Online advertising transitions

Online advertising is a huge part of the World Wide Web, and the user who browses and participates in any online activity has to deal with it. Often what we forget or do not realize advertising is being fed to us with clever methods while we don’t notice. The same holds true in other media as well. For example a boxer or athlete might have a tattoo of some company on his back or a logo on his clothing constantly feeding us. In the online world the things you search for in web browsers are being fed back to you through advertisements later.

Advertising can be a annoying to the end users when not done right. For example, if the user is constantly fed with bright banner ads and ads popping off in flash it can make someone not want to be on that site. Advertising is part of every media and has been with us since the beginning of the WWW. It is not going to just go away. There needs to be an advertising procedure however that doesn't alienate the user from the content that he is using.

Unlike previously in the history of the WWW where mass users were targeted for advertisement and advertising was easier to spot, it is becoming much more individualized now. It used to be about mass e-mail targeting, and bright banner ads but now it is much more personal and based on our interests. Often when we sign up for a message board on a site we have to fill out an inquiry asking about our hobbies and the like, and we later are fed things related to those hobbies or interests through ads. These companies figured out that we are much more likely influenced and purchase a product or service that we are interested in.

behavioral targeting is a method Google and its competitors use to target individual users with advertising based on their history of web search. Much what we do on the web is tracked, and often that information including private information about us is being sold or given to companies interested in such material. The web really opened us up to companies being able to profit off of.




I think for newspapers to be successful online, they should either work with or learn from companies such as Google -- to see what really works. Banner ads might not be enough revenue, and readers probably do not want to be spanned with e-mails or have to deal with flash pop-ups. It shouldn't be too difficult to figure out what the interests are of a person reading certain topics and discussing certain news stories. However what is also needed is the revenue from online advertisers to be enough for online news sites to be profitable as well. Thus, the readership of online articles and the use of these sites must be high -- which can be done through participation and good journalism attracting readers.