Online advertising is a marketing strategy that involves the use of the Internet as a medium to obtain website traffic and target and deliver marketing messages to the right customers. Online advertising is geared toward defining markets through unique and useful applications.
Online advertising is also known as Internet advertising or Digital Advertising.
A major advantage of online advertising is the quick promotion of product information without geographical boundary limits. A major challenge is the evolving field of interactive advertising, which poses new challenges for online advertisers.
Online advertisements are purchased through one of the following common vehicles:
- Cost per Thousand (CPM): Advertisers pay when their messages are exposed to specific audiences.
- Cost per Click (CPC): Advertisers pay every time a user clicks on their ads.
- Cost per Action (CPA): Advertisers only pay when a specific action (generally a purchase) is performed.
Examples of online advertising include banner ads, search engine results pages, social networking ads, email spam, online classified ads, pop-ups, contextual ads and spyware.
