Online Ads

Online advertising is a new and potentially very lucrative advertising method, but they are rife with difficulty as well, particularly as those in more affordable pricing brackets are mainly text based. This means that their success is entirely dependent on the persuasive skill of the writer – and the target market is of necessity limited to those who read ads.

You would be surprised at how many people just don’t read – even when they’re “reading” a website, they’re a lot more interested in pictures and short captions than they are in big blocks of text.

Another danger of online advertising is that some of the more common methods, like popups and pop-unders, are generally considered to be lowbrow or "sleazy" advertising tactics. When choosing an online advertising scheme, keep in mind that ads that come in "under the radar" and those that rely on tracking cookies may do your company more harm than good by creating a negative association between users and your business identity.

Some of the more popular online ad venues are by no means free of ads by an unsavory element, but their appearance is innocuous, and their association with big-name search engines such as Yahoo! and Google boosts the appearance of legitimacy.

Google Adwords is perhaps the most popular and easy-to-access online advertising venue. Your ad is referenced by keyword so that a search for funny t-shirts in Portland, Oregon will result in an ad for a company that makes funny t-shirts in Portland. Depending on the sets of keywords you provide when signing up for the service, your business website will be indexed in the Google Ad database and appear at the top of the search results and in a separate field when the correct terms are entered.