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The Imperfect World of Quantifying Website Traffic
Online Advertising Lingo
Necessities for Every Company with a Website
Paid Advertising
Leveraging the True Power of the Internet Bootstrap Marketing Online
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A Dated Introduction to Online Marketing* *Note: This is the original version of a whitepaper that was authored in 2001 by iCondotta's founder and principal consultant, Stephan Aarstol. It's a useful primer, but dated - pre-Wikipedia (2001), pre-Google AdWords PPC (2002), way pre-YouTube (2005), you get the picture... Site & Section Sponsorships The online marketing realm is ideally suited for site sponsorships simply because people come to web sites on their own accord. Web content is not being broadcasted to people or forced on them in any way. If they’re interested in a certain topic, they actively seek out the content they want, from where they want, and then leave when they want. It’s entirely up to the user. The effect of this is that an advertiser can bank on the fact that a site’s audience has an affinity for the underlying site content where their advertising will be placed. Branding aficionados will be hard pressed to find a more suitable medium to achieve their branding objectives than the web. If you’re looking to positively reinforce your message in a non-commercial way by tying your message to a specific venue, it’s likely that there are several content rich websites devoted to a part, if not all, of your target audience. Even better, these web sites are usually provided free to the user, so they have already generated a tremendous amount of goodwill. Whether your tactical branding strategy is to simply create awareness, enhance message association, or to effect purchase intentions, sponsorships of site content that is popular to your target audience is a powerful branding tool that, depending on your market, is probably widely available… at least for now. Due to the ubiquitous nature of the web, certain ‘best of breed’ content tends to have a monopolistic pull on certain specific audiences. This spells opportunity for any company in a competitive environment where several competitors are targeting the same specific niche audience. Whichever company occupies the ‘best of breed’ content sponsorship in their market niche effectively locks their competitors out of that placement. A first right of refusal on that ‘best of breed’ content sponsorship is a valuable asset which creates a substantial competitive advantage over existing competitors and erects a barrier to entry for any potential newcomers. Location, location, location - if you can’t build a magnetic web space for your target audience, own the best one out there. Hesitation here could mean that your company ends up getting locked out by one of your competitors. Since sponsorships tend to be premium priced placements that run for a longer duration of time than other forms of online advertising, they usually constitute a more substantial financial commitment on the part of the advertiser. Media owners are well aware of this, and thus a greater deal of customization is usually expected on sponsorship campaigns. It’s essential for an advertiser to take full advantage of this willingness to customize because sponsorships hold much more value if they are distinctly different, in the eyes of a web site visitor, than the rest of the site’s standard advertising formats such as banner or button ads. In short, the advertiser’s message should be integrated naturally with the content and there should be no doubt which company underwrites the content. >> Email Newsletter Sponsorships Authored in 2001
by Stephan Aarstol |
