Innovative Advertising in Cyberspace
A Revolutionary New Advertising Medium
Traditional advertising media work on a "shotgun" approach, relying on massive exposure to a wide audience to attract attention from the few who might be interested. The obvious drawback to this is that whatever the exposure of an advertising campaign, it can only be temporary. The immense costs of the channels of delivery make a sustained campaign prohibitive to all but the biggest corporations.
The nature of the internet however makes it far more deliberate in the way it reaches people. Web Advertising pages are interactive and information rich, unlike the compressed messages that are canned and pumped out over traditional media. And the bottom line is that web advertising is more cost effective. Producing and publicising a quality website, rich in content and graphics generally costs HK$30,000 - 50,000. A fair sized flyer production can easily cost the same, and last no more than one or two days, with most of the paper ending up in dustbins.
Some companies have larger budgets and choose to employ an in-house team to create and maintain a web site. This can easily run up monthly costs in the hundreds of thousands. Many others though prefer to farm out the design and maintenance work to professional web consultant companies.
The thirst for information leads to your door
The thirst for readily accessible information seems unquenchable. In 1995, Infoseek, the biggest search engine, averaged over 3 million requests for information each day. In 1996, the request count has reached 7 million per day. Other search engines such as Yahoo and Webcrawler also report request counts in the millions.
According to research data provided by Lycos (a leading internet search engine), the typical Lycos user is college educated, middle to upper income, between the ages of 18-35, and uses Lycos at least once a day. More than 40% use Lycos as their only Internet search engine.
| Age | Under 18 18-24 25-35 36-44 45-54 55+ |
6% 22% 39% 19% 11% 3% |
| Gender | 61% 39% |
male female |
| Education | 73% have a Bachelors degree or higher 29% have an advanced degree (Masters or PhD) 22% graduated high school, do/didn't attend college 5% have no degree |
|
| Income | 6% 5% 19% 21% 23% 26% |
over $100,000 $80,000 - $99,999 $50,000 - $79,999 $35,000 - $49,999 $20,000 - $34,999 refused to answer |
| Marital | 55% 45% |
married single or divorced |
| Lycos Use | 98% use Lycos at least once a month | |
| Use Length | 29.9% have used Lycos for more than 6 months | |
| Where Used | 81% use at home 64% use at work 9.5% use at school |
|
| Exclusivity | 41% use Lycos as their exclusive search engine | |
Detailed studies of internet use have been conducted by large corporations and universities. Although Lycos has been chosen here as a microcosm of internet life, the Net extends much further and wider. Check out the internet user survey conducted by Excite/Citynet. And the Hermes user survey. These are ongoing projects committed to providing extensive and accurate information on the makeup of the internet and the way people use it. Webcrawler collects useful numbers on the size of the web. Web Ad Design closely monitors browser usage on the internet - the percentage of people using Netscape as opposed to other browsers has great impact on the way the web is viewed. Take a look at hourly updated browser usage figures for the Visual Senses Design Group. BenLo Park Research has extensive statistics on browser usage. Yahoo's Random Link browser statistics measure the type browsers used based on access hosts.
For people and companies interested in publishing their material on the internet, these figures indicate the size and nature of the target market. Web developers need to take into account the popularity of browsers when designing the presentation of web material. Web browsers are after all the equivalent of paper in publishing. It's one thing to design a page, quite another to visualise the way it is displayed on the browser screens of millions of web surfers using hundreds of different combinations of browser, platform and hardware.
The internet represents a vast potential customer base with a large proportion who are highly educated executives and professionals with buying power, connected to yet more millions of people. You reach top decision makers on their desktops without knocking on any door. If you offer good content in your web site, backed up by quality products and services, knowledgeable people will soon know where to find you on the web. So if your company is not yet on the World Wide Web, now is the time to take it there. In doing so, you commit your organisation to a position of leadership in your industry's use of the internet, and open the door to powerful new opportunities in an online world.
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