Advertising on the Internet

For #ThrowBackThursday, I dug up this article from the 2008 ScLoHo archives.

(What are the ScLoHo archives?  It’s been more than 10 years that I have been writing and publishing articles online.  Over 10,000 were published in the first 8 years on various ScLoHo blogs that I used to update. Then in 2011, when this website went live, this became the central hub of all my online activity.)
The internet is a wonderful thing. And it is still in its infancy. 

Think about the advent of radio or television broadcasting.

A nice invention, but how do you make money with it was a question someone must have asked a long, long time ago.

Eventually advertising was used to support this “free medium”. I say free, because after buying a radio or television, you were not obligated to spend anymore money except for the electricity to power the radio or t.v.

Later people started paying a subscription fee to get extra channels via a cable t.v. service. Those in the Television Broadcasting business locally tell me that penetration for cable, FIOS, or satellite services is 80% in our Metro.

Wow, 4 out of 5 people pay extra money each month to watch television.
Next thing, people will pay extra for bottles of water that is no different than the water they can get out of their tap.

See how we become conditioned to accept things through marketing?

Another piece of technology that changed our viewing habits was the wireless remote control. With dozens, no, make that hundreds of channels piped into our homes, can you imagine having to stand in front of your television to change the channel until you find what you want?!

The remote also made it easy for us to flip the channel when a commercial came on. But studies show, that the number of people that flip during a commercial break is directly related to the quality of the commercial as judged by the viewer.

So what about this internet thing? Can anyone make money with it? Yes, but it will take more than setting up a website and waiting for the money to come rolling in. Quite frankly, methods of advertising online that worked 5 years ago, are not as effective, generally speaking as they used to be.

Consumers have learned to tune out advertising, so it will take a marriage of advertising methods and creativity, coupled with the understanding of basic human emotions and behavior, to make an internet ad campaign successful. And odds are that within a few years, you will need to use different methods to reach your online audience, which is okay.

Now in 2015, the options for advertising online have become more and more sophisticated.  What I can offer through the digital division of WOWO Radio’s parent company is light years ahead of what was available when I published this article 7 years ago.  Want to know more?  Contact me.