Online advertising

History of Online Advertising
– Rise of digital advertising and decline of print media in advertising revenue as a percent of US GDP since 1995
– Early prohibition of online advertising on networks like ARPANET and NSFNet
– Phasing out of commercial use ban by NSFNet in 1991
– Widely publicized example of online advertising via email by DEC in 1978
– Evolution of email marketing and the emergence of spam
– Emergence of spam and its association with email marketing
– Establishment of the first email marketing company by Mark Eberra in 1994
– Canter and Siegel’s Green Card USENET spam raising the profile of online advertising
– Introduction of online banner advertising in the early 1990s
– Prodigy’s use of banners to promote Sears products
– First clickable web ad sold by Global Network Navigator in 1993
– Mainstream adoption of web banner advertising by HotWired in 1994
– AT&T’s successful banner ad campaign on HotWired
– Creation of the first search advertising keyword auction by GoTo.com in 1998
– Launch of Google’s AdWords search advertising program in 2000
– Introduction of quality-based ranking allocation by Google in 2002
– Sorting of search advertisements based on bid price and click likelihood
– Growing importance of search ads in online advertising
– Integration of advertising messages into editorial content and valuable services
– Examples of companies merging advertising with content or services (e.g., Red Bull, Coca-Cola, Nike)
– Embracing of social media and mobile advertising
– Significant growth in mobile ad spending from 2010 to 2013
– Digital work contributing over half of agency revenue in 2017

Types of Online Ads
– Floating ads: appear superimposed over the requested website’s content and may disappear after a pre-set time period
– Expanding ads: change dimensions based on predefined conditions such as user interaction or time spent on a webpage
– Trick banners: imitate common screen elements to induce ad clicks, often without mentioning the advertiser initially
– News Feed Ads: blend into non-paid news updates on social media platforms, offering various types of content promotion
– Interstitial ads: display before users can access requested content, often used during loading times

Advertising Sales and Delivery Models
– Simple publisher case: website publisher selects and serves the ads
– Ad agency case: ads outsourced to an advertising agency and served from their servers
– Online bidding case: ad space offered for sale in a bidding market using an ad exchange and real-time bidding
– Programmatic advertising: automating the sale and delivery of digital advertising using software and targeting algorithms
– Behavioral targeting: using data collected across multiple websites to create detailed user profiles for targeted advertising

Programmatic Advertising Process
– Advertisements selected and targeted to audiences via ad servers
– Cookies used to track user behavior and enable retargeting
– Contextual advertising delivers display ads related to the content of web pages
– Geotargeting delivers ads based on a user’s suspected geography
– Real-time interaction between multiple parties in the ad serving process

Data Management Platforms
– First-party data: retrieved from CRM platforms and customer behaviors
– Second-party data: statistics related to cookie pools on external publications and platforms
– Third-party data: sourced from external providers and aggregated from numerous websites
– Customer information combined and returned to the supply side platform
– Ad exchange puts the offer out for bid to demand-side platforms
– Demand-side platforms act on behalf of ad agencies, searching for users to view ads
– Bidders decide how much to offer based on user information
– Ad exchange picks the winning bid and informs both parties
– Ad content delivered to the user’s browser for confirmation
– Mobile advertising process involves mobile carriers and handset software manufacturers

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
– SEM increases website visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs)
– Search engines provide sponsored and organic results based on search queries
– Visual cues differentiate sponsored and organic results
– SEM includes actions to make a website listing more prominent for keywords
– Google popularized SEM with its PPC and Analytics tools

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
– SEO improves a website’s organic search rankings
– Search engines penalize poor quality sites that try to game their rankings
– SEO is a moving target for advertisers due to algorithm updates
– Many vendors offer SEO services
– Optimization aims to increase website relevance to search terms

Sponsored Search
– Sponsored search allows advertisers to be included in search results for selected keywords
– Search ads are often sold via real-time auctions
– Bids may include constraints such as time, language, and geography
– Search engines originally sold listings based on highest bids
– Modern search engines rank sponsored listings based on bid price, click-through rate, relevancy, and site quality

Social Media Marketing
– Social media marketing is commercial promotion on social media websites
– Companies promote products through frequent updates and special offers
– Videos, interactive quizzes, and sponsored posts are common in social media marketing
– Ads are found on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat
– Social media profiles are utilized for promotion

Mobile Advertising
– Mobile advertising delivers ad copy through wireless mobile devices
– It can be in the form of static or rich media display ads
– SMS or MMS are used for mobile advertising
– Mobile advertising targets smartphones, feature phones, and tablet computers
– Ads are designed to be compatible with mobile devices.