By Bihongoye Erica (BAPRM 42535)

Advantage and disadvantage of online advertising

The number of the World Wide Web users is always on the rise worldwide and the internet is being used by people of all age and at all times of the day. The World Wide Web has become one of the most used means of communication and entertainment. Every day we use social networks or messenger apps to reach our friends. Internet is slowly substituting traditional entertainment, the way people get their news and other products or services.

Companies realize that handing out a promo product such as business cards, mugs and pens is too expensive and give poor results. ‘Traditional’ marketing formats such as magazines TV, newspaper, radio and others are lost in the oblivion.

Online advertising, however, is much less expensive and reaches a much wider audience and will probably give you more profit than traditional advertising. It has a lot of advantages that traditional advertising haven’t even dreamed about. This new form of advertising gives such wide possibilities, that it makes your head spin: video advertising, advertising on social networks, mobile advertising, e-mail advertising, banner advertising, Google Search advertising and a lot more. These are the benefits of online advertising

·       Less expensive. A main benefit of online advertising is that it has a much affordable price when compared with the traditional advertising costs. On the internet, you can advertise at a way more inexpensive cost for a much wider audience.

• Wider geographical reach. Online advertising gives your campaigns global coverage, which helps your online campaigns reach more audiences. This will definitely help you achieve superior results via your online advertising strategy.
• No rigorous payment. This is another appealing benefit of online advertising. In traditional advertising you have to pay the full amount of money to the advertising agency, no matter the results. In online advertising however, you have to pay only for the qualified clicks, leads or impressions.
• Easy result measurement. The fact that it’s so easy to measure makes online advertising more appealing than the traditional advertising methods. You can find a lot of effective analytics tools in order to measure online advertising results, which helps you know what to do and what not to do in your following campaigns.
• More targeted audiences. In comparison with traditional advertising, online advertising helps you to easily reach the targeted audience, which leads to your campaign’s success.

Disadvantages of online advertising

The disadvantages of online advertising are less, but they exist:

1. Intrusive ads. The nature of a lot of online advertising ads and campaigns is intrusive, that’s why browsers’ pop-up blockers can frequently prevent ads from being presented. Almost all browsers now block pop-ups. There are also extensions available for the Chrome, Opera and Firefox browsers, which will block ads on websites. More and more consumers use these methods to avoid seeing so much the advertising.
2. Copyright problem. Your advertising materials are automatically available for everyone in the world. They can copy it, regardless of the legal limitations. Trademarks, pictures and logos can be copied and used for commercial purposes. In traditional advertising, such as TV, radio and newspaper advertising, where pictures must be replicated, copying the content is much more difficult.