Marketing Strategy and Competitive Positioning pdf ebook

Display advertising
Display advertising can take one of a number of forms.
Banner advertising is the use of advertisements on web pages that have click-through 
options to take browsers through to company websites. They are currently the main form 
of advertising on the Internet. Advertisers bid on key words they believe potential custom-
ers will use in their searches (using Google, Yahoo or other Internet search engines). The 
search engines then display advertisements next to the results of the Internet search. While 
irritating to some customers, they have proven very successful when linked to the page 
content being viewed. For example, search engines such as Yahoo and Lycos will flash links 
to commercial sites offering goods and services related to the items that are the subject of 
searches. Much of the early success of Amazon was attributed to the banner advertising it 
enjoyed on the AOL website, which directed purchasers to books on the topics of interest. 
The effectiveness of banner advertisements in general, however, is questionable, with Tim-
mers (1999) reporting that click-throughs (visitors clicking on banner ads to link through to 
the corresponding website) can be as low as 0.5 per cent (one in two hundred). As users of 
the Internet become more sophisticated and experienced, it is likely that the click-through 
rate will fall rather than increase. To be effective, a banner advertisement must make an 
immediate impact on an often-crowded computer screen, as well as conveying in a few 
words the reasons to click through.
Pop-up advertising is another form of display advertising that is losing popularity due 
to the growth of ad-blocking software (by around 30 per cent in 2016).
Rich-media advertising, including video (often containing live information), is gaining 
in popularity because it involves interaction and engages consumers.
However, it is worth stressing that, as presented in, mobile advertising represents the 
largest share, with the fastest growth of all forms of online display advertising.

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