As in the early days of television, online marketing has been filled with both successes and failures as businesses have tried to piece together the puzzle to attract online customers. Marketers have experimented with both local and national advertising targets. Content providers have experimented with ways to attract viewers. Together both groups are trying to figure out how to pay for all of this. Just as with television, the largest online players are companies with huge amounts of money to invest in these experiments.
Television today is no longer a puzzle and has become a well-established and accepted medium.
The television networks and their local affiliates are able to charge huge sums of money for their advertising because they offer a huge number of viewers. For some companies that advertising is a good investment. Nike or Coca-Cola or General Motors can all benefit from that kind of blanket advertising. But many businesses can't. Paying a million dollars to advertise during the half-time show of the Superbowl just isn't going to pay off for the local dry cleaner.