Website Advertising
Website advertising is an essential component of Internet Advertising. While the World Wide Web represents just one aspect or service of the Internet (which incidentally includes other services like Usenet newsgroups and electronic mail), it is by far the most widely used component of the Internet and thereby the most extensive beneficiary of Internet Advertising investment. Website advertising is comprised of the following types of advertising:
Google AdSense: This is probably the most popular form of Website Advertising. Usually displayed down the right hand side of the web page, these advertisements are displayed in a similar format to ads in a newspaper or magazine. The ad consists of a title, displayed as as hypertext link, and a few lines of sales text. Google tries to intelligently match the ads it receives with web sites which have related content.
Banner Ads: these are rectangular advertisements which usually appear at the top of the web page. Most of them are horizontal in layout. Some are static while others use animating graphics files, audio and even video to capture the visitors attention. While this style of ad is popular, many web users are so familiar with them that they are beginning to ignore them. This has caused designers to innovate and introduce new forms of animated ads, including expanding and shrinking ones.
Pop-up Ads: these advertisements appear in their own, small browser window. Research shows that most web users are extremely irritated by pop up ads, primarily because they obscure the web page they are reading. Paradoxically, these ads also have a high click through rate, which could in part be explained by inadvertent clicking while removing the ads.
Video Ads: Also known as unicast ads, these ads are basically video based commercial advertisements which typical play for 10 to 30 seconds in a pop-up window. Evidence now shows that people find these ads interesting or even entertaining, resulting in greater click-through rates in comparison to the other forms of advertising. They are rapidly gaining popularity in the Website Advertising industry.
Interstitial Ads: Like the pop-up ads, these ads appear in their own window. The ad is automatically displayed when a user clicks on a link, but unlike the pop-ups they are only displayed for the length of time that it takes for the linking page to be displayed. They still make an impression on the visitor by briefly filling their screen, but as most interstitial ads close automatically they tend to be considered less annoying.
Text Links: This style of ad is somewhat better integrated into the website and is less obvious to the web user as it appears to be part of the web site's content. When the user clicks on the text link they are taken to an ad or website.
Sidebar: Also known as skyscraper ads, these are comparable to banner ads apart from the fact that they are placed vertically along the side of the web page which allows them to be larger than a banner ad. Sidebar ads are considered more effective than banner ads because they can be bigger, and the ad doesn't disappear so quickly when the user scrolls down the web page. As a result, more people will click on a sidebar ad which means advertisers will pay more for sidebar ads than banner ads.
Floating Ads: These are among the most controversial advertisements. They will appear when a user first loads a web page in the browser. They have the added benefit (or lack thereof) of being immune to closing. They cannot be removed before their display duration ends. They have a high click through rate because they are almost impossible to ignore.
