Check out this commercial for AOL from 1995!
While videos like this seem silly and obviously outdated, the trend in online advertising has changed even more. Looking back at the data, it's obvious that by 1997, advertising was starting to pick up speed, even though previous growth was fairly slow. (See Chart Below) Within 2 years the U.S. Economy would experience the "Dot Com" bubble which brought exponential growth for a short period, but ushered in a new era of consumer familiarity with the internet. As more and more Americans spent time on the internet, advertising companies worked to keep pace and "follow the eyeballs," eventually causing internet advertising revenues to surpass print in 2012.
After the "Dot Com" boom, and as technology evolved, the true advertising advantage of the internet became apparent: measurability! Up until this point in history, the best way to measure an ad's success was to compare changing sales revenues, or even just ask customers: "How did you hear about us?" The internet brought about a whole new reality: the ability to track the number of eyeballs viewing an ad, and more importantly the conversion rate, or number of people responding to an ad (clicking on it, calling in, etc).
Privacy issues aside, this new ability now allows companies to track sites visited, time of day, length of time on pages, referring website, and even search terms. This ability was deemed the "Holy Grail" of advertising as it allowed companies to finally be able to measure success. It also gave birth to the term and idea of "big data," which became an integral part of the growth in online advertising, fueling revenues of over $30 billion in the US alone!
It is my prediction that the future of all advertising will be internet based as more and more devices are connected. Television commercials will no longer be television commercials as TV programming will likely be coming over the internet, making them technically online advertising as well. When your "Smart TV" makes you log in for content, you'll remember that advertisers are interested in everything you do!
Sources:
NY Times Article by Peter C. T. Elsworth, February 24, 1997 http://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/24/business/internet-advertising-growing-slowly.html
Forbes.com Article by Robert Hof, January 19, 2012
http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2012/01/19/online-ad-revenues-to-pass-print-in-2012/
NY Times Article by Rob Walker, August 27, 2001
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/27/business/new-economy-holy-grail-internet-advertising-ability-measure-who-clicking-message.html
YouTube video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1npzZu83AfU
Advertising Revenue Growth Graphic - Content aggregated by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers
This is a fascinating blog post. I love the way that you structured the concept of measureability. Internet advertising is surely here to stay. Ads will become smarter and companies will less and less money trying to formulate some sort of print ad. Does anyone even read print ads anymore?! As a marketing major, this post is very interesting and insightful to me because I want to make sure that I am prepared for the future of where advertising is going and how it all works.
ReplyDeleteYes! Well, the more experience you have in marketing the more you understand how much impact the ability to measure views and sales has. Marketing analytics is only one of the amazing outcomes of online advertising but definitely one of the most important! The advantages are endless.
ReplyDeleteI have bookmarked your blog, the articles are way better than other similar blogs.. thanks for a great blog! online advertising
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