Creating and Placing Online Advertising

Information technology (IT) companies, most of them being b-to-b marketers, are more successful than others in using online advertising, according to a May 2001 study by Nielsen/NetRatings (www.netratings.com). Nevertheless, the study suggests that banner ads are run too frequently on sites with limited audiences, concluding that this causes click-through rates to plummet. Nielsen/NetRatings says that online advertising frequency rates are in the high teens versus 3 to 4% in offline advertising. The statistics in the 2001 eAdvertising Report published by eMarketer (www.emarketer.com) are even more sobering. The report says more than 99.7% of banner ads do not get clicked, and 74% of online advertising space is not sold.
An interesting benefit of such statistics, however, is that in a softer economy, advertisers willing to commit to even modest ongoing spending can get great deals and even stretch the boundaries of what can be done. Web site owners hungry for advertising revenue will heavily discount.
Sometimes they will also allow advertisers to go quite beyond the ordinary, permitting regular advertisers to even modify their sites’ home pages. That means you may be able to do some breakthrough
online advertising.

Generating and Qualifying Leads with Online Advertising

You can’t cover the full spectrum of Internet marketing without addressing online advertising. When it comes to b-to-b lead generation and qualification, however, online advertising is losing its luster. Banner advertising in particular has been under attack because of dropping clickthrough rates. Yet there are effective ways to apply online advertising, as you will see in this chapter. Internet advertising continues to grow, even if at a slower pace than previously. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (www.iab.net) reported in April 2001 that online advertising in 2000 reached $8.2 billion, up from $4.6 billion the prior year. Although this was an increase of 78%, the IAB said it was lower than in past years. Banner advertising made up 47% of the year’s ad revenue, with sponsorships accounting for 28%. AdRelevance (www.adrelevance.com) says about 54% of b-to-b online ads are direct response ads, mostly to drive traffic to Web sites. Forrester Research (www.forrester.com) believes online advertising in the United States will reach over $25 billion by 2004, with online advertising in Europe expected to hit about $5.4 billion by 2005.