It is always helpful to define the subject being discussed, which the following quotation does perfectly: ‘Internet marketing (..or online marketing) is the process of promoting an organisation using online media, typically with the goals of increasing sales and boosting profits’ (Jamehshooran B.G. et al 2011). In other words anything a company or an individual does to promote themselves, or their company, is classed as online advertising. Advertising on the internet is something most are familiar with, whether it be through the medium of banner ads, newsletters, spam emails or pop ups on websites. However online advertising has evolved substantially since the first online site advertisement was put up in 1993, which was done by a company called Global Network Navigator (Bourne, J. (2015).
An expedition into how and why online marketing went from one website, to being the vast marketing machine it is now ($537 billion dollars in 2014 was spent in 2014 on online markeitng (Lunden, I. 2015) will take place. To start off, a timeline showing online advertising has progressed since 1993, is shown below (source taken from Bourne, J. 2015).
Without conducting an in-depth analysis into why online advertising has become so massive, the timeline above highlights a big contributing factor, the significant rise in the users. In 1995 there were 16 million users, In 2012 there were 1.2 billion, which is a 7400% increase, by all means a very big audience to market to. Of course there are other contributing factors to this growth just to list a few; the rise of ecommerce, developments in technology, faster internet, mobile internet, social networking and online PR (Ellis-Chadwick, F., & Johnston, K. 2009).
Since the first online advertisements emerged the environment of the internet and it uses have dramatically changed. Advertising has adapted along side this change, so has the way in which online advertisements are portrayed to the end user. The first form was spam emails, which according to the BBC (2008) the first was sent in 1978! Since then many forms have emerged, these are just a few of the many examples:
- Banner Ads
- Search engine Ads
- Adwords Ads
- Social media Ads
- Viral video Ads
- App ads
The following video, briefly explores this evolution:
Online advertising has progressed a lot since the first spam emails, and the first paid advertisements emerged. The question which next comes to mind is where is it headed? What implications will it have for everyone as the users of the internet? Well in a nutshell its hard to tell, as Pozin, I. (2013) eloquently puts it: ‘Today’s digital marketing certainly wont look like tomorrow’s’.
References:
BBC. (2015). BBC NEWS | Technology | Spam reaches 30-year anniversary. [online] Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7380788.stm [Accessed 10 Feb. 2015].
Bourne, J. (2015). Online advertising: A history from 1993 to the present day [infographic]. [online] Marketing Tech News. Available at: http://www.marketingtechnews.net/news/2013/sep/11/online-advertising-history-1993-present-day-infographic/ [Accessed 10 Feb. 2015].
Ecommerce, (2015). Internet Marketing – History Of Internet Marketing. [online] Available at: http://ecommerce.hostip.info/pages/708/Marketing-Internet-HISTORY-INTERNET-MARKETING.html [Accessed 10 Feb. 2015].
Ellis-Chadwick, F., & Johnston, K. (2009). Internet marketing: strategy, implementation and practice. D. Chaffey (Ed.). Pearson Education.
Chicago Jamehshooran, B.G., Danesh, E., Teimouri, M.E. & Heydari, A. 2011, “The past, present and future of online Marketing”,Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research In Business, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 585-606.
Jamehshooran, B.G., Danesh, E., Teimouri, M.E. & Heydari, A. 2011, “The past, present and future of online Marketing”,Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research In Business, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 585-606.
Lunden, I. (2015). Internet Ad Spend To Reach $121B In 2014, 23% Of $537B Total Ad Spend, Ad Tech Boosts Display. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/07/internet-ad-spend-to-reach-121b-in-2014-23-of-537b-total-ad-spend-ad-tech-gives-display-a-boost-over-search/ [Accessed 10 Feb. 2015].
Pozin, I. (2013). Where’s Digital Marketing Heading? 4 Leaders Weigh In. [online] Forbes. Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ilyapozin/2013/09/11/wheres-digital-marketing-heading-4-leaders-weigh-in/ [Accessed 10 Feb. 2015].