Do your homework before deciding to invest in online advertising.
Since Internet use continues to increase, advertising online can seem like a "no brainer." Advertising online is usually a cheaper method of reaching a large audience, and ads can be viewed 24 hours a day, seven days a week. However, the effectiveness of online advertisements has been questioned by some marketers and communications researchers. Like any other part of a marketing campaign, the pros and cons of online advertising should be reviewed carefully before investing in order to prevent a waste of time, money and effort.
Damage Reputation
Online advertising can hurt a company's reputation if the ads annoy enough users. Many users consider online advertisements irritating because they are perceived as lacking credibility and frustrating because they interrupt tasks, according to Eric Clemmons, a professor of operations and information management at The Wharton School. Customers really hate pop-up ads. In fact, according to a 2004 Yahoo survey, 50 percent of customers who disliked a pop-up ad said their distaste extended to the company as well as the website that displayed the ad. Other techniques that turned off customers, according to the survey, were ads that played sound automatically, tricked a user into clicking, covered content or blinked.
Hard to Measure
Companies can gather an abundance of statistics about their advertisement such as page views or click-throughs, but this information is not a reliable or valid indicator about the ad's effectiveness. Multiple page views have not consistently turned into huge sales, and click-through rates remain a low one to two percent, according to Web Design Library. Because the Internet is a relatively new medium, there is not a lot of history about what types of advertisements consistently bring about the intended result.
Missed Customers
Although it seems like everybody is now online, not all users visit on the Internet for the same reasons. Many of a company's current or potential customers may rely on other forms of information such as newspaper, radio or television when it comes to making decisions based on advertising. While there are paid services that can target your advertisements to clients using the web, they can be expensive and must be factored into the overall cost of the campaign.
Easy To Ignore
Companies that create user-friendly online ads which skip audience irritants face a different problem. Often the advertisements are very easily ignored since users already face an information overload online. So far, no one has found a practical way of directing attention without turning off viewers.
