of the netizens.

 

In other words, it seems as if the entire business world wants to become a part of the world of Internet advertising. But the obvious question is why? Well, more and more people are joining the virtual world bandwagon. For instance, there were about 16 million netizens in December 1995. The number now stands at 1,114,274,426 [on March 2007].

 

Business houses are soon realizing that the Internet provides a cost-effective way to reach a large number of target audiences. Moreover, Internet offers far more options than traditional media of advertising such as TV, radio or print. Hence, Internet advertising has been witnessing a tremendous increase.

 

This fact is also supported by data released by major survey houses. Take for instance the data released by the Internet Advertising Bureau. The research carried out by it reveals that in UK alone Internet advertising has witnessed a huge growth. For instance, online ad spends crossed the  £2 billion mark in 2006. Thus, Internet advertising industry in UK achieved a growth of 41.6% on a year-on-year basis. This at a time when the advertising industry as a whole recorded a growth of mere 1.1%.  The above-mentioned fact underlines the trust that business houses place in Internet advertising.

 

The research by this firm also reveals that Internet advertising is a growing phenomena across the globe. It stated that the online sellers netted a revenue of $4.0 billion for the second quarter of 2006. This 5.5 % more than what had been reported during the first quarter of 2006 when the revenues earned by online sellers stood at $3, 848 million.

 

In fact, the report reveals that the revenues increased by 35%.

 

But one has to remember that there are many forms of Internet advertising. Some of the popular forms include display advertising, search, emails and classifieds.

 

The survey conducted by the IAB throws an interesting light on this issue. The survey reveals that ‘search’ commands the maximum share, which is pegged at 40%.  Search includes the use of paid links, search engine optimization, contextual advertising, and paid inclusions. Thus, the survey reveals that most people have a good faith in search marketing.

 

And among the many facets of ‘Search’, the one that continues to draw an implicit faith happens to be search engine optimization. This fact is also supported by the data released by Marketing Sherpa. The firm asked both product marketers as well as lead generation marketers the ROI [Return on Investment] on the various marketing strategies employed by the. Most of them talked highly of search engine optimization. In fact, the ROI was above 65%, whereas the ROI of online advertising was 31% for product marketers and only 19% for lead generation marketers.

 

Thus, Internet advertising is growing and experts believe that there is still a lot of potential left in it.