It was Mark Twain who once quipped that the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated after the Associated Press mistakenly reported his unfortunate demise. To that end, recently online advertising has been the subject of many eulogies that seem to be a bit premature. Bold statements declaring that Online Advertising Doesn t Work and Advertisers Are Pulling Back Ad Dollars might be the word of the day, but this perspective is short sighted and just plain false. The fact remains that the Internet and online advertising are not going away.
Online advertising is just a little over six years old.
During that time the business has grown and become more and more refined. The difficulties of late are caused by the same things that have been causing problems for business in general the lack of attention to marketing fundamentals. Like most things, advertising works better if those planning the advertising know what results they hope to achieve. The fate of the less fortunate online campaigns of the past has been due to a lack of planning and forethought. Along with the naivet that resulted in the gold rush of anybody who could build a Web page thinking they could also run an online store, many advertisers believed that the secret to online advertising success was to create an ad banner and put in on the Web.