There’s the age old saying that a person or business has to spend money in order to make money. This can be seen through the massive amount of online advertising that companies put out there in order to sell to the masses on the Internet. It seems as though a person today can’t visit a website or a social networking site without seeing advertising. Even when using standard webmail programs such as Gmail, users are graced with the presence of ads. From a user’s perspective, this can be annoying, but from a company’s perspective, advertising is the tried and true way of making money (even though it costs money.)
Online advertising isn’t perfect though and it does come with several issues; a few of which will be discussed today. If your business uses online advertising to market products or services, it can sometimes feel like an uphill battle that you’re never going to win. Let’s explore three troubling issues with online advertising and also dive into whether or not there are any strategies to overcome them.
Issue 1: Trust
Have you ever wondered why consumers trust the information that is advertised in magazines, newspapers and television ads but they don’t trust online ads? There are a few reasons for this. Starting off, the Internet isn’t as regulated as newspapers, magazines and television advertising. Generally, if a business submits an ad to a newspaper, magazine or television station, someone has to approve it and make sure that the advertising company is holding up to laws and regulations. The same isn’t true on the Internet however. While there are rules and regulations, it’s easier for things to slip through the cracks online. This leads to false advertising, scams and people just generally not feeling comfortable believing what they read or see in an online ad. The second reason revolves around what a person knows and comfortable with. Many people grew up seeing ads on television and in magazines, but online advertising still isn’t very old and a lot of people simply aren’t used to it yet.
To help gain trust online when advertising, it helps to have a brand that people know well and therefore building a strong brand is a good place to start with. Another way to deal with this issue is to be as transparent as possible. Use social media to connect with people; address concerns that Internet users bring to your attention and at the very least, be honest and ethical in your company’s ads.
Issue 2: Ads can be blocked
Web browsers come with extensions (or extensions can be added by the user) that block online ads. Rather than seeing the intended ads, users will just see blank spaces in place of them. Depending on what program or extension that is being used, sometimes the users won’t even see ads that are shown at the start of videos.
Unfortunately, this isn’t something that businesses have any control over. Internet users have the right to block ads if they choose to do so. However, businesses can keep this in mind when deciding how much of their marketing efforts they want to devote to online ads. It can also help businesses research if online ads are going to be the right marketing method to go with. For example, if a company is marketing to the tech demographic, there may be a better chance people are using programs to block ads.
Issue 3: Ads can look the same
Regardless of what platform you’re using to advertise online, there are usually standards in place that require the ads to look a certain way. This can lead to many ads looking the same, which can confuse Internet users. To deal with this, try to look for online advertising platforms which do allow some form of creativity or design aspects to be infused. Also be careful with the wording of your ads so that it at least sounds different when read when compared to similar advertising.
Those aren’t the only issues with online advertising, but they’re good ones to be aware of if you sell your products or services online or even if you just use online advertising to being more attention to your offline business.
