Marketing Communications and the Internet

Internet: The Internet provides a complementary facility to the marketing communication tools
and as such should be used with the established means of marketing communications. The
Internet provides a wide variety of activities, including electronic mail, global information access
and retrieval systems, discussion groups, multiplayer games and file transfer facilities. The
Internet impacts upon marketing in two main ways: distribution and communication
(interaction). The Internet provides a new, more direct route to customers, which can either
replace or supplement current distribution/channel arrangements. It provides a means of
reaching huge new audiences and enabling the provision of vast amounts of information. The
Internet is an important way of providing product and service information and can enable
organizations to provide frequent and intensive levels of customer support. It is also essential
that the Internet be integrated into the marketing communications mix. Offline communications
are used to raise site awareness and interest among a wide audience and to provide the
public/viewers or customers with the site address. One at the web site, in-depth product
information can be exchanged for customer-specific details to refresh the database and fuel
future communication activities. The Internet enables organization to offer the following in their
marketing communications: interactivity, where messages can be responded to more or less
instantly. Personalization through use of email communications is now extensive including viral
marketing campaigns.

The Internet can become an integral part of the way an organization operates, the way it sees its
future and the way others see it, and not just be used to supplement the organization’s
promotional programme. It is this technology factor, more than any other, which has done so
much to accelerate moves towards integrated marketing communications and to encourage
managers to consider the totality of their activities rather than focus on an individual aspect of
communication.

While the ability of the Internet to reach customers directly, avoiding channel intermediaries and
reducing transaction costs is attractive, strategies must be decided upon for attracting customers
to a website. Reliance on online communications alone is too limiting and unlikely to be
successful, so a combination of off-line and on-line communications is necessary to attract
sufficient traffic.

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The variety of offline communications used by organizations varies according to their budgets
and their overall strategy. Many online brands use television and outdoor advertising to promote
not only the web site but, more importantly for them, the brand name to drive shareholder
interest.

Other offline communications used to promote a website include sponsorship, corporate

literature such as company reports and brochures. Online communications vary from banner ads
and pop-ups and viral marketing. Research indicates that the most important factor driving first
time visits to websites is word-mouth and recommendations by significant others. In other
words, people are more disposed to having their website behaviour directed by those they trust
rather than risk time and effort seeking information based on communications that lack inherent
credibility.

1. Display ads (banners and pop-ups)

Display ads were the first Internet advertisements. A banner ad displays a promotional message
in a rectangular box at the top or bottom of a computer screen. A banner ad is similar to a
traditional ad in a printed publication but has some added advantages. If clicked on, it can bring
a potential customer directly to the advertiser’s Web site. It also is much more dynamic than a
printed ad: it can present multiple images or otherwise change its appearance. Even more
important, the Web site where the ad appears can observe the click and the user’s behaviour on
the site. The most distinguishing feature of online advertising when compared to other forms is
this ability to identify and track the user.

Banner ads often feature Flash video and animations or animated GIFs, which display different
images in relatively quick succession, creating an animated effect. The various types of ads
including the rich media/video ads discussed in the next section) are designed to help advertisers
break through the “noise” and clutter created by the high number of display impressions that a
typical user is exposed to within a given day. Pop-up ads are those banners and buttons that
appear on the screen without the user calling for them. Generally these ads conform to the size
specification of the IAB banner and button specifications. One type of pop-up ad is the pop-
under ad, which opens underneath a user’s active browser window and does not appear until the
user closes the active window. The ad remains visible until the user takes action to close it.

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Pop-ups can appear prior to display of the consumer’s target page, during or after the display on
leaving.

Multiple surveys found that pop-up ads that appear over a user’s Web page cause negative
consumer sentiment. Online consumers rate pop-ups right next to telemarketing as the most
annoying form of marketing communications. A number of ISPs and search engine/portal sites,
such as Yahoo, Google, AOL, and EarthLink now offer consumers pop-up blocking toolbars, as
do Web browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, studies have
found that pop-up ads are twice more effective in terms of click-through rates than normal
banner ads (although this may occur because people get confused about how to close the ads and
end up unintentionally clicking to the advertised site). As a result, despite the backlash although
the number of pop-ups and pop-unders are likely to decline, they will not disappear entirely.

2. Rich media ads

Rich media ads are ads that employ animation, sound, and interactivity using Flash, dynamic
HTML (DHTML), Java, and JavaScript. Increasingly, rich media ads will be built in HTML5,
an open source program that does not require proprietary plug-ins like Adobe Flash to produce
animations and video. Rich media ads (with or without video) have their largest impact on brand
awareness and online ad awareness. But they impact all aspects of the purchase funnel including
message association, brand favourability, and purchase intent. They are far more effective than
simple banner ads. Interstitial ads are typically considered a kind of “rich media” ad. An
interstitial ad (interstitial means “in between”) is a way of placing a full page message between
the current and destination pages of a user. Interstitials are usually inserted within a single Web
site, and displayed as the user moves from one page to the next. The interstitial typically moves
automatically to the page the user requested after allowing enough time for the ad to be read.
Interstitials can also be deployed over an advertising network and appear as users move among
Web sites.

Since the Web is such a busy place, people have to find ways to cope with over stimulation. One
means of coping is known as sensory input filtering. This means that people learn to filter out
the vast majority of the messages coming at them. Internet users quickly learn at some level to
recognize banner ads or anything that looks like a banner ad and to filter out most of the ads
that are not exceptionally relevant. Interstitial messages like TV commercials, attempt to make
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viewers a captive of the message. Typical interstitials last 10 seconds or less and force the user
to look at the ad for that time period. To avoid boring users, ads typically use animated graphics
and music to entertain and inform them. A good interstitial will also have a “skip through” or
“stop” option for users who have no interest in the message. A superstitial differ from
interstitials in that they are preloaded into a browser’s cache and do not play until fully loaded.
When the file is finished downloading, like interstitial, it waits until the user clicks to another
page before popping up in a separate window.

3. Video ads

Video ads are TV-like advertisements that appear as in-page video commercials or before,
during, or after a variety of content. Video ads are the fastest growing form of online
advertisement. However, from a total revenue standpoint, online video ads are still very small
when compared to the amount spent on search engine advertising, and of course, are dwarfed by
the amount spent on television advertising. The explosion of online video content across major
news and entertainment sites, Web portals, and humor and user-generated sites has created huge
opportunities for brand marketers to better reach their target audience. The rapid growth in video
ads is due to the fact that video ads are far more effective than other display ad formats. Online
video has become the audience aggregator of the twenty-first century; displacing television
broadcast networks and Hollywood film producers. Internet users are willing to listen to
advertising in order to see short video clips as long as the ads do not interfere, and the ads are not
too long. There are many formats for displaying ads with videos. Currently, the most widely
used format is the “pre-roll” where users are forced to watch an ad, often another video, either
before, in the middle of, or at the end of the video they originally clicked on. Around half of
YouTube videos are TV or Hollywood clips used without authorization, but which are tolerated
by the studio owners because they drive traffic to the legitimate full-length video or TV show.
There are many specialized video advertising networks such as SAY Media, Advertising.com,
Broadband Enterprises, ROO, and others who run video advertising campaigns for national
advertisers and place these videos on their respective networks of Websites. Firms can also
establish their own video and television sites to promote their products. Retail sites are among
the largest users of advertising videos. In 2011, Zappos, the largest online shoe retailer, is
creating a video for every one of its products, adding 100,000 videos to its Web sites in 2011.

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Regardless of the type of advertising, most large advertisers work through intermediaries such as
advertising networks (e.g. Google’s Double Click), or advertising agencies that have an ad
placement and creative staff. Other options include swapping ad space with other sites and
dealing directly with the publisher (the Web site that will post the advertisement).

4. Online catalogs

These are the equivalent of a paper-based catalog. The basic function of a catalog is to display
the merchant’s products. The electronic version typically contains a color image of each
available product and a description of the item, as well as size, color, material composition, and
pricing information. There are two different types of online catalogs: full-page spreads and grid
displays. Most online retailers use a grid display in which multiple products are shown in very
small postage-stamp sized photos. This is typical of Amazon, LLBean.com, and Gap.com. The
other alternative is to use larger page spreads using large photos to display one or two products;
Hammacher.com, Landsend.com are just two of the many examples. It is still possible to use
both direct mail catalogs and direct physical mail catalogs. Direct mail companies can increase
their operational efficiency by sending electronic catalogs to customers before sending out the
physical catalogs. In general, merchants find that online and offline catalogs are complementary
and do not cannibalize or substitute for one another.

5. Social network, blog, app, and game advertising

Social advertising is another aspect of social commerce, namely, using the social graph to
communicate brand images and to directly promote sales of products and services. Social
advertising differs from traditional print and other media advertising that uses a one-to-many
model of communication. For example, in a traditional broadcast one-to-many model, Procter
and Gamble marketing department seeks to communicate to millions of mid-day television
viewers. In contrast, social network advertising adopts a many-to-many model where the object
is not to directly contact millions of viewers, but rely on the viewer’s themselves to pass the
message along (hopefully with positive remarks). For instance, when Disney released its Toy
Story 3 video trailer on YouTube in June 2010, it quickly generated 13 million viewers. Over 1
million viewers shared it with friends, and another 800,000 clicked “Like” to share it with their
friends on Face Book or other social sites. An existing social network composed of many people
and their friends distributed the Disney message to a great many other people.
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Social networks offer advertisers all the formats found on portal and search sites including
banner ads (the most common), short pre-roll and post-all ads associated with videos, and
sponsorship of content. Having a corporate Facebook page is in itself an advertising portal for
brands just like a Web page. Many firms, such as Coca Cola have shut down product-specific
Web pages and instead use Face Book pages. A typical social network advertising campaign
for Facebook will include the following elements:

 Establish a Facebook page

 Use comment and Facebook tools to develop fan comments
 Develop a community of users
 Encourage brand involvement through videos and rich media showing product in use by
real customers.
 Use contests and competitions to deepen fan involvement intensity
 Develop display ads for use on other Facebook pages
 Develop display ads for use in response to social search queries.
 Liberally display the Like button so fans share the experience with their friends
 Enable e-commerce by using Facebook Connect (social sign on) to direct fans to product
sale Web sites
Twitter is another social site that offers advertisers and marketers a chance to interact and engage
with their customers in real time and in a fairly intimate, one-on-one manner. Twitter began
offering advertising in 2010 and it is not yet a mature platform. Advertisers can buy ads that
look like organic tweets (the kind you receive from friends), and these ads can tie into and
enhance marketing events like new product announcements or pricing changes. Among the
users of Twitter are Volkswagen (product announcement), Google (announcing Google Instant
Search), Old Spice (product promotion), Ford (product announcement), and Papa John’s Pizza
(branding).

There are several issues to be aware of when using social advertising. User comments can
sometimes be negative and brand destruction can result. Corporate users carefully watch
submissions to their social network sites. Social networks can be influential, but not under all
circumstances. If Facebook fans and Likes do not turn into sales, then you will have to re-
evaluate your objectives on social sites.

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 6. Blog Advertising

Blogs are high on the list of advertising tactics that marketing executives consider. Blogs have
proved difficult to monetize because few blogs attract large audiences, and the subject matter of
most blogs is highly personal and idiosyncratic. Young people in the 18-34 age bracket have cut
their blog writing in half as social networks prove to be just as effective a method of self-
expression. Advertising dollars are therefore concentrated in the top 100 blogs, which have a
coherent theme that consistently attracts larger audiences. Because blog readers and creators
tend to be more educated, have higher incomes, and be opinion leaders, they are ideal recipients
of ads for many products and services that cater to this kind of audience. Advertising networks
that specialize in blogs provide some efficiency in placing ads, as do blog networks, which are
collections of a small number of popular blogs, coordinated by a central management team, and
which can deliver a larger audience to advertisers. Nevertheless outside of the established top
100 blogs advertising will be a small part of online social network advertising.

**The End**