Consumer Targeting & Online Ads

Targeting online ads is a topic that has been coming up quite frequently in the advertising industry over the past few months. One of the reasons this topic is coming up so frequently lately is due to all the recent changes in online advertising platforms.

There was a time not long ago when online advertising mainly consisted of online banners randomly posted across the internet. Back then online advertising was more of a standard process than a targeted strategy. Fast forward to today and you will see that online ads have become much more strategic and targeted.

When it comes to the effectiveness of online ads, more consumer based companies are increasing their online ad spending because they are beginning to see the value of having a strong online presence. In light of the growing number of people making internet purchases, these companies view investing in online advertising as good marketing sense. Some of the companies that currently have a strong online ad presence include mobile phone companies like T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Tracfone, Straight Talk and Verizon. These companies frequently launch online ads that feature special promotions for free shipping and discounted refurbished phones.

As a result of this increased online ad activity, search engine sites like Yahoo and Google are introducing new online ad tracking systems. These new systems are designed to make it easier for consumer companies to accurately track how many people are visiting their website and making purchasing based on their online ads.

Other types of companies that have increased their online ad spending in recent years include automotive companies like General Motors and Ford, and credit card companies like American Express and Capital One.

As far as where the future of online advertising is headed, some of this will be dictated by social media companies like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Each one of these companies are developing new systems that are slowly changing the face of online advertising. Facebook for example has been aggressively revamping its online ad platform over the past few months. While Twitter has been experimenting with various types of sponsored based Tweets to attract more advertisers, and YouTube has been developing new video advertising products. Due to the number of visitors these sites generate each month (which is estimated to be in the millions), it will hard for consumer based companies not to consider advertising on these social media sites.

Based on the above information, it looks like online advertising has a bright future and will be around for awhile. However, some industry analysts are predicting that mobile advertising will overtake traditional online advertising within the next five to seven years.