What is Internet Marketing / Online Marketing?

Detailed explanation to Internet/Online Marketing

Internet Marketing, also called online marketing or Internet advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers. It includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising (including web banner advertising), and mobile advertising. Like other advertising media, online advertising frequently involves both a publisher, who integrates advertisements into its online content, and an advertiser, who provides the advertisements to be displayed on the publisher's content. Other potential participants include advertising agencies who help generate and place the ad copy, an ad server which technologically delivers the ad and tracks statistics, and advertising affiliates who do independent promotional work for the advertiser.

"Internet marketing, or online marketing, refers to advertising and marketing efforts that use the Web and email to drive direct sales via electronic commerce, in addition to sales leads from Web sites or emails. Internet marketing and online advertising efforts are typically used in conjunction with traditional types of advertising such as radio, television, newspapers and magazines." - Webopedia

Online advertising serving process using online bidding

Internet Marketing includes:

• Email advertising.
• Display ads.
• Search ads.
• Recent trends.
• and much more!

Email advertising

Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email message. Email marketing may be unsolicited, in which case the sender may give the recipient an option to opt out of future emails, or it may be sent with the recipient's prior consent (opt-in).

An example of email advertising.

Display ads

Display advertising conveys its advertising message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads' effect. Online advertisers (typically through their ad servers) often use cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to serve to a particular consumer. Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ads from the site the user visited.

An example of display ads.

Search ads

Sponsored search (also called sponsored links, search ads, or paid search) allows advertisers to be included in the sponsored results of a search for selected keywords. Search ads are often sold via real-time auctions, where advertisers bid on keywords. In addition to setting a maximum price per keyword, bids may include time, language, geographical, and other constraints. Search engines originally sold listings in order of highest bids. Modern search engines rank sponsored listings based on a combination of bid price, expected click-through rate, keyword relevancy and site quality.

An example of sponsored ads when you type in "buy a domain" in Google.

You might be wondering how it all began, right?

In early days of the Internet, online advertising was mostly prohibited. For example, two of the predecessor networks to the Internet, ARPANET and NSFNet, had "acceptable use policies" that banned network "use for commercial activities by for-profit institutions". The NSFNet began phasing out its commercial use ban in 1991.

Difference between Online Marketing and Digital Marketing

There's a misconception about these two terms that they're both the same things, different terms. Whereas digital marketing can be defined as the marketing technique which uses the digital channels, platforms and devices regardless of whether they are online or not. It uses all channels available in digital media to get information while online marketing can be defined as the marketing technique which uses real time live internet for promotion and branding of a product or any service. Digital marketing is Online marketing, but also much more, as it uses more channels to reach people. Like mobile phones, T.V, tablets and other means of communication. In short you can say they are the two sides of the same coin.

References:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_advertising

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/I/internet_marketing.html

http://www.bayt.com/en/specialties/q/161/what-s-the-difference-between-online-marketing-and-digital-marketing/

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About Author:

Dawood Khan is the CEO/Admin of a forum based website called Warrior.PK, which provides information on search engine and online marketing to a new level. Check out their awesome website for more information; Warrior.PK.