Online marketing (Internet marketing), Internet advertising or eMarketing are all one and same terminologies for marketing of products and services using the medium of internet. Placement of ads on websites (just a subset of entire gamut of online marketing) is popularly known as Web advertising or Web Marketing. It has equipped the marketing and advertising honchos with an interactive and instant response elicitation mechanism, coupled with low costs benefits to target a global audience.

Internet Marketing (Web Advertising) aims at creating visibility, brand awareness and increasing sales to generate profits. The best part being, binding together the creative aspect to the technical know-how of the internet, right from design, development, implementation, advertising and monitoring of sales. Internet Marketing (Web Advertising) encompasses a wide array of services each having its own methodologies.

To begin with,
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) which is SEO and PPC, Advertising – display or text based or interactive,
Marketing – e-mails or newsletters or behavioral or affiliate,
Online Reputation Management,
Online Market Research and
SMO inclusive of blog & viral marketing.

Internet marketing (Web Advertising) draws a media strategy to address the specifics at the various stages of client engagement, incorporating an array of aforementioned services (single or multiple, with recommendations to compliment each of the stages) and Web2.0 strategies based on the organization’s business model.

Advantages of Internet Marketing (Web Advertising):
1. Wide audience reach
2. Fraction of traditional media costs
3. Personalized marketing messages
4. Behavior or Interest based targeting
5. Greater accountability
6. Campaign metrics- tracking, measuring & testing
7. Lesser Advertiser Risk
8. Performance based model availability

Disadvantages:
1. Use of newer technologies
2. Low speed internet
3. Complicated and heavy web pages
4. Security concerns for transactions
5. Personal information privacy

Online companies have come up with innovations like stronger encryption enabling conversion of the data to cipher, which cannot be intercepted without authenticated authorization into the program, thus taking care of security and privacy constraints. Internet Marketing has found favor with the music, movies, banking and the advertising industry.

So profound is the effect of online advertising, that within a short span it has grown to billions of dollars, with growth registration of 69% in 2007, 60% in 2006 and 69% in 2005. The average internet advertising growth has been 65% as against the 19% growth for the rest of traditional advertising media industry. The 2008, PriceWaterHouseCooper’s report states, web advertising in India will be Rs.4.5 billion this year end. Globally, the total revenue for the internet earnings is pegged at $44 billion. Moreover, Google’s results for the last financial belied expectations of the NASDAQ, which is a clear indication of online advertising being on the right track and of having rapid growth for the years to come…….