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Digital marketing

Digital marketing is the component of marketing that utilizes internet and online based digital technologies such as desktop computers, mobile phones and other digital media and platforms to promote products and services.[1][2] Its development during the 1990s and 2000s, changed the way brands and businesses use technology for marketing.

As digital platforms became increasingly incorporated into marketing plans and everyday life,[3] and as people increasingly use digital devices instead of visiting physical shops,[4][5] Digital marketing campaigns have become prevalent, employing combinations of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), content marketing, influencer marketing, content automation, campaign marketing, data-driven marketing, e-commerce marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization, e-mail direct marketing, display advertising, e–books, and optical disks and games have become commonplace.

Digital marketing extends to non-Internet channels that provide digital media, such as television, mobile phones (SMS and MMS), callback, and on-hold mobile ring tones.[6] The extension to non-Internet channels differentiates Digital marketing from online marketing.[7] The development of Digital marketing is inseparable from technology development.

One of the key points in the start of was in 1971, where Ray Tomlinson sent the very first email and his technology set the platform to allow people to send and receive files through different machines.[8] However, the more recognisable period as being the start of Digital marketing is 1990 as this was where the Archie search engine was created as an index for FTP sites.

In the 1980s, the storage capacity of computer was already big enough to store huge volumes of customer information.

Companies started choosing online techniques, such as database marketing, rather than limited list broker.[9] These kinds of databases allowed companies to track customers' information more effectively, thus transforming the relationship between buyer and seller.

However, the manual process was not as efficient.

In the 1990s, the term Digital marketing was first coined,.[10] With the debut of server/client architecture and the popularity of personal computers, the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications became a significant factor in marketing technology.[11] Fierce competition forced vendors to include more service into their software, for example, marketing, sales and service applications.

Marketers were also able to own huge online customer data by eCRM software after the Internet was born.

Companies could update the data of customer needs and obtain the priorities of their experience.

This led to the first clickable banner ad being going live in 1994, which was the "You Will" campaign by AT&T and over the first four months of it going live, 44% of all people who saw it clicked on the ad.[12][13] In the 2000s, with increasing numbers of Internet users and the birth of iPhone, customers began searching products and making decisions about their needs online first, instead of consulting a salesperson, which created a new problem for the marketing department of a company.[14] In addition, a survey in 2000 in the United Kingdom found that most retailers had not registered their own domain address.[15] These problems encouraged marketers to find new ways to integrate digital technology into market development.

In 2007, marketing automation was developed as a response to the ever evolving marketing climate.

Marketing automation is the process by which software is used to automate conventional marketing processes.[16] Marketing automation helped companies segment customers, launch multichannel marketing campaigns, and provide personalized information for customers.[16] However, the speed of its adaptability to consumer devices was not fast enough.

Digital marketing became more sophisticated in the 2000s and the 2010s, when[17][18] the proliferation of devices' capable of accessing digital media led to sudden growth.[19] Statistics produced in 2012 and 2013 showed that Digital marketing was still growing.[20][21] With the development of social media in the 2000s, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, consumers became highly dependent on digital electronics in daily lives.

Therefore, they expected a seamless user experience across different channels for searching product's information.

The change of customer behavior improved the diversification of marketing technology.[22] Digital marketing is also referred to as 'online marketing', 'internet marketing' or 'web marketing'.

The term Digital marketing has grown in popularity over time.

In the USA online marketing is still a popular term.

In Italy, Digital marketing is referred to as web marketing.

Worldwide Digital marketing has become the most common term, especially after the year 2013.[23] Digital media growth was estimated at 4.5 trillion online ads served annually with digital media spend at 48% growth in 2010.[24] An increasing portion of advertising stems from businesses employing Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA) to tailor advertising for internet users, but OBA raises concern of consumer privacy and data protection.[19] Nonlinear marketing, a type of interactive marketing, is a long-term marketing approach which builds on businesses collecting information about an Internet user's online activities, and trying to be visible in multiple areas.[25][26] Unlike traditional marketing techniques, which involve direct, one-way messaging to consumers (via print, television and radio advertising), nonlinear Digital marketing strategies are centered on reaching prospective customers across multiple online channels.[27] Combined with higher consumer knowledge and the demand for more sophisticated consumer offerings, this change has forced many businesses to rethink their outreach strategy and adopt or incorporate omnichannel, nonlinear marketing techniques to maintain sufficient brand exposure, engagement and reach.[28] Nonlinear marketing strategies involve efforts to adapt the advertising to different platforms,[29] and to tailor the advertising to different individual buyers rather than a large coherent audience.[26] Tactics may include: Some studies indicate that consumer responses to traditional marketing approaches are becoming less predictable for businesses.[30] According to a 2018 study, nearly 90% of online consumers in the United States researched products and brands online before visiting the store or making a purchase.[31] The Global Web Index estimated that in 2018, a little more than 50% of consumers researched products on social media.[32] Businesses often rely on individuals portraying their products in a positive light on social media, and may adapt their marketing strategy to target people with large social media followings in order to generate such comments.[33] In this manner, businesses can use consumers to advertise their products or services, decreasing the cost for the company.[34] One of the key objectives of modern Digital marketing is to raise brand awareness, the extent to which customers and the general public are familiar with and recognize a particular brand.

Enhancing brand awareness is important in Digital marketing, and marketing in general, because of its impact on brand perception and consumer decision-making.

According to the 2015 essay, “Impact of Brand on Consumer Behavior”: “Brand awareness, as one of the fundamental dimensions of brand equity, is often considered to be a prerequisite of consumers’ buying decision, as it represents the main factor for including a brand in the consideration set.

Brand awareness can also influence consumers’ perceived risk assessment and their confidence in the purchase decision, due to familiarity with the brand and its characteristics.”[35] Recent trends show that businesses and digital marketers are prioritizing brand awareness, focusing more of their Digital marketing efforts on cultivating brand recognition and recall than in previous years.

This is evidenced by a 2019 Content Marketing Institute study, which found that 81% of digital marketers have worked on enhancing brand recognition over the past year.[36] Another Content Marketing Institute survey revealed 89% of B2B marketers now believe improving brand awareness to be more important than efforts directed at increasing sales.[37] Increasing brand awareness is a focus of Digital marketing strategy for a number of reasons: Digital marketing strategies may include the use of one or more online channels and techniques (omnichannel) to increase brand awareness among consumers.[45] Building brand awareness may involve such methods/tools as: Search engine optimization techniques may be used to improve the visibility of business websites and brand-related content for common industry-related search queries.[46] The importance of SEO to increasing brand awareness is said to correlate with the growing influence of search results and search features like featured snippets, knowledge panels and local SEO on customer behavior.[47] SEM, also known as PPC advertising, involves the purchase of ad space in prominent, visible positions atop search results pages and websites.

Search ads have been shown to have a positive impact on brand recognition, awareness and conversions.[48] 33% of searchers who click on paid ads do so because they directly respond to their particular search query.[49] 70% of marketers list increasing brand awareness as their number one goal for marketing on social media platforms.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube are listed as the top platforms currently used by social media marketing teams.[50] 56% of marketers believe personalized content – brand-centered blogs, articles, social updates, videos, landing pages – improves brand recall and engagement.[51] According to Mentionlytics, an active and consistent content strategy that incorporates elements of interactive content creation, social posting and guest blogging can improve brand awareness and loyalty by 88%.[52] One of the major changes that occurred in traditional marketing was the "emergence of Digital marketing" (Patrutiu Baltes, Loredana, 2015), this led to the reinvention of marketing strategies in order to adapt to this major change in traditional marketing (Patrutiu Baltes, Loredana, 2015).

As Digital marketing is dependent on technology which is ever-evolving and fast-changing, the same features should be expected from Digital marketing developments and strategies.

This portion is an attempt to qualify or segregate the notable highlights existing and being used as of press time.[when?] To summarize, Pull Digital marketing is characterized by consumers actively seeking marketing content while Push Digital marketing occurs when marketers send messages without that content being actively sought by the recipients.

An important consideration today while deciding on a strategy is that the digital tools have democratized the promotional landscape.

The new digital era has enabled brands to selectively target their customers that may potentially be interested in their brand or based on previous browsing interests.

Businesses can now use social media to select the age range, location, gender and interests of whom they would like their targeted post to be seen by.

Furthermore, based on a customer's recent search history they can be ‘followed’ on the internet so they see advertisements from similar brands, products and services,[58] This allows businesses to target the specific customers that they know and feel will most benefit from their product or service, something that had limited capabilities up until the digital era.

Digital marketing activity is still growing across the world according to the headline global marketing index.

A study published in September 2018, found that global outlays on Digital marketing tactics are approaching $100 billion.[59] Digital media continues to rapidly grow; while the marketing budgets are expanding, traditional media is declining (World Economics, 2015).[60] Digital media helps brands reach consumers to engage with their product or service in a personalised way.

Five areas, which are outlined as current industry practices that are often ineffective are prioritizing clicks, balancing search and display, understanding mobiles, targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic, and cross-platform measurement (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Why these practices are ineffective and some ways around making these aspects effective are discussed surrounding the following points.

Prioritizing clicks refers to display click ads, although advantageous by being ‘simple, fast and inexpensive’ rates for display ads in 2016 is only 0.10 percent in the United States.

This means one in a thousand click ads are relevant therefore having little effect.

This displays that marketing companies should not just use click ads to evaluate the effectiveness of display advertisements (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Balancing search and display for digital display ads are important; marketers tend to look at the last search and attribute all of the effectiveness to this.

This, in turn, disregards other marketing efforts, which establish brand value within the consumers mind.

ComScore determined through drawing on data online, produced by over one hundred multichannel retailers that digital display marketing poses strengths when compared with or positioned alongside, paid search (Whiteside, 2016).[61] This is why it is advised that when someone clicks on a display ad the company opens a landing page, not its home page.

A landing page typically has something to draw the customer in to search beyond this page.

Things such as free offers that the consumer can obtain through giving the company contact information so that they can use retargeting communication strategies (Square2Marketing, 2012).[62] Commonly marketers see increased sales among people exposed to a search ad.

But the fact of how many people you can reach with a display campaign compared to a search campaign should be considered.

Multichannel retailers have an increased reach if the display is considered in synergy with search campaigns.

Overall both search and display aspects are valued as display campaigns build awareness for the brand so that more people are likely to click on these digital ads when running a search campaign (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Understanding Mobiles: Understanding mobile devices is a significant aspect of Digital marketing because smartphones and tablets are now responsible for 64% of the time US consumers are online (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Apps provide a big opportunity as well as challenge for the marketers because firstly the app needs to be downloaded and secondly the person needs to actually use it.

This may be difficult as ‘half the time spent on smartphone apps occurs on the individuals single most used app, and almost 85% of their time on the top four rated apps’ (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Mobile advertising can assist in achieving a variety of commercial objectives and it is effective due to taking over the entire screen, and voice or status is likely to be considered highly; although the message must not be seen or thought of as intrusive (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Disadvantages of digital media used on mobile devices also include limited creative capabilities, and reach.

Although there are many positive aspects including the users entitlement to select product information, digital media creating a flexible message platform and there is potential for direct selling (Belch & Belch, 2012).[63] Cross-platform measurement: The number of marketing channels continues to expand, as measurement practices are growing in complexity.

A cross-platform view must be used to unify audience measurement and media planning.

Market researchers need to understand how the Omni-channel affects consumer's behaviour, although when advertisements are on a consumer's device this does not get measured.

Significant aspects to cross-platform measurement involves deduplication and understanding that you have reached an incremental level with another platform, rather than delivering more impressions against people that have previously been reached (Whiteside, 2016).[61] An example is ‘ESPN and comScore partnered on Project Blueprint discovering the sports broadcaster achieved a 21% increase in unduplicated daily reach thanks to digital advertising’ (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Television and radio industries are the electronic media, which competes with digital and other technological advertising.

Yet television advertising is not directly competing with online digital advertising due to being able to cross platform with digital technology.

Radio also gains power through cross platforms, in online streaming content.

Television and radio continue to persuade and affect the audience, across multiple platforms (Fill, Hughes, & De Franceso, 2013).[64] Targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic: Targeting, viewability, brand safety and invalid traffic all are aspects used by marketers to help advocate digital advertising.

Cookies are a form of digital advertising, which are tracking tools within desktop devices; causing difficulty, with shortcomings including deletion by web browsers, the inability to sort between multiple users of a device, inaccurate estimates for unique visitors, overstating reach, understanding frequency, problems with ad servers, which cannot distinguish between when cookies have been deleted and when consumers have not previously been exposed to an ad.

Due to the inaccuracies influenced by cookies, demographics in the target market are low and vary (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Another element, which is affected within Digital marketing, is ‘viewabilty’ or whether the ad was actually seen by the consumer.

Many ads are not seen by a consumer and may never reach the right demographic segment.

Brand safety is another issue of whether or not the ad was produced in the context of being unethical or having offensive content.

Recognizing fraud when an ad is exposed is another challenge marketers face.

This relates to invalid traffic as premium sites are more effective at detecting fraudulent traffic, although non-premium sites are more so the problem (Whiteside, 2016).[61] Digital marketing Channels are systems based on the Internet that can create, accelerate, and transmit product value from producer to a consumer terminal, through digital networks.[65][66] Digital marketing is facilitated by multiple Digital marketing channels, As an advertiser one's core objective is to find channels which result in maximum two-way communication and a better overall ROI for the brand.

There are multiple Digital marketing channels available namely;[67] It is important for a firm to reach out to consumers and create a two-way communication model, as Digital marketing allows consumers to give back feed back to the firm on a community based site or straight directly to the firm via email.[80] Firms should seek this long term communication relationship by using multiple forms of channels and using promotional strategies related to their target consumer as well as word-of mouth marketing.[80] The ICC Code has integrated rules that apply to marketing communications using digital interactive media throughout the guidelines.

There is also an entirely updated section dealing with issues specific to digital interactive media techniques and platforms.

Code self-regulation on use of digital interactive media includes: Digital marketing planning is a term used in marketing management.

It describes the first stage of forming a Digital marketing strategy for the wider Digital marketing system.

The difference between digital and traditional marketing planning is that it uses digitally based communication tools and technology such as Social, Web, Mobile, Scannable Surface.[84][85] Nevertheless, both are aligned with the vision, the mission of the company and the overarching business strategy.[86] Using Dr Dave Chaffey's approach, the Digital marketing planning (DMP) has three main stages: Opportunity, Strategy and Action.

He suggests that any business looking to implement a successful Digital marketing strategy must structure their plan by looking at opportunity, strategy and action.

This generic strategic approach often has phases of situation review, goal setting, strategy formulation, resource allocation and monitoring.[86] To create an effective DMP, a business first needs to review the marketplace and set 'SMART' (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Time-Bound) objectives.[87] They can set SMART objectives by reviewing the current benchmarks and key performance indicators (KPIs) of the company and competitors.

It is pertinent that the analytics used for the KPIs be customised to the type, objectives, mission and vision of the company.[88][89] Companies can scan for marketing and sales opportunities by reviewing their own outreach as well as influencer outreach.

This means they have competitive advantage because they are able to analyse their co-marketers influence and brand associations.[90] To cease opportunity, the firm should summarize their current customers' personas and purchase journey from this they are able to deduce their Digital marketing capability.

This means they need to form a clear picture of where they are currently and how many resources they can allocate for their Digital marketing strategy i.e.

labour, time etc.

By summarizing the purchase journey, they can also recognise gaps and growth for future marketing opportunities that will either meet objectives or propose new objectives and increase profit.

To create a planned digital strategy, the company must review their digital proposition (what you are offering to consumers) and communicate it using digital customer targeting techniques.

So, they must define online value proposition (OVP), this means the company must express clearly what they are offering customers online e.g.

brand positioning.

The company should also (re)select target market segments and personas and define digital targeting approaches.

After doing this effectively, it is important to review the marketing mix for online options.

The marketing mix comprises the 4Ps – Product, Price, Promotion and Place.[91][92] Some academics have added three additional elements to the traditional 4Ps of marketing Process, Place and Physical appearance making it 7Ps of marketing.[93] The third and final stage requires the firm to set a budget and management systems; these must be measurable touchpoints, such as audience reached across all digital platforms.

Furthermore, marketers must ensure the budget and management systems are integrating the paid, owned and earned media of the company.[94] The Action and final stage of planning also requires the company to set in place measurable content creation e.g.

oral, visual or written online media.[95] After confirming the Digital marketing plan, a scheduled format of digital communications (e.g.

Gantt Chart) should be encoded throughout the internal operations of the company.

This ensures that all platforms used fall in line and complement each other for the succeeding stages of Digital marketing strategy.

One way marketers can reach out to consumers, and understand their thought process is through what is called an empathy map.

An empathy map is a four step process.

The first step is through asking questions that the consumer would be thinking in their demographic.

The second step is to describe the feelings that the consumer may be having.

The third step is to think about what the consumer would say in their situation.

The final step is to imagine what the consumer will try to do based on the other three steps.

This map is so marketing teams can put themselves in their target demographics shoes.[96] Web Analytics are also a very important way to understand consumers.

They show the habits that people have online for each website.[97] One particular form of these analytics is predictive analytics which helps marketers figure out what route consumers are on.

This uses the information gathered from other analytics, and then creates different predictions of what people will do so that companies can strategize on what to do next, according to the peoples trends.[98] The "sharing economy" refers to an economic pattern that aims to obtain a resource that is not fully utilized.[101] Nowadays, the sharing economy has had an unimagined effect on many traditional elements including labor, industry, and distribution system.[101] This effect is not negligible that some industries are obviously under threat.[101][102] The sharing economy is influencing the traditional marketing channels by changing the nature of some specific concept including ownership, assets, and recruitment.[102] Digital marketing channels and traditional marketing channels are similar in function that the value of the product or service is passed from the original producer to the end user by a kind of supply chain.[103] Digital marketing channels, however, consist of internet systems that create, promote, and deliver products or services from producer to consumer through digital networks.[104] Increasing changes to marketing channels has been a significant contributor to the expansion and growth of the sharing economy.[104] Such changes to marketing channels has prompted unprecedented and historic growth.[104] In addition to this typical approach, the built-in control, efficiency and low cost of Digital marketing channels is an essential features in the application of sharing economy.[103] Digital marketing channels within the sharing economy are typically divided into three domains including, e-mail, social media, and search engine marketing or SEM.[104] Other emerging Digital marketing channels, particularly branded mobile apps, have excelled in the sharing economy.[104] Branded mobile apps are created specifically to initiate engagement between customers and the company.This engagement is typically facilitated through entertainment, information, or market transaction.[104]

Online advertising

Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers.

Many consumers find Online advertising disruptive[1] and have increasingly turned to ad blocking for a variety of reasons.

When software is used to do the purchasing, it is known as programmatic advertising.

Online advertising 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 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.

In 2016, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and broadcast television.[2]:14 In 2017, Internet advertising revenues in the United States totaled $83.0 billion, a 14% increase over the $72.50 billion in revenues in 2016.[3] Many common Online advertising practices are controversial and, as a result, have been increasingly subject to regulation.

Online ad revenues also may not adequately replace other publishers' revenue streams.

Declining ad revenue has led some publishers to place their content behind paywalls.[4] 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".[5][6] The NSFNet began phasing out its commercial use ban in 1991.[7][8][9][10] The first widely publicized example of Online advertising was conducted via electronic mail.

On 3 May 1978, a marketer from DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), Gary Thuerk, sent an email to most of the ARPANET's American west coast users, advertising an open house for a new model of a DEC computer.[6][11] Despite the prevailing acceptable use policies, electronic mail marketing rapidly expanded[12] and eventually became known as "spam." The first known large-scale non-commercial spam message was sent on 18 January 1994 by an Andrews University system administrator, by cross-posting a religious message to all USENET newsgroups.[13] In January 1994 Mark Eberra started the first email marketing company for opt in email list under the domain Insideconnect.com.

He also started the Direct Email Marketing Association to help stop unwanted email and prevent spam.

[14] [15] Four months later, Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel, partners in a law firm, broadly promoted their legal services in a USENET posting titled "Green Card Lottery – Final One?"[16] Canter and Siegel's Green Card USENET spam raised the profile of Online advertising, stimulating widespread interest in advertising via both Usenet and traditional email.[13] More recently, spam has evolved into a more industrial operation, where spammers use armies of virus-infected computers (botnets) to send spam remotely.[11] Online banner advertising began in the early 1990s as page owners sought additional revenue streams to support their content.

Commercial online service Prodigy displayed banners at the bottom of the screen to promote Sears products.

The first clickable web ad was sold by Global Network Navigator in 1993 to a Silicon Valley law firm.[17] In 1994, web banner advertising became mainstream when HotWired, the online component of Wired Magazine, and Time Warner's Pathfinder (website)[18] sold banner ads to AT&T and other companies.

The first AT&T ad on HotWired had a 44% click-through rate, and instead of directing clickers to AT&T's website, the ad linked to an online tour of seven of the world's most acclaimed art museums.[19][20] GoTo.com (renamed Overture in 2001, and acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) created the first search advertising keyword auction in 1998.[21]:119 Google launched its "AdWords" (now renamed Google Ads) search advertising program in 2000[22] and introduced quality-based ranking allocation in 2002,[23] which sorts search advertisements by a combination of bid price and searchers' likeliness to click on the ads.[21]:123 More recently, companies have sought to merge their advertising messages into editorial content or valuable services.

Examples include Red Bull's Red Bull Media House streaming Felix Baumgartner's jump from space online, Coca-Cola's online magazines, and Nike's free applications for performance tracking.[20] Advertisers are also embracing social media[24][25] and mobile advertising; mobile ad spending has grown 90% each year from 2010 to 2013.[26]:13 According to Ad Age Datacenter analysis, in 2017 over half of agency revenue came from digital work.[27] 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.[28] As advertisers collect data across multiple external websites about a user's online activity, they can create a detailed profile of the user's interests to deliver even more targeted advertising.

This aggregation of data is called behavioral targeting.[29] Advertisers can also target their audience by using contextual to deliver display ads related to the content of the web page where the ads appear.[21]:118 Retargeting, behavioral targeting, and contextual advertising all are designed to increase an advertiser's return on investment, or ROI, over untargeted ads.[30] Advertisers may also deliver ads based on a user's suspected geography through geotargeting.

A user's IP address communicates some geographic information (at minimum, the user's country or general region).

The geographic information from an IP can be supplemented and refined with other proxies or information to narrow the range of possible locations.[31] For example, with mobile devices, advertisers can sometimes use a phone's GPS receiver or the location of nearby mobile towers.[32] Cookies and other persistent data on a user's machine may provide help narrowing a user's location further.[31] Web banners or banner ads typically are graphical ads displayed within a web page.

Many banner ads are delivered by a central ad server.

Banner ads can use rich media to incorporate video, audio, animations, buttons, forms, or other interactive elements using Java applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash, and other programs.

Frame ads were the first form of web banners.[19] The colloquial usage of "banner ads" often refers to traditional frame ads.

Website publishers incorporate frame ads by setting aside a particular space on the web page.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau's Ad Unit Guidelines proposes standardized pixel dimensions for ad units.[33] A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window that opens above a website visitor's initial browser window.[34] A pop-under ad opens a new browser window under a website visitor's initial browser window.[26]:22 Pop-under ads and similar technologies are now advised against by online authorities such as Google, who state that they "do not condone this practice".[35] A floating ad, or overlay ad, is a type of rich media advertisement that appears superimposed over the requested website's content.

Floating ads may disappear or become less obtrusive after a pre-set time period.

An expanding ad is a rich media frame ad that changes dimensions upon a predefined condition, such as a preset amount of time a visitor spends on a webpage, the user's click on the ad, or the user's mouse movement over the ad.[36] Expanding ads allow advertisers to fit more information into a restricted ad space.

A trick banner is a banner ad where the ad copy imitates some screen element users commonly encounter, such as an operating system message or popular application message, to induce ad clicks.[37] Trick banners typically do not mention the advertiser in the initial ad, and thus they are a form of bait-and-switch.[38][39] Trick banners commonly attract a higher-than-average click-through rate, but tricked users may resent the advertiser for deceiving them.[40] "News Feed Ads", also called "Sponsored Stories", "Boosted Posts", typically exist on social media platforms that offer a steady stream of information updates ("news feed"[41]) in regulated formats (i.e.

in similar sized small boxes with a uniform style).

Those advertisements are intertwined with non-promoted news that the users are reading through.

Those advertisements can be of any content, such as promoting a website, a fan page, an app, or a product.

Some examples are: Facebook's "Sponsored Stories",[42] LinkedIn's "Sponsored Updates",[43] and Twitter's "Promoted Tweets".[44] This display ads format falls into its own category because unlike banner ads which are quite distinguishable, News Feed Ads' format blends well into non-paid news updates.

This format of online advertisement yields much higher click-through rates than traditional display ads.[45][46] The process by which Online advertising is displayed can involve many parties.

In the simplest case, the website publisher selects and serves the ads.

Publishers which operate their own advertising departments may use this method.

The ads may be outsourced to an advertising agency under contract with the publisher, and served from the advertising agency's servers.

Alternatively, ad space may be offered for sale in a bidding market using an ad exchange and real-time bidding.

This involves many parties interacting automatically in real time.

In response to a request from the user's browser, the publisher content server sends the web page content to the user's browser over the Internet.

The page does not yet contain ads, but contains links which cause the user's browser to connect to the publisher ad server to request that the spaces left for ads be filled in with ads.

Information identifying the user, such as cookies and the page being viewed, is transmitted to the publisher ad server.

The publisher ad server then communicates with a supply-side platform server.

The publisher is offering ad space for sale, so they are considered the supplier.

The supply side platform also receives the user's identifying information, which it sends to a data management platform.

At the data management platform, the user's identifying information is used to look up demographic information, previous purchases, and other information of interest to advertisers.

Broadly speaking, there are three types of data obtained through such a data management platform: This customer information is combined and returned to the supply side platform, which can now package up the offer of ad space along with information about the user who will view it.

The supply side platform sends that offer to an ad exchange.

The ad exchange puts the offer out for bid to demand-side platforms.

Demand side platforms act on behalf of ad agencies, who sell ads which advertise brands.

Demand side platforms thus have ads ready to display, and are searching for users to view them.

Bidders get the information about the user ready to view the ad, and decide, based on that information, how much to offer to buy the ad space.

According to the Internet Advertising Bureau, a demand side platform has 10 milliseconds to respond to an offer.

The ad exchange picks the winning bid and informs both parties.

The ad exchange then passes the link to the ad back through the supply side platform and the publisher's ad server to the user's browser, which then requests the ad content from the agency's ad server.

The ad agency can thus confirm that the ad was delivered to the browser.[49] This is simplified, according to the IAB.

Exchanges may try to unload unsold ("remnant") space at low prices through other exchanges.

Some agencies maintain semi-permanent pre-cached bids with ad exchanges, and those may be examined before going out to additional demand side platforms for bids.

The process for mobile advertising is different and may involve mobile carriers and handset software manufacturers.[49] An interstitial ad displays before a user can access requested content, sometimes while the user is waiting for the content to load.[50] Interstitial ads are a form of interruption marketing.[51][52] A text ad displays text-based hyperlinks.

Text-based ads may display separately from a web page's primary content, or they can be embedded by hyperlinking individual words or phrases to the advertiser's websites.

Text ads may also be delivered through email marketing or text message marketing.

Text-based ads often render faster than graphical ads and can be harder for ad-blocking software to block.[53] Search engine marketing, or SEM, is designed to increase a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Search engines provide sponsored results and organic (non-sponsored) results based on a web searcher's query.[21]:117 Search engines often employ visual cues to differentiate sponsored results from organic results.

Search engine marketing includes all of an advertiser's actions to make a website's listing more prominent for topical keywords.

The primary reason behind the rising popularity of Search Engine Marketing has been Google.

There were a few companies that had its own PPC and Analytics tools.

However, this concept was popularized by Google.

Google Ad words was convenient for advertisers to use and create campaigns.

And, they realized that the tool did a fair job, by charging only for someone's click on the ad, which reported as the cost-per-click for which a penny was charged.

This resulted in the advertisers monitoring the campaign by the number of clicks and were satisfied that the ads could be tracked.[54] Search engine optimization, or SEO, attempts to improve a website's organic search rankings in SERPs by increasing the website content's relevance to search terms.

Search engines regularly update their algorithms to penalize poor quality sites that try to game their rankings, making optimization a moving target for advertisers.[55][56] Many vendors offer SEO services.[26]:22 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.[21]:118[57] In addition to setting a maximum price per keyword, bids may include time, language, geographical, and other constraints.[21]:118 Search engines originally sold listings in order of highest bids.[21]:119 Modern search engines rank sponsored listings based on a combination of bid price, expected click-through rate, keyword relevancy and site quality.[23] Social media marketing is commercial promotion conducted through social media websites.

Many companies promote their products by posting frequent updates and providing special offers through their social media profiles.Videos, interactive quizzes, and sponsored posts are all a part of this operation.

Usually these ads are found on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat.[58] Mobile advertising is ad copy delivered through wireless mobile devices such as smartphones, feature phones, or tablet computers.

Mobile advertising may take the form of static or rich media display ads, SMS (Short Message Service) or MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) ads, mobile search ads, advertising within mobile websites, or ads within mobile applications or games (such as interstitial ads, "advergaming," or application sponsorship).[26]:23 Industry groups such as the Mobile Marketing Association have attempted to standardize mobile ad unit specifications, similar to the IAB's efforts for general Online advertising.[52] Mobile advertising is growing rapidly for several reasons.

There are more mobile devices in the field, connectivity speeds have improved (which, among other things, allows for richer media ads to be served quickly), screen resolutions have advanced, mobile publishers are becoming more sophisticated about incorporating ads, and consumers are using mobile devices more extensively.[26]:14 The Interactive Advertising Bureau predicts continued growth in mobile advertising with the adoption of location-based targeting and other technological features not available or relevant on personal computers.[26]:14 In July 2014 Facebook reported advertising revenue for the June 2014 quarter of $2.68 billion, an increase of 67 percent over the second quarter of 2013.

Of that, mobile advertising revenue accounted for around 62 percent, an increase of 41 percent on the previous year.

Email advertising is ad copy comprising an entire email or a portion of an email message.[26]:22 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).

Businesses may ask for your email and send updates on new products or sales.

As opposed to static messaging, chat advertising refers to real-time messages dropped to users on certain sites.

This is done using live chat software or tracking applications installed within certain websites with the operating personnel behind the site often dropping adverts on the traffic surfing around the sites.

In reality, this is a subset of the email advertising but different because of its time window.

Online classified advertising is advertising posted online in a categorical listing of specific products or services.

Examples include online job boards, online real estate listings, automotive listings, online yellow pages, and online auction-based listings.[26]:22 Craigslist and eBay are two prominent providers of online classified listings.

Adware is software that, once installed, automatically displays advertisements on a user's computer.

The ads may appear in the software itself, integrated into web pages visited by the user, or in pop-ups/pop-unders.[59] Adware installed without the user's permission is a type of malware.[60] Affiliate marketing occurs when advertisers organize third parties to generate potential customers for them.

Third-party affiliates receive payment based on sales generated through their promotion.[26]:22 Affiliate marketers generate traffic to offers from affiliate networks, and when the desired action is taken by the visitor, the affiliate earns a commission.

These desired actions can be an email submission, a phone call, filling out an online form, or an online order being completed.

Content marketing is any marketing that involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers.

This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including blogs, news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, case studies, how-to guides and more.

Considering that most marketing involves some form of published media, it is almost (though not entirely) redundant to call 'content marketing' anything other than simply 'marketing'.

There are, of course, other forms of marketing (in-person marketing, telephone-based marketing, word of mouth marketing, etc.) where the label is more useful for identifying the type of marketing.

However, even these are usually merely presenting content that they are marketing as information in a way that is different from traditional print, radio, TV, film, email, or web media.

Online marketing platform (OMP) is an integrated web-based platform that combines the benefits of a business directory, local search engine, search engine optimisation (SEO) tool, customer relationship management (CRM) package and content management system (CMS).

eBay and Amazon are used as online marketing and logistics management platforms.

On Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and other Social Media, retail online marketing is also used.

Online business marketing platforms such as Marketo, MarketBright and Pardot have been bought by major IT companies (Eloqua-Oracle, Neolane-Adobe and Unica-IBM).

Unlike television marketing in which Neilsen TV Ratings can be relied upon for viewing metrics, online advertisers do not have an independent party to verify viewing claims made by the big online platforms.[61] Advertisers and publishers use a wide range of payment calculation methods.

In 2012, advertisers calculated 32% of Online advertising transactions on a cost-per-impression basis, 66% on customer performance (e.g.

cost per click or cost per acquisition), and 2% on hybrids of impression and performance methods.[26]:17 Cost per mille, often abbreviated to CPM, means that advertisers pay for every thousand displays of their message to potential customers (mille is the Latin word for thousand).

In the online context, ad displays are usually called "impressions." Definitions of an "impression" vary among publishers,[62] and some impressions may not be charged because they don't represent a new exposure to an actual customer.

Advertisers can use technologies such as web bugs to verify if an impression is actually delivered.[63][64]:59 Similarly, revenue generated can be measured in Revenue per mille (RPM).[65] Publishers use a variety of techniques to increase page views, such as dividing content across multiple pages, repurposing someone else's content, using sensational titles, or publishing tabloid or sexual content.[66] CPM advertising is susceptible to "impression fraud," and advertisers who want visitors to their sites may not find per-impression payments a good proxy for the results they desire.[67]:1–4 CPC (Cost Per Click) or PPC (Pay per click) means advertisers pay each time a user clicks on the ad.

CPC advertising works well when advertisers want visitors to their sites, but it's a less accurate measurement for advertisers looking to build brand awareness.[68] CPC's market share has grown each year since its introduction, eclipsing CPM to dominate two-thirds of all Online advertising compensation methods.[26]:18[67]:1 Like impressions, not all recorded clicks are valuable to advertisers.

GoldSpot Media reported that up to 50% of clicks on static mobile banner ads are accidental and resulted in redirected visitors leaving the new site immediately.[69] Cost per engagement aims to track not just that an ad unit loaded on the page (i.e., an impression was served), but also that the viewer actually saw and/or interacted with the ad.[70][71] Cost per view video advertising.

Both Google and TubeMogul endorsed this standardized CPV metric to the IAB's (Interactive Advertising Bureau) Digital Video Committee, and it's garnering a notable amount of industry support.[72] CPV is the primary benchmark used in YouTube Advertising Campaigns, as part of Google's AdWords platform.

The CPI compensation method is specific to mobile applications and mobile advertising.

In CPI ad campaigns brands are charged a fixed of bid rate only when the application was installed.

In marketing, "attribution" is the measurement of effectiveness of particular ads in a consumer's ultimate decision to purchase.

Multiple ad impressions may lead to a consumer "click" or other action.

A single action may lead to revenue being paid to multiple ad space sellers.[73] CPA (Cost Per Action or Cost Per Acquisition) or PPP (Pay Per Performance) advertising means the advertiser pays for the number of users who perform a desired activity, such as completing a purchase or filling out a registration form.

Performance-based compensation can also incorporate revenue sharing, where publishers earn a percentage of the advertiser's profits made as a result of the ad.

Performance-based compensation shifts the risk of failed advertising onto publishers.[67]:4, 16 Fixed cost compensation means advertisers pay a fixed cost for delivery of ads online, usually over a specified time period, irrespective of the ad's visibility or users' response to it.

One examples is CPD (cost per day) where advertisers pay a fixed cost for publishing an ad for a day irrespective of impressions served or clicks.

The low costs of electronic communication reduce the cost of displaying online advertisements compared to offline ads.

Online advertising, and in particular social media, provides a low-cost means for advertisers to engage with large established communities.[58] Advertising online offers better returns than in other media.[67]:1 Online advertisers can collect data on their ads' effectiveness, such as the size of the potential audience or actual audience response,[21]:119 how a visitor reached their advertisement, whether the advertisement resulted in a sale, and whether an ad actually loaded within a visitor's view.[63][64]:59 This helps online advertisers improve their ad campaigns over time.

Advertisers have a wide variety of ways of presenting their promotional messages, including the ability to convey images, video, audio, and links.

Unlike many offline ads, online ads also can be interactive.[20] For example, some ads let users input queries[74] or let users follow the advertiser on social media.[75] Online ads can even incorporate games.[76] Publishers can offer advertisers the ability to reach customizable and narrow market segments for targeted advertising.

Online advertising may use geo-targeting to display relevant advertisements to the user's geography.

Advertisers can customize each individual ad to a particular user based on the user's previous preferences.[30] Advertisers can also track whether a visitor has already seen a particular ad in order to reduce unwanted repetitious exposures and provide adequate time gaps between exposures.[77] Online advertising can reach nearly every global market, and Online advertising influences offline sales.[78][79][80] Once ad design is complete, online ads can be deployed immediately.

The delivery of online ads does not need to be linked to the publisher's publication schedule.

Furthermore, online advertisers can modify or replace ad copy more rapidly than their offline counterparts.[81] According to a US Senate investigation, the current state of Online advertising endangers the security and privacy of users.[82] Eye-tracking studies have shown that Internet users often ignore web page zones likely to contain display ads (sometimes called "banner blindness"), and this problem is worse online than in offline media.[83] On the other hand, studies suggest that even those ads "ignored" by the users may influence the user subconsciously.[84] There are numerous ways that advertisers can be overcharged for their advertising.

For example, click fraud occurs when a publisher or third parties click (manually or through automated means) on a CPC ad with no legitimate buying intent.[85] For example, click fraud can occur when a competitor clicks on ads to deplete its rival's advertising budget, or when publishers attempt to manufacture revenue.[85] Click fraud is especially associated with pornography sites.

In 2011, certain scamming porn websites launched dozens of hidden pages on each visitor's computer, forcing the visitor's computer to click on hundreds of paid links without the visitor's knowledge.[86] As with offline publications, online impression fraud can occur when publishers overstate the number of ad impressions they have delivered to their advertisers.

To combat impression fraud, several publishing and advertising industry associations are developing ways to count online impressions credibly.[87][88] Because users have different operating systems, web browsers[89] and computer hardware (including mobile devices and different screen sizes), online ads may appear to users differently from how the advertiser intended, or the ads may not display properly at all.

A 2012 comScore study revealed that, on average, 31% of ads were not "in-view" when rendered, meaning they never had an opportunity to be seen.[90] Rich media ads create even greater compatibility problems, as some developers may use competing (and exclusive) software to render the ads (see e.g.

Comparison of HTML 5 and Flash).

Furthermore, advertisers may encounter legal problems if legally required information doesn't actually display to users, even if that failure is due to technological heterogeneity.[91]:i In the United States, the FTC has released a set of guidelines indicating that it's the advertisers' responsibility to ensure the ads display any required disclosures or disclaimers, irrespective of the users' technology.[91]:4–8 Ad blocking, or ad filtering, means the ads do not appear to the user because the user uses technology to screen out ads.

Many browsers block unsolicited pop-up ads by default.[92] Other software programs or browser add-ons may also block the loading of ads, or block elements on a page with behaviors characteristic of ads (e.g.

HTML autoplay of both audio and video).

Approximately 9% of all online page views come from browsers with ad-blocking software installed,[93] and some publishers have 40%+ of their visitors using ad-blockers.[4] Some web browsers offer privacy modes where users can hide information about themselves from publishers and advertisers.

Among other consequences, advertisers can't use cookies to serve targeted ads to private browsers.

Most major browsers have incorporated Do Not Track options into their browser headers, but the regulations currently are only enforced by the honor system.[94][95][96] The collection of user information by publishers and advertisers has raised consumer concerns about their privacy.[31][64] Sixty percent of Internet users would use Do Not Track technology to block all collection of information if given an opportunity.[97][98] Over half of all Google and Facebook users are concerned about their privacy when using Google and Facebook, according to Gallup.[99] Many consumers have reservations about online behavioral targeting.

By tracking users' online activities, advertisers are able to understand consumers quite well.

Advertisers often use technology, such as web bugs and respawning cookies, to maximize their abilities to track consumers.[64]:60[100] According to a 2011 survey conducted by Harris Interactive, over half of Internet users had a negative impression of online behavioral advertising, and forty percent feared that their personally-identifiable information had been shared with advertisers without their consent.[101][102] Consumers can be especially troubled by advertisers targeting them based on sensitive information, such as financial or health status.[100] Furthermore, some advertisers attach the MAC address of users' devices to their 'demographic profiles' so they can be retargeted (regardless of the accuracy of the profile) even if the user clears their cookies and browsing history.[citation needed] Scammers can take advantage of consumers' difficulties verifying an online persona's identity,[103]:1 leading to artifices like phishing (where scam emails look identical to those from a well-known brand owner)[104] and confidence schemes like the Nigerian "419" scam.[105][106][107] The Internet Crime Complaint Center received 289,874 complaints in 2012, totaling over half a billion dollars in losses, most of which originated with scam ads.[108][109] Consumers also face malware risks, i.e.

malvertising, when interacting with Online advertising.

Cisco's 2013 Annual Security Report revealed that clicking on ads was 182 times more likely to install a virus on a user's computer than surfing the Internet for porn.[110][111] For example, in August 2014 Yahoo's advertising network reportedly saw cases of infection of a variant of Cryptolocker ransomware.[112] The Internet's low cost of disseminating advertising contributes to spam, especially by large-scale spammers.

Numerous efforts have been undertaken to combat spam, ranging from blacklists to regulatorily-required labeling to content filters, but most of those efforts have adverse collateral effects, such as mistaken filtering.[6] In general, consumer protection laws apply equally to online and offline activities.[91]:i However, there are questions over which jurisdiction's laws apply and which regulatory agencies have enforcement authority over transborder activity.[113] As with offline advertising, industry participants have undertaken numerous efforts to self-regulate and develop industry standards or codes of conduct.

Several United States advertising industry organizations jointly published Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising based on standards proposed by the FTC in 2009.[114] European ad associations published a similar document in 2011.[115] Primary tenets of both documents include consumer control of data transfer to third parties, data security, and consent for collection of certain health and financial data.[114]:2–4 Neither framework, however, penalizes violators of the codes of conduct.[116] Privacy regulation can require users' consent before an advertiser can track the user or communicate with the user.

However, affirmative consent ("opt in") can be difficult and expensive to obtain.[64]:60 Industry participants often prefer other regulatory schemes.

Different jurisdictions have taken different approaches to privacy issues with advertising.

The United States has specific restrictions on online tracking of children in the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA),[114]:16–17 and the FTC has recently expanded its interpretation of COPPA to include requiring ad networks to obtain parental consent before knowingly tracking kids.[117] Otherwise, the U.S.

Federal Trade Commission frequently supports industry self-regulation, although increasingly it has been undertaking enforcement actions related to online privacy and security.[118] The FTC has also been pushing for industry consensus about possible Do Not Track legislation.

In contrast, the European Union's "Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive" restricts websites' ability to use consumer data much more comprehensively.

The EU limitations restrict targeting by online advertisers; researchers have estimated Online advertising effectiveness decreases on average by around 65% in Europe relative to the rest of the world.[64]:58 Many laws specifically regulate the ways online ads are delivered.

For example, Online advertising delivered via email is more regulated than the same ad content delivered via banner ads.

Among other restrictions, the U.S.

CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 requires that any commercial email provide an opt-out mechanism.[113] Similarly, mobile advertising is governed by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA), which (among other restrictions) requires user opt-in before sending advertising via text messaging.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate's own marketing efforts.[1][2][3][4][5] The industry has four core players:[citation needed] The market has grown in complexity, resulting in the emergence of a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates, and specialized third party vendors.[citation needed] Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree because affiliates often use regular advertising methods.

Those methods include organic search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing (PPC – Pay Per Click), e-mail marketing, content marketing, and (in some sense) display advertising.

On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.[citation needed] Affiliate marketing is commonly confused with referral marketing, as both forms of marketing use third parties to drive sales to the retailer.

The two forms of marketing are differentiated, however, in how they drive sales, where Affiliate marketing relies purely on financial motivations, while referral marketing relies more on trust and personal relationships.[citation needed] Affiliate marketing is frequently overlooked by advertisers.[6] While search engines, e-mail, and web site syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, Affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile.

Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies.[citation needed] The concept of revenue sharing—paying commission for referred business—predates Affiliate marketing and the Internet.

The translation of the revenue share principles to mainstream e-commerce happened in November 1994,[7] almost four years after the origination of the World Wide Web.

The concept of Affiliate marketing on the Internet was conceived of, put into practice and patented by William J.

Tobin, the founder of PC Flowers & Gifts.

Launched on the Prodigy Network in 1989, PC Flowers & Gifts remained on the service until 1996.

By 1993, PC Flowers & Gifts generated sales in excess of $6 million per year on the Prodigy service.

In 1998, PC Flowers and Gifts developed the business model of paying a commission on sales to the Prodigy Network.[8][9] In 1994, Tobin launched a beta version of PC Flowers & Gifts on the Internet in cooperation with IBM, who owned half of Prodigy.[10] By 1995 PC Flowers & Gifts had launched a commercial version of the website and had 2,600 Affiliate marketing partners on the World Wide Web.

Tobin applied for a patent on tracking and Affiliate marketing on January 22, 1996, and was issued U.S.

Patent number 6,141,666 on Oct 31, 2000.

Tobin also received Japanese Patent number 4021941 on Oct 5, 2007, and U.S.

Patent number 7,505,913 on Mar 17, 2009, for Affiliate marketing and tracking.[11] In July 1998 PC Flowers and Gifts merged with Fingerhut and Federated Department Stores.[12] In November 1994, CDNow launched its BuyWeb program.

CDNow had the idea that music-oriented websites could review or list albums on their pages that their visitors might be interested in purchasing.

These websites could also offer a link that would take visitors directly to CDNow to purchase the albums.

The idea for remote purchasing originally arose from conversations with music label Geffen Records in the fall of 1994.

The management at Geffen wanted to sell its artists' CD's directly from its website but did not want to implement this capability itself.

Geffen asked CDNow if it could design a program where CDNow would handle the order fulfillment.

Geffen realized that CDNow could link directly from the artist on its website to Geffen's website, bypassing the CDNow home page and going directly to an artist's music page.[13] Amazon.com (Amazon) launched its associate program in July 1996: Amazon associates could place banner or text links on their site for individual books, or link directly to the Amazon home page.[14] When visitors clicked on the associate's website to go to Amazon and purchase a book, the associate received a commission.

Amazon was not the first merchant to offer an affiliate program, but its program was the first to become widely known and serve as a model for subsequent programs.[15][16] In February 2000, Amazon announced that it had been granted a patent[17] on components of an affiliate program.

The patent application was submitted in June 1997, which predates most affiliate programs, but not PC Flowers & Gifts.com (October 1994), AutoWeb.com (October 1995), Kbkids.com/BrainPlay.com (January 1996), EPage (April 1996), and several others.[18] Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception.

The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the Internet, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business.

According to one report, the total sales amount generated through affiliate networks in 2006 was £2.16 billion in the United Kingdom alone.

The estimates were £1.35 billion in sales in 2005.[19] MarketingSherpa's research team estimated that, in 2006, affiliates worldwide earned US$6.5 billion in bounty and commissions from a variety of sources in retail, personal finance, gaming and gambling, travel, telecom, education, publishing, and forms of lead generation other than contextual advertising programs.[20] In 2006, the most active sectors for Affiliate marketing were the adult gambling, retail industries and file-sharing services.[21]:149–150 The three sectors expected to experience the greatest growth are the mobile phone, finance, and travel sectors.[21] Soon after these sectors came the entertainment (particularly gaming) and Internet-related services (particularly broadband) sectors.

Also several of the affiliate solution providers expect to see increased interest from business-to-business marketers and advertisers in using Affiliate marketing as part of their mix.[21]:149–150 Websites and services based on Web 2.0 concepts—blogging and interactive online communities, for example—have impacted the Affiliate marketing world as well.

These platforms allow improved communication between merchants and affiliates.

Web 2.0 platforms have also opened Affiliate marketing channels to personal bloggers, writers, and independent website owners.

Contextual ads allow publishers with lower levels of web traffic to place affiliate ads on websites.[citation needed] Forms of new media have also diversified how companies, brands, and ad networks serve ads to visitors.

For instance, YouTube allows video-makers to embed advertisements through Google's affiliate network.[citation needed] New developments have made it more difficult for unscrupulous affiliates to make money.

Emerging black sheep are detected and made known to the Affiliate marketing community with much greater speed and efficiency.[citation needed] Eighty percent of affiliate programs today use revenue sharing or pay per sale (PPS) as a compensation method, nineteen percent use cost per action (CPA), and the remaining programs use other methods such as cost per click (CPC) or cost per mille (CPM, cost per estimated 1000 views).[22] Within more mature markets, less than one percent of traditional Affiliate marketing programs today use cost per click and cost per mille.

However, these compensation methods are used heavily in display advertising and paid search.

Cost per mille requires only that the publisher make the advertising available on his or her website and display it to the page visitors in order to receive a commission.

Pay per click requires one additional step in the conversion process to generate revenue for the publisher: A visitor must not only be made aware of the advertisement but must also click on the advertisement to visit the advertiser's website.

Cost per click was more common in the early days of Affiliate marketing but has diminished in use over time due to click fraud issues very similar to the click fraud issues modern search engines are facing today.

Contextual advertising programs are not considered in the statistic pertaining to the diminished use of cost per click, as it is uncertain if contextual advertising can be considered Affiliate marketing.

While these models have diminished in mature e-commerce and online advertising markets they are still prevalent in some more nascent industries.

China is one example where Affiliate marketing does not overtly resemble the same model in the West.

With many affiliates being paid a flat "Cost Per Day" with some networks offering Cost Per Click or CPM.

In the case of cost per mille/click, the publisher is not concerned about whether a visitor is a member of the audience that the advertiser tries to attract and is able to convert because at this point the publisher has already earned his commission.

This leaves the greater, and, in case of cost per mille, the full risk and loss (if the visitor cannot be converted) to the advertiser.

Cost per action/sale methods require that referred visitors do more than visit the advertiser's website before the affiliate receives a commission.

The advertiser must convert that visitor first.

It is in the best interest of the affiliate to send the most closely targeted traffic to the advertiser as possible to increase the chance of a conversion.

The risk and loss are shared between the affiliate and the advertiser.

Affiliate marketing is also called "performance marketing", in reference to how sales employees are typically being compensated.

Such employees are typically paid a commission for each sale they close, and sometimes are paid performance incentives for exceeding objectives.[23] Affiliates are not employed by the advertiser whose products or services they promote, but the compensation models applied to Affiliate marketing are very similar to the ones used for people in the advertisers' internal sales department.

The phrase, "Affiliates are an extended sales force for your business", which is often used to explain Affiliate marketing, is not completely accurate.

The primary difference between the two is that affiliate marketers provide little if any influence on a possible prospect in the conversion process once that prospect is directed to the advertiser's website.

The sales team of the advertiser, however, does have the control and influence up to the point where the prospect either a) signs the contract, or b) completes the purchase.

Some advertisers offer multi-tier programs that distribute commission into a hierarchical referral network of sign-ups and sub-partners.

In practical terms, publisher "A" signs up to the program with an advertiser and gets rewarded for the agreed activity conducted by a referred visitor.

If publisher "A" attracts publishers "B" and "C" to sign up for the same program using his sign-up code, all future activities performed by publishers "B" and "C" will result in additional commission (at a lower rate) for publisher "A".

Two-tier programs exist in the minority of affiliate programs; most are simply one-tier.

Referral programs beyond two-tier resemble multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing but are different: Multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing associations tend to have more complex commission requirements/qualifications than standard affiliate programs.[citation needed] Merchants favor Affiliate marketing because in most cases it uses a "pay for performance" model, meaning that the merchant does not incur a marketing expense unless results are accrued (excluding any initial setup cost).[24] Some merchants run their own (in-house) affiliate programs using dedicated software, while others use third-party intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates.

There are two different types of affiliate management methods used by merchants: standalone software or hosted services, typically called affiliate networks.

Payouts to affiliates or publishers can be made by the networks on behalf of the merchant, by the network, consolidated across all merchants where the publisher has a relationship with and earned commissions or directly by the merchant itself.

Uncontrolled affiliate programs aid rogue affiliates, who use spamming,[25] trademark infringement, false advertising, cookie stuffing, typosquatting,[26] and other unethical methods that have given Affiliate marketing a negative reputation.

Some merchants are using outsourced (affiliate) program management (OPM) companies, which are themselves often run by affiliate managers and network program managers.[27] OPM companies perform affiliate program management for the merchants as a service, similar to the role an advertising agencies serves in offline marketing.

Affiliate websites are often categorized by merchants (advertisers) and affiliate networks.

There are currently no industry-wide standards for the categorization.

The following types of websites are generic, yet are commonly understood and used by affiliate marketers.

Affiliate networks that already have several advertisers typically also have a large pool of publishers.

These publishers could be potentially recruited, and there is also an increased chance that publishers in the network apply to the program on their own, without the need for recruitment efforts by the advertiser.

Relevant websites that attract the same target audiences as the advertiser but without competing with it are potential affiliate partners as well.

Vendors or existing customers can also become recruits if doing so makes sense and does not violate any laws or regulations (such as with pyramid schemes).

Almost any website could be recruited as an affiliate publisher, but high traffic websites are more likely interested in (for their sake) low-risk cost per mille or medium-risk cost per click deals rather than higher-risk cost per action or revenue share deals.[28] There are three primary ways to locate affiliate programs for a target website: If the above locations do not yield information pertaining to affiliates, it may be the case that there exists a non-public affiliate program.

Utilizing one of the common website correlation methods may provide clues about the affiliate network.

The most definitive method for finding this information is to contact the website owner directly if a contact method can be located.

Since the emergence of Affiliate marketing, there has been little control over affiliate activity.

Unscrupulous affiliates have used spam, false advertising, forced clicks (to get tracking cookies set on users' computers), adware, and other methods to drive traffic to their sponsors.

Although many affiliate programs have terms of service that contain rules against spam, this marketing method has historically proven to attract abuse from spammers.

In the infancy of Affiliate marketing, many Internet users held negative opinions due to the tendency of affiliates to use spam to promote the programs in which they were enrolled.[29] As Affiliate marketing matured, many affiliate merchants have refined their terms and conditions to prohibit affiliates from spamming.

A browser extension is a plug-in that extends the functionality of a web browser.

Some extensions are authored using web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.

Most modern web browsers have a whole slew of third-party extensions available for download.

In recent years, there has been a constant rise in the number of malicious browser extensions flooding the web.

Malicious browser extensions will often appear to be legitimate as they seem to originate from vendor websites and come with glowing customer reviews.[30] In the case of Affiliate marketing, these malicious extensions are often used to redirect a user's browser to send fake clicks to websites that are supposedly part of legitimate Affiliate marketing programs.

Typically, users are completely unaware this is happening other than their browser performance slowing down.

Websites end up paying for fake traffic numbers, and users are unwitting participants in these ad schemes.

As search engines have become more prominent, some affiliate marketers have shifted from sending e-mail spam to creating automatically generated web pages that often contain product data feeds provided by merchants.

The goal of such web pages is to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine, also known as spamdexing.

Each page can be targeted to a different niche market through the use of specific keywords, with the result being a skewed form of search engine optimization.

Spam is the biggest threat to organic search engines, whose goal is to provide quality search results for keywords or phrases entered by their users.

Google's PageRank algorithm update ("BigDaddy") in February 2006—the final stage of Google's major update ("Jagger") that began in mid-summer 2005—specifically targeted spamdexing with great success.

This update thus enabled Google to remove a large amount of mostly computer-generated duplicate content from its index.[31] Websites consisting mostly of affiliate links have previously held a negative reputation for underdelivering quality content.

In 2005 there were active changes made by Google, where certain websites were labeled as "thin affiliates".[32] Such websites were either removed from Google's index or were relocated within the results page (i.e., moved from the top-most results to a lower position).

To avoid this categorization, affiliate marketer webmasters must create quality content on their websites that distinguishes their work from the work of spammers or banner farms, which only contain links leading to merchant sites.

Although it differs from spyware, adware often uses the same methods and technologies.

Merchants initially were uninformed about adware, what impact it had, and how it could damage their brands.

Affiliate marketers became aware of the issue much more quickly, especially because they noticed that adware often overwrites tracking cookies, thus resulting in a decline of commissions.

Affiliates not employing adware felt that it was stealing commission from them.

Adware often has no valuable purpose and rarely provides any useful content to the user, who is typically unaware that such software is installed on his/her computer.

Affiliates discussed the issues in Internet forums and began to organize their efforts.

They believed that the best way to address the problem was to discourage merchants from advertising via adware.

Merchants that were either indifferent to or supportive of adware were exposed by affiliates, thus damaging those merchants' reputations and tarnishing their Affiliate marketing efforts.

Many affiliates either terminated the use of such merchants or switched to a competitor's affiliate program.

Eventually, affiliate networks were also forced by merchants and affiliates to take a stand and ban certain adware publishers from their network.

The result was Code of Conduct by Commission Junction/beFree and Performics,[33] LinkShare's Anti-Predatory Advertising Addendum,[34] and ShareASale's complete ban of software applications as a medium for affiliates to promote advertiser offers.[35] Regardless of the progress made, adware continues to be an issue, as demonstrated by the class action lawsuit against ValueClick and its daughter company Commission Junction filed on April 20, 2007.[36] Affiliates were among the earliest adopters of pay per click advertising when the first pay-per-click search engines emerged during the end of the 1990s.

Later in 2000 Google launched its pay per click service, Google AdWords, which is responsible for the widespread use and acceptance of pay per click as an advertising channel.

An increasing number of merchants engaged in pay per click advertising, either directly or via a search marketing agency, and realized that this space was already occupied by their affiliates.

Although this situation alone created advertising channel conflicts and debates between advertisers and affiliates, the largest issue concerned affiliates bidding on advertisers names, brands, and trademarks.[37] Several advertisers began to adjust their affiliate program terms to prohibit their affiliates from bidding on those type of keywords.

Some advertisers, however, did and still do embrace this behavior, going so far as to allow, or even encourage, affiliates to bid on any term, including the advertiser's trademarks.

Bloggers and other publishers may not be aware of disclosure guidelines set forth by the FTC.

Guidelines affect celebrity endorsements, advertising language, and blogger compensation.[38] Affiliate marketing currently lacks industry standards for training and certification.

There are some training courses and seminars that result in certifications; however, the acceptance of such certifications is mostly due to the reputation of the individual or company issuing the certification.

Affiliate marketing is not commonly taught in universities, and only a few college instructors work with Internet marketers to introduce the subject to students majoring in marketing.[39] Education occurs most often in "real life" by becoming involved and learning the details as time progresses.

Although there are several books on the topic, some so-called "how-to" or "silver bullet" books instruct readers to manipulate holes in the Google algorithm, which can quickly become out of date,[39] or suggest strategies no longer endorsed or permitted by advertisers.[citation needed] Outsourced Program Management companies typically combine formal and informal training, providing much of their training through group collaboration and brainstorming.

Such companies also try to send each marketing employee to the industry conference of their choice.[40] Other training resources used include online forums, weblogs, podcasts, video seminars, and specialty websites.

A code of conduct was released by affiliate networks Commission Junction/beFree and Performics in December 2002 to guide practices and adherence to ethical standards for online advertising.

In 2008 the state of New York passed a law asserting sales tax jurisdiction over Amazon.com sales to New York residents.

New York was aware of Amazon affiliates operating within the state.

In Quill Corp.

v.

North Dakota, the US Supreme Court ruled that the presence of independent sales representatives may allow a state to require sales tax collections.

New York determined that affiliates are such independent sales representatives.

The New York law became known as "Amazon's law" and was quickly emulated by other states.[41] While that was the first time states successfully addressed the internet tax gap, since 2018 states have been free to assert sales tax jurisdiction over sales to their residents regardless of the presence of retailer affiliates.[42] Many voucher code web sites use a click-to-reveal format, which requires the web site user to click to reveal the voucher code.

The action of clicking places the cookie on the website visitor's computer.

In the United Kingdom, the IAB Affiliate Council under chair Matt Bailey announced regulations[43] that stated that "Affiliates must not use a mechanism whereby users are encouraged to click to interact with content where it is unclear or confusing what the outcome will be."

Guerrilla marketing

Guerrilla marketing is an advertisement strategy in which a company uses surprise and/or unconventional interactions in order to promote a product or service.[1] It is a type of publicity.[2] The term was popularized by Jay Conrad Levinson's 1984 book Guerrilla marketing.

Guerrilla marketing uses multiple techniques and practices in order to establish direct contact with the customers.[3] One of the goals of this interaction is to cause an emotional reaction in the clients, and the ultimate goal of marketing is to get people to remember products or brands in a different way than they are accustomed to.

As traditional advertising media channels—such as print, radio, television, and direct mail[4]—lose popularity, marketers and advertisers have to find new strategies to get their commercial messages to the consumer.

Guerrilla marketing focuses on taking the consumer by surprise to make a big impression about the product or brand.[5] This in turn creates buzz about the product being marketed.

It is a way of advertising that increases consumers' engagement with the product or service, and is designed to create a memorable experience.

By creating a memorable experience, it also increases the likelihood that a consumer, or someone who interacted with the campaign, will tell their friends about the product.

Thus, via word of mouth, the product or service being advertised reaches more people than initially anticipated.

Guerrilla marketing is relatively inexpensive, and focuses more on reach rather than frequency.[citation needed] For guerrilla campaigns to be successful, companies don't need to spend large amounts, they just need to have imagination, energy and time.[6] Therefore, it has the potential to be effective for small businesses, especially if they are competing against bigger companies.

The message to consumers is often designed to be clear and concise.

This type of marketing also works on the unconscious mind,[citation needed] as purchasing decisions are often made by the unconscious mind.

To keep the product or service in the unconscious mind requires repetition, so if a buzz is created around a product, and it is shared amongst friends, it enables repetition.[7] The term "Guerrilla marketing" is traced to guerrilla warfare, which employs atypical tactics to achieve an objective.

In 1984, the term Guerrilla marketing was introduced by Leo Burnett's creative director Jay Conrad Levinson in his book Guerrilla marketing.[8][9][10] The term itself was from the inspiration of guerrilla warfare which was unconventional warfare using different techniques from usual and small tactic strategies used by armed civilians.

It involves high imagination and energy to execute a Guerrilla marketing campaign.

This kind of marketing is purely focusing on taking the consumer by surprise, creating a greater impression and eventually leading to buzz through word-of-mouth or social media platforms.

Guerrilla marketing is perfect for any small or medium size businesses to bring their product or services to its consumers without investing more money on advertisements.

This has also been used by large companies to show the difference from its competitors and to make use of social media campaigns.

Lately, individuals use unconventional methods of job hunting or to work more.[11] As a result, the concept of street marketing was born.

It has evolved from being only the application of activities on the streets, to be the development of innovative practices of promotion.[12] For example, one method used by many enterprises to promote their products or services on the streets is the distribution of fliers.

This activity does not focus on creativity, but on making publicity on the streets.

However, with the passage of time, companies have developed more unconventional techniques to catch the attention of the clients.[13] Ambient communication is advertising presented on elements of the environment, including nearly every available physical surface.[14] It is a compilation of intelligence, flexibility, and effective use of the atmosphere.

These kinds of ads can be found anywhere and everywhere from hand dryers in public bathrooms and petrol pumps through to bus hand straps and golf-hole cups.[15] Ambush marketing is a form of associative marketing, used by an organization to capitalize upon the awareness, attention, goodwill, and other benefits, generated by having an association with an event or property, without that organization having an official or direct connection to that event or property.[16] It is typically seen at major events where rivals of official sponsors attempt to build an association with the event and increase awareness for their brands, sometimes covertly.

For example, Nike during the 2012 London Olympics created 'find your Greatness' spots where they featured athletes from several locations called London (but without showing the real London or referring to the Olympic games) which was intended to build a strong association between London Olympics and Nike.[17] Stealth marketing is a deliberate act of entering, operating in, or exiting a market in a furtive, secretive or imperceptible manner, or an attempt to do so.[18] Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence.

Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth", "creating a buzz", "leveraging the media", "network marketing", But on the Internet, for better or worse, it's called "viral marketing".[19] Similarly, buzz marketing uses high-profile media to encourage the public to discuss the brand or product.[15] Buzz marketing works best when consumer's responses to a product or service and subsequent endorsements are genuine, without the company paying them.

Buzz generated from buzz marketing campaigns is referred to as "amplified WOM" (word-of-mouth), and "organic WOM" is when buzz occurs naturally by the consumer.[15] Grassroots campaigns aim to win customers over on an individual basis.

A successful grassroots campaign is not about the dissemination of the marketing message in the hope that possible consumers are paying attention, but rather highlights a personal connection between the consumer and the brand and builds a lasting relationship with the brand.[20] Astroturfing is among the most controversial Guerrilla marketing strategies, and has a high risk factor for the company marketing the product or service.[21] Astroturfing derives from artificial “turf”, often used in stadiums or tennis courts – also known as fake grass.

Hence, fake endorsements, testimonials and recommendations are all products of Astroturfing in the public relations sector.[21] Astroturfing involves generating an artificial hype around a particular product or company through a review or discussion on online blogs or forums by an individual who is paid to convey a positive view.

This can have a negative and detrimental effect on a company, should the consumer suspect that the review or opinion is not authentic, damaging the company's reputation or even worse, resulting in litigation.[21] Street marketing uses unconventional means of advertising or promoting products and brands in public areas.

The main goal is to encourage consumers to remember and recall the brand or product marketed.

As a division of Guerrilla marketing, street marketing is specific to all marketing activities carried out in streets and public areas such as parks, streets, events etc.

Street marketing also encompasses advertising outdoors, such as on shopping trolleys (shopping carts, in the US), public toilets, sides of cars or public transport, manhole covers, footpaths, rubbish bins, etc.[22] Street marketing isn't confined to fixed advertisements.

It is common practice for organisations to use brand ambassadors who distribute product samples or discount vouchers, and answer queries about the product while emphasizing the brand.

The brand ambassadors may be accompanied by a kiosk which contains the product samples or demonstration materials, or they may be wearing a "walking billboard".

The physical interaction with consumers has a greater influencing power than traditional passive advertising.[23] Street marketing is understood as mobilizing not only the space of the streets but also the imagination of the street: that of street culture and street art.[24] The Y-generation broadly consisting of young urbanites (15 – 30 years old), is often put forth as the most susceptible target for the campaigns due to its associations with the culture of the street.[25] According to Marcel Saucet and Bernard Cova,[13] street marketing can be used as a general term encompassing six principal types of activities: This activity is more traditional and is the most common form of street marketing employed by brands.

This consists of personalizing a high-traffic space using brand imagery.

The idea is to create a micro-universe in order to promote a new product or service.

The goal of such actions is to create a space in which the brand's message is communicated through human activity.

This form of mobile presentation is based on the development of means of transport: Taxi, bike, Segway, etc.

These activities involve the customization of street elements.

These activities take the form of spectacles, such as flash mobs or contests.

The idea is to promote a product, service or brand value through organization of a public event.

First, enterprises identify the public places where the campaign can be developed such as beaches, cultural events, close to schools, sporting events and recreation areas for children.[26] Next, companies have to develop a plan to get close to different media and the target market.[14] In order to attract attention, street marketing events not only involve unusual activities, but use technology as part of the events.

The purpose is to increase the value of the campaigns and get potential consumers' attention.[27] Besides, the plans that companies develop take into account that guerrilla or street marketing involves global communication and interaction not only with the customers or the media.[28] They are also developed to identify opportunities and collect enough information about products, markets and competitors.

For example, for business it is important that customers stay with them, instead of choosing the competitors’ offers.

They implement innovative strategies with which they will not lose position in the market, and they consider supplementation with other advertisement through other mediums, such as radio and television, when using street marketing.[29][full citation needed] There are various examples of strategies that are used in Guerrilla marketing.

One of them is to provide offers to increase sales.

In many cases, businesses do not only supply their products or services to be recognized, but they also offer other things for free.

Another instance is to present a fundraiser offer.

The point of this strategy is to help other organizations, such as schools, by offering them money.

Most companies implement this method not only to increase their sales, but to improve their reputation and image among the community.

Finally, there is a strategy called "team selling" that consists of conforming groups of people, the majority of them young, who go knocking the doors of different houses in a neighborhood.

They do this in order to help companies promoting and selling their products or services.[citation needed] When doing Guerrilla marketing or street marketing, organizations also consider focusing on the psychological approach.

For many companies, this implies if they are having success or not.

Street marketing focuses on some psychological aspects to know customers' behavior and preferences.

For example, certain psychological areas study how people's brains are divided: 45% of people are left-brained, 45% are right brained, and 10% are balanced.

Left-brained persons tend to be logical, right-brained ones tend to be emotional, and the rest combine the two.

Then, according to the product or service that enterprises provide, and also the kind of customer, businesses decides the way they are going to manage their street marketing campaigns.

Besides, almost all the enterprises base their street marketing campaigns on repeating the messages they spread among their customers.

Repetition is related to the unconscious part of the mind.

This is the one in charge of making decisions.

It lets people know what they are going to choose, as well as what they are going to buy.

Businesses follow the principle that establishes that, the more people paying attention to the campaign, the more possibilities that campaign has for being remembered.

When a company decides to do a Guerrilla marketing campaign which could be anything out of viral, ambient, ambush, street or stealth, the focus for them is to meet the objectives.

The main objectives for them are: Through the experience and the ephemeral feelings shared between the company and the target, advertisers and agencies generate a feeling of intimacy that resonates beyond the encounter.

This feeling of nearness becomes all the more lasting as the affected individuals relive this encounter on the internet through social media.[30] The Guerrilla marketing promotion strategy was first identified by Jay Conrad Levinson in his book Guerrilla marketing (1984).The book describes hundreds of "Guerrilla marketing weapons" in use at the time.

Guerrilla marketers need to be creative in devising unconventional methods of promotion to maintain the public's interest in a product or service.

Levinson writes that when implementing Guerrilla marketing tactics, smaller organizations and entrepreneurs are actually at an advantage.

Ultimately, however, guerrilla marketers must "deliver the goods." In The Guerrilla marketing Handbook, the authors write: "...in order to sell a product or a service, a company must establish a relationship with the customer.

It must build trust and support the customer's needs, and it must provide a product that delivers the promised benefits..."[31] The web is rife with examples of Guerrilla marketing, to the extent that many of us don't notice its presence - until a particularly successful campaign arises.

The desire for instant gratification of internet users provides an avenue for Guerrilla marketing by allowing businesses to combine wait marketing with guerrilla tactics.

Simple examples consist of using 'loading' pages or image alt texts to display an entertaining or informative message to users waiting to access the content they were trying to get to.

As users dislike waiting with no occupation on the web, it is essential, and easy, to capture their attention this way.

Other website methods include interesting web features such as engaging landing pages.

Many online marketing strategies also use social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn to begin campaigns, share-able features and event host events.

Other companies run competitions or discounts based on encouraging users to share or create content related to their product.

Viral videos are an incredibly popular form of Guerrilla marketing in which companies film entertaining or surprising videos that internet users are likely to share and enjoy, that subtly advertise their service or product.

Some companies such as Google even create interactive elements like the themed Google logo games to spark interest and engagement.

These dynamic Guerrilla marketing tactics can become news globally and give businesses considerable publicity.

There are various organizations who have implemented the guerrilla and street marketing strategies.

The majority of them are small companies, but there are also big companies that have involved in the guerrilla and street marketing environment.[32] Most of the examples of the strategies that both small and big enterprises have put into action include costumed persons, the distribution of tickets, people providing samples, among others.

As stated before, one Guerrilla marketing conventional method that is used by many businesses is to provide fliers.

The goal is to create awareness on the customers about what the enterprise is doing.

One example of this took place in Montpelier, Vermont, where the New England Culinary Institute (NECI) sent a group of students to a movie theatre to hand out 400 fliers.

Those fliers had coupons in which NECI was inviting people to go to its monthly Theme Dinners.

Another company, Boston's Kung-Fu Tai Chi Club, chose the option of disseminating fliers instead of placing its advertisements on the newspapers.

The purpose of the fliers was to promote the company's self-defence classes for women.

Other businesses apply the technique of sending disguised people to promote things on the streets.

For example, match.com organized a street marketing activity in the “Feria del Libro” (“Book Fair”) in Madrid.

It consisted of a man dressed like a prince who was walking among the crowd looking for his “real love”.

He had a glass slipper and even got to try the shoe on some people.

A woman behind him was giving bookmarks to the people which contained messages such as “Times have changed; the way to find love, too” or “You have been reading love stories all your life; experience yours on Match.com”.

Also, in Madrid and Barcelona, Nokia developed a campaign called “Avestruz” (“Ostrich”) to promote the 5500 and 5700 mobiles.

In the campaign, a group of real-size ostrich puppets tried to interact with young people in order to let them know these mobiles provide a high-quality MP3 playback.

The puppets were holding their own telephones and listening to the music.

When a young person appeared, the puppet tried to catch his/her attention to show him/her the quality of the mobile.

The reason why Nokia decided to use ostriches was that they are big animals, so people could easily look at them.[32] There are enterprises that disseminate passes or tickets to different events.

For example, Sony invests on joining promoters and tells them that they have to infiltrate in public meetings.

What they have to do is to distribute free tickets to concerts and other musical events sponsored by the company .

Another instance is the Spanish company Clickair (an extension of Iberia airlines), that developed a campaign in which a group of five people had to walk through Barcelona streets dressed as Euros.

The group was supplying approximately 3,000 tickets to promote different Clickair destinations.

The people who first sent a text message with the required information would get free tickets to go on a trip.

In the end, the company received a total of 3,390 messages.

Along with these examples, there are other street marketing techniques that are even more unusual.

Lee Jeans, a French company dedicated to the selling of jeans, promoted the opening of their new store in rue des Rosiers in Paris.

The method they applied consisted of distributing denims, as well as denim accessories, on the different streets of the neighborhood.

Furthermore, in Italy, the members of the company Nintendo put into action a campaign in which they used post-it's to promote the Wii console.

They pasted several post-it with the shapes of some characters from different video games.

Those images were placed as if they were billboards on the streets.

“Wii not forget”, the name of the campaign, and a brief explanation of it, were the words written on the post-its.

In some cases, some street marketing may incite the ire of local authorities; such was the case in Houston, Texas, when BMW's ad agency (Street Factory Media in Minneapolis)attached a replication, made from Styrofoam, of a Mini-Cooper to the side of a downtown building.[33] For the cost of a small city-issued fine, the company received front page advertising on the Houston Chronicle.

Sony Ericsson used an undercover campaign in 2002 when they hired 60 actors in ten major cities and had them accost strangers and ask them: "Would you mind taking my picture?" The actor then handed the target a brand new picture phone while talking about how cool the new device was.

"And thus an act of civility was converted into a branding event.[34] Guerrilla marketing is not just exclusive to small companies.

For big companies it is a high risk, high reward strategy.

When successful it can capture even more market share, but if it fails it can damage the company’s brand image.

One successful Guerrilla marketing campaign is the Coca-Cola ‘Happiness Machine”.

In January 2010, Coca-Cola, with the help of Definition 6, filmed a reaction video of a Coke vending machine dispensing ‘doses’ of happiness to unsuspecting students in St.

John's University.

A seemingly normal vending machine surprised students by dispensing items that were more than they bargained for.

The students received goodies ranging from extra coke, pizza, flowers, to even a twelve-foot hero sub.

“Coke’s goal to inspire consumers through small, surprise moments of happiness” said Paul Iannacchino Jr., Creative Director, Definition 6.

With a budget of only $60,000, the video generated 500,000 views in the first week.

It now has over 7 million views to date.

The campaign was so popular that a 30-second edit of the footage was featured during American Idol's season finale.[which?] The Coca-Cola “Happiness Machine” also went on to receive the CLIO's prestigious Gold Interactive Award at the 51st annual awards dinner held in New York City.

After the campaign's success, Coca-Cola decided to continue with the ‘Happiness’ theme and has released similar videos since then.[35] Because of the nature of Guerrilla marketing, the message and objective must be clearly defined in order to avoid being misunderstood.

Misinterpretation by the targeted audience of the message intended to be promoted is a risk.

Word-of-mouth advertising does not always stay focused enough to present the intended message.

The rumor-like spread of word-of-mouth marketing is uncontrollable once released, and can result in a misrepresentation of the message or confusion about a brand.

Another risk involves wrongly timed (or wrongly placed) events, which may actually be perceived to be against the interests of the consumer.

For instance, in an ill-conceived promotion which took place on January 31, 2007, several magnetic circuit boards—each with an flashing LED cartoon figure—were attached to metal surfaces in and around Boston, Massachusetts to promote the animated series, Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

The circuit boards were mistakenly taken for explosive devices.

Several subway stations; bridges; and a portion of Interstate 93 were closed as police examined, removed, and (in some cases) destroyed the devices.[36] Some Guerrilla marketing may incite the ire of local authorities.

Then risks are assessed and may still be considered worthwhile.

Such was the case in Houston, Texas, when BMW Auto's ad agency, Street Factory Media, attached a replica of a Mini-Cooper (made of Styrofoam), to the side of a downtown building in January 2013.[37] For the small cost of a city-issued fine, the company received front page advertising in the Houston Chronicle.

Another problem presents itself if marketers fail to properly execute an undercover campaign.

They run considerable risk of backlash.

An example of this can be found in Sony Entertainment's on-line debacle with Zipatoni.

The company attempted to promote Zipatoni through a stealth marketing campaign, which was quickly detected by the internet community, resulting in Sony immediately experiencing a backlash from video game enthusiasts.[38] Street art is thus a subversive activity, hijacking public places and inventing rather paradoxical forms of expression that reformulate ways of communicating,[24] all of which inform street marketing practices.

Thus marketing in the street, given that it is inspired by the work of such artists, brings with it constraints and statutory risks for which agencies and advertisers are generally not prepared.[39] The main problem is that, by definition, street mobilization campaigns require the use of public space, and that use must be authorized by government authorities to be legal.

This is just as true for simple operations like distributing flyers as it is for mobilizing products or people and, of course, for a disguised campaign.[40] The authorizations necessary to carry out such a campaign are often very difficult to obtain within the time allotted for bringing the plan to fruition.

Numerous potential operations have failed to obtain authorization for safety reasons, and in certain urban areas it is even expressly forbidden to undertake a Guerrilla marketing campaign.

In such cases, many agencies and advertisers will simply go ahead with the operation, meaning that they choose to act without authorization.[32] How is such a choice reached, and on what bases? How is it justified? What impact does this choice have on the performance and costs of the operation? What transformations does this choice bring to the agency–advertiser relationship? These are the main questions posed in the development of street marketing operations today.[32] In a declining economy, Guerrilla marketing is an increasing solution to giving companies the comparative edge over others.

During times where companies are downsizing and cutting costs, companies look to Guerrilla marketing as a cheaper strategy than conventional marketing.

Instead of investing money in the marketing process, guerrillas invest energy, time and creativity.[41] If done successfully, companies will be able to reach conventional goals for profits and growth with a smaller marketing budget.

One such example is the Blair Witch Project.

A group of film students filmed an amateur horror movie.

By setting up an internet campaign devoted to spreading rumors about the fictitious 'Blair Witch', it created a lot of interest for the film.

With a budget of $50,000, the movie grossed $250 million worldwide.

According to Jay Levinson, Guerrilla marketing emphasizes strongly on customer follow-up rather than ignoring customers after their purchase.

Focusing on customer follow-up is a cheaper strategy because the cost of selling to a new customer is six times higher than selling to an existing customer.

During a tough economy, it is important to focus on building relationships rather than sales, and aiming at individuals instead of groups.

This promotes repeat sales, referrals and increased size of purchase.

The use of telephone as a follow-up tool is helpful in improving customer relationships.

Email is also another inexpensive tool for maintaining relationships.

Emails can be used to direct people to the company website.

The site can be then used to provide information and to advance sales.[42] Honesty is an important attribute when marketing to customers during tough times.

When companies show that they are fully aware of the economic situation and why they have priced their products accordingly, this earns the customer's respect.

Explaining the current situation and the risks and the steps the company is taking to the customers will give the customers assurance and also maintains their trust.

One example is the Las Vegas tourism board.

During the 2008 recession, Las Vegas was one of the cities hit the hardest.

They released an ad campaign showing people they were fully aware of the recession, yet, in a dramatic way, showing 'that regular people are coming here and having a blast'.

This piqued a lot of interest which led to an increase of tourism in Las Vegas during the recession.[43]

Content marketing

Content marketing is a form of marketing focused on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience online.[1] It is often used by businesses in order to: Content marketing attracts prospects and transforms prospects into customers by creating and sharing valuable free content.

Content marketing helps companies create sustainable brand loyalty, provides valuable information to consumers, and creates a willingness to purchase products from the company in the future.

This relatively new form of marketing does not involve direct sales.

Instead, it builds trust and rapport with the audience.[2] Unlike other forms of online marketing, Content marketing relies on anticipating and meeting an existing customer need for information, as opposed to creating demand for a new need.

As James O'Brien of Contently wrote on Mashable, "The idea central to Content marketing is that a brand must give something valuable to get something valuable in return.

Instead of the commercial, be the show.

Instead of the banner ad, be the feature story."[3] Content marketing requires continuous delivery of large amounts of content, preferably within a Content marketing strategy.[4] When businesses pursue Content marketing, the main focus should be the needs of the prospect or customer.

Once a business has identified the customer's need, information can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, video, white papers, e-books, infographics, email newsletters, case studies, podcasts, how-to guides, question and answer articles, photos, blogs, etc.[5] Most of these formats belong to the digital channel.

Digital Content marketing is a management process that uses electronic channels to identify, forecast, and satisfy the content requirements of a particular audience.

It must be consistently updated and added to in order to influence the behavior of customers.

Traditional marketers have long used content to disseminate information about a brand and build a brand's reputation.

Taking advantage of technological advances in transportation and communication, business owners started to apply Content marketing techniques in the late 19th century.

They also attempted to build connections with their customers.

For example: During the golden age of TV, between the 1940s and 1950s, advertising took over the media.

Companies focused on sales rather than connecting with the public.

There were few ventures into Content marketing and not many prominent campaigns.

During the baby boom era, Kellogg’s began selling sugary cereal to children.

With this change in business model came sociable animal mascots, lively animated commercials and the back of the cereal box as a form of targeted Content marketing.

Infographics were born in this era.

This represented a new approach to make a brand memorable with the audience.

In the 1990s, everything changed for marketers.

The arrival of computers and the Internet made websites and blogs flourish, and corporations found Content marketing opportunities through email.

E-commerce adaptations and digital distribution became the foundation of marketing strategy.

Internet also helped Content marketing become a mainstream form of marketing.

Traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, radio and TV started to lose their power in the marketplace.

Companies started to promote and sell their products digitally.[10] The phrase "Content marketing" was used as early as 1996,[11] when John F.

Oppedahl led a roundtable for journalists at the American Society for Newspaper Editors.

By the late 2000s, when social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube were born, online Content marketing was accessible, shareable and on-demand anytime worldwide.

By 2014, Forbes Magazine's website had written about the seven most popular ways companies use Content marketing.[14] In it, the columnist points out that by 2013, use of Content marketing had jumped across corporations from 60% a year or so before, to 93%[15] as part of their overall marketing strategy.

Despite the fact that 70% of organizations are creating more content, only 21% of marketers think they are successful at tracking return on investment.

Today, Content marketing has become a powerful model for marketers.

Storytelling is part of it, and they must convey the companies’ messages or goal to their desired audience without pushing them to just buy the product or service.

The rise of Content marketing has turned many traditional businesses into media publishing companies.[16] For example: The rise of Content marketing has also accelerated the growth of online platforms, such as YouTube, Yelp, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest, and more.

For example: Businesses actively curate their content on these platforms with hopes to expand their reach to new audiences.

Part of transitioning to a media publishing mindset requires a change in structure and process to create content at the speed of culture.

The old model you see on shows like Mad Men is too slow and cumbersome.

By the time an idea becomes an ad, it is out of date.

Marketers are increasingly co-locating insights, creative, production, legal approval, and placement to increase interaction and speed in producing and distributing content.

Marketing content production is transforming from an advertising agency model to a newsroom model.[23] Metrics to determine the success of Content marketing are often tied to the original goals of the campaign.

For example, for each of these goals, a content marketer may measure the different engagement and conversion metrics: Businesses focused on expanding their reach to more customers will want to pay attention to the increase in the volume of visitors, as well as the quality of those interactions.

Traditional measures of volume include the number of visitors to a page and number of emails collected, while time spent on page and click-through to other pages/ photos are good indicators for engagement.

Businesses want to measure the impact that their messages have on consumers.

Brand health refers to the positive or negative feedback that a company gets.

It also measures how important a brand is for consumers.

With this companies want to find out if brand reputation influences their customers to make a purchase.[24] Measures in this part comprise For businesses hoping to reach not only more - but also new - types of customers online, they should pay attention to the demographics of new visitors, as evidenced by cookies that can be installed, different sources of traffic, different online behaviors, and/or different buying habits of online visitors.

Businesses focused on increasing sales through Content marketing should look at traditional e-commerce metrics including click-through-rate from a product-page to check-out and completion rates at the check-out.

Altogether, these form a conversion funnel.

Moreover, to better understand customers' buying habits, they should look at other engagement metrics like time spent per page, number of product-page visits per user, and re-engagement.

Refers to companies that want to analyze whether their social media campaigns are generating commentary among consumers.

This helps them to come up with ways to improve their product and service.

This involves "high level of brand engagement and builds brand loyalty".[26] Examples: Digital Content marketing, which is a management process, uses digital products through different electronic channels to identify, forecast and satisfy the necessity of the customers.[27] It must be consistently maintained to preserve or change the behavior of customers.[citation needed] Examples: The supply chain of digital Content marketing mainly consists of commercial stakeholders and end-user stakeholders which represent content providers and distributors and customers separately.[34] In this process, distributors manage the interface between the publisher and the consumer, then distributors could identify the content that consumers need through external channels and implement marketing strategies.

For instance, Library and document supply agencies as intermediaries can deliver the digital content of e-books, and e-journal articles to the users according to their search results through the electronic channels.

Another example is when consumers pay for the acquisition of some MP3 downloads, search engines can be used to identify different music providers and smart agents can be used by consumers to search for multiple music provider sites.

In a word, the digital Content marketing process needs to be conducted at the business level and service experience level because when consumers are accessing digital content, their own experience depends on the complex network of relationships in the Content marketing channels such as websites and videos.

The consumers interact directly with distributors in the big supply chain through various digital products which have an important role in meeting the requirements of the consumers.

The design and user experience of these channels directly decides the success of digital Content marketing.[27] Electronic services refer to interactive network services.[35] In the electronic service, the interaction between the customer and the organizations mainly through the network technology, such as using E-mail, telephone, online chat windows for communication.

Electronic services are different from traditional services and they are not affected by distance restrictions and opening hours.

Digital Content marketing through electronic service is usually served together with other channels to achieve marketing purposes including face-to-face, postal, and other remote services.

Information companies provide different messages and documents to customers who use multiple search engines on different sites and set up access rights for business groups.

These are some channels of digital Content marketing.[27]

Search engine marketing

Search engine marketing (SEM) is a form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) primarily through paid advertising.[1] SEM may incorporate search engine optimization (SEO), which adjusts or rewrites website content and site architecture to achieve a higher ranking in search engine results pages to enhance pay per click (PPC) listings.[2] In 2007, U.S.

advertisers spent US $24.6 billion on Search engine marketing.[3] In Q2 2015, Google (73.7%) and the Yahoo/Bing (26.3%) partnership accounted for almost 100% of U.S.

search engine spend.[4] As of 2006, SEM was growing much faster than traditional advertising and even other channels of online marketing.[5] Managing search campaigns is either done directly with the SEM vendor or through an SEM tool provider.

It may also be self-serve or through an advertising agency.

As of October 2016, Google leads the global search engine market with a market share of 89.3%.

Bing comes second with a market share of 4.36%, Yahoo comes third with a market share of 3.3%, and Chinese search engine Baidu is fourth globally with a share of about 0.68%.[6] As the number of sites on the Web increased in the mid-to-late 1990s, search engines started appearing to help people find information quickly.

Search engines developed business models to finance their services, such as pay per click programs offered by Open Text[7] in 1996 and then Goto.com[8] in 1998.

Goto.com later changed its name[9] to Overture in 2001, was purchased by Yahoo! in 2003, and now offers paid search opportunities for advertisers through Yahoo! Search Marketing.

Google also began to offer advertisements on search results pages in 2000 through the Google AdWords program.

By 2007, pay-per-click programs proved to be primary moneymakers[10] for search engines.

In a market dominated by Google, in 2009 Yahoo! and Microsoft announced the intention to forge an alliance.

The Yahoo! & Microsoft Search Alliance eventually received approval from regulators in the US and Europe in February 2010.[11] Search engine optimization consultants expanded their offerings to help businesses learn about and use the advertising opportunities offered by search engines, and new agencies focusing primarily upon marketing and advertising through search engines emerged.

The term "Search engine marketing" was popularized by Danny Sullivan in 2001[12] to cover the spectrum of activities involved in performing SEO, managing paid listings at the search engines, submitting sites to directories, and developing online marketing strategies for businesses, organizations, and individuals.

Search engine marketing uses at least five methods and metrics to optimize websites.[citation needed] Search engine marketing is a way to create and edit a website so that search engines rank it higher than other pages.

It should be also focused on keyword marketing or pay-per-click advertising (PPC).

The technology enables advertisers to bid on specific keywords or phrases and ensures ads appear with the results of search engines.

With the development of this system, the price is growing under a high level of competition.

Many advertisers prefer to expand their activities, including increasing search engines and adding more keywords.

The more advertisers are willing to pay for clicks, the higher the ranking for advertising, which leads to higher traffic.[15] PPC comes at a cost.

The higher position is likely to cost $5 for a given keyword, and $4.50 for a third location.

A third advertiser earns 10% less than the top advertiser while reducing traffic by 50%.[15] Investors must consider their return on investment when engaging in PPC campaigns.

Buying traffic via PPC will deliver a positive ROI when the total cost-per-click for a single conversion remains below the profit margin.

That way the amount of money spent to generate revenue is below the actual revenue generated.

There are many reasons explaining why advertisers choose the SEM strategy.

First, creating a SEM account is easy and can build traffic quickly based on the degree of competition.

The shopper who uses the search engine to find information tends to trust and focus on the links showed in the results pages.

However, a large number of online sellers do not buy search engine optimization to obtain higher ranking lists of search results but prefer paid links.

A growing number of online publishers are allowing search engines such as Google to crawl content on their pages and place relevant ads on it.[16] From an online seller's point of view, this is an extension of the payment settlement and an additional incentive to invest in paid advertising projects.

Therefore, it is virtually impossible for advertisers with limited budgets to maintain the highest rankings in the increasingly competitive search market.

Google's Search engine marketing is one of the western world's marketing leaders, while its Search engine marketing is its biggest source of profit.[17] Google's search engine providers are clearly ahead of the Yahoo and Bing network.

The display of unknown search results is free, while advertisers are willing to pay for each click of the ad in the sponsored search results.

Paid inclusion involves a search engine company charging fees for the inclusion of a website in their results pages.

Also known as sponsored listings, paid inclusion products are provided by most search engine companies either in the main results area or as a separately identified advertising area.

The fee structure is both a filter against superfluous submissions and a revenue generator.

Typically, the fee covers an annual subscription for one webpage, which will automatically be catalogued on a regular basis.

However, some companies are experimenting with non-subscription based fee structures where purchased listings are displayed permanently.

A per-click fee may also apply.

Each search engine is different.

Some sites allow only paid inclusion, although these have had little success.

More frequently, many search engines, like Yahoo!,[18] mix paid inclusion (per-page and per-click fee) with results from web crawling.

Others, like Google (and as of 2006, Ask.com[19][20]), do not let webmasters pay to be in their search engine listing (advertisements are shown separately and labeled as such).

Some detractors of paid inclusion allege that it causes searches to return results based more on the economic standing of the interests of a web site, and less on the relevancy of that site to end-users.

Often the line between pay per click advertising and paid inclusion is debatable.

Some have lobbied for any paid listings to be labeled as an advertisement, while defenders insist they are not actually ads since the webmasters do not control the content of the listing, its ranking, or even whether it is shown to any users.

Another advantage of paid inclusion is that it allows site owners to specify particular schedules for crawling pages.

In the general case, one has no control as to when their page will be crawled or added to a search engine index.

Paid inclusion proves to be particularly useful for cases where pages are dynamically generated and frequently modified.

Paid inclusion is a Search engine marketing method in itself, but also a tool of search engine optimization since experts and firms can test out different approaches to improving ranking and see the results often within a couple of days, instead of waiting weeks or months.

Knowledge gained this way can be used to optimize other web pages, without paying the search engine company.

SEM is the wider discipline that incorporates SEO.

SEM includes both paid search results (using tools like Google Adwords or Bing Ads, formerly known as Microsoft adCenter) and organic search results (SEO).

SEM uses paid advertising with AdWords or Bing Ads, pay per click (particularly beneficial for local providers as it enables potential consumers to contact a company directly with one click), article submissions, advertising and making sure SEO has been done.

A keyword analysis is performed for both SEO and SEM, but not necessarily at the same time.

SEM and SEO both need to be monitored and updated frequently to reflect evolving best practices.

In some contexts, the term SEM is used exclusively to mean pay per click advertising,[2] particularly in the commercial advertising and marketing communities which have a vested interest in this narrow definition.

Such usage excludes the wider search marketing community that is engaged in other forms of SEM such as search engine optimization and search retargeting.

Creating the link between SEO and PPC represents an integral part of the SEM concept.

Sometimes, especially when separate teams work on SEO and PPC and the efforts are not synced, positive results of aligning their strategies can be lost.

The aim of both SEO and PPC is maximizing the visibility in search and thus, their actions to achieve it should be centrally coordinated.

Both teams can benefit from setting shared goals and combined metrics, evaluating data together to determine future strategy or discuss which of the tools works better to get the traffic for selected keywords in the national and local search results.

Thanks to this, the search visibility can be increased along with optimizing both conversions and costs.[21] Another part of SEM is social media marketing (SMM).

SMM is a type of marketing that involves exploiting social media to influence consumers that one company’s products and/or services are valuable.[22] Some of the latest theoretical advances include Search engine marketing management (SEMM).

SEMM relates to activities including SEO but focuses on return on investment (ROI) management instead of relevant traffic building (as is the case of mainstream SEO).

SEMM also integrates organic SEO, trying to achieve top ranking without using paid means to achieve it, and pay per click SEO.

For example, some of the attention is placed on the web page layout design and how content and information is displayed to the website visitor.

SEO & SEM are two pillars of one marketing job and they both run side by side to produce much better results than focusing on only one pillar.

Paid search advertising has not been without controversy and the issue of how search engines present advertising on their search result pages has been the target of a series of studies and reports[23][24][25] by Consumer Reports WebWatch.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also issued a letter[26] in 2002 about the importance of disclosure of paid advertising on search engines, in response to a complaint from Commercial Alert, a consumer advocacy group with ties to Ralph Nader.

Another ethical controversy associated with search marketing has been the issue of trademark infringement.

The debate as to whether third parties should have the right to bid on their competitors' brand names has been underway for years.

In 2009 Google changed their policy, which formerly prohibited these tactics, allowing 3rd parties to bid on branded terms as long as their landing page in fact provides information on the trademarked term.[27] Though the policy has been changed this continues to be a source of heated debate.[28] On April 24, 2012, many started to see that Google has started to penalize companies that are buying links for the purpose of passing off the rank.

The Google Update was called Penguin.

Since then, there have been several different Penguin/Panda updates rolled out by Google.

SEM has, however, nothing to do with link buying and focuses on organic SEO and PPC management.

As of October 20, 2014, Google had released three official revisions of their Penguin Update.

In 2013, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals held in Lens.com, Inc.

v.

1-800 Contacts, Inc.

that online contact lens seller Lens.com did not commit trademark infringement when it purchased search advertisements using competitor 1-800 Contacts' federally registered 1800 CONTACTS trademark as a keyword.

In August 2016, the Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against 1-800 Contacts alleging, among other things, that its trademark enforcement practices in the Search engine marketing space have unreasonably restrained competition in violation of the FTC Act.

1-800 Contacts has denied all wrongdoing and appeared before an FTC administrative law judge in April 2017.[29] AdWords is recognized as a web-based advertising utensil since it adopts keywords that can deliver adverts explicitly to web users looking for information in respect to a certain product or service.

It is flexible and provides customizable options like Ad Extensions, access to non-search sites, leveraging the display network to help increase brand awareness.

The project hinges on cost per click (CPC) pricing where the maximum cost per day for the campaign can be chosen, thus the payment of the service only applies if the advert has been clicked.

SEM companies have embarked on AdWords projects as a way to publicize their SEM and SEO services.

One of the most successful approaches to the strategy of this project was to focus on making sure that PPC advertising funds were prudently invested.

Moreover, SEM companies have described AdWords as a practical tool for increasing a consumer’s investment earnings on Internet advertising.

The use of conversion tracking and Google Analytics tools was deemed to be practical for presenting to clients the performance of their canvas from click to conversion.

AdWords project has enabled SEM companies to train their clients on the utensil and delivers better performance to the canvass.

The assistance of AdWord canvass could contribute to the growth of web traffic for a number of its consumer’s websites, by as much as 250% in only nine months.[30] Another way Search engine marketing is managed is by contextual advertising.

Here marketers place ads on other sites or portals that carry information relevant to their products so that the ads jump into the circle of vision of browsers who are seeking information from those sites.

A successful SEM plan is the approach to capture the relationships amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines.

Search engines were not important to some industries in the past, but over the past years the use of search engines for accessing information has become vital to increase business opportunities.[31] The use of SEM strategic tools for businesses such as tourism can attract potential consumers to view their products, but it could also pose various challenges.[32] These challenges could be the competition that companies face amongst their industry and other sources of information that could draw the attention of online consumers.[31] To assist the combat of challenges, the main objective for businesses applying SEM is to improve and maintain their ranking as high as possible on SERPs so that they can gain visibility.

Therefore, search engines are adjusting and developing algorithms and the shifting criteria by which web pages are ranked sequentially to combat against search engine misuse and spamming, and to supply the most relevant information to searchers.[31] This could enhance the relationship amongst information searchers, businesses, and search engines by understanding the strategies of marketing to attract business.

Marketing

Marketing is the study and management of exchange relationships.[1][2] It is the business process of identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers' needs and wants.

Because Marketing is used to attract customers, it is one of the primary components of business management and commerce.[3] Marketers can direct product to other businesses (B2B Marketing) or directly to consumers (B2C Marketing).[4] Regardless of who is being marketed to, several factors, including the perspective the marketers will use.

These market orientations determine how marketers will approach the planning stage of Marketing.[5] This leads into the Marketing mix, which outlines the specifics of the product and how it will be sold.[6][7] This can in turn be affected by the environment surrounding the product [8], the results of Marketing research and market research[9], and the characteristics of the product's target market.[10] Once these factors are determined, marketers must then decide what methods will be used to market the product.[4] This decision is based on the factors analyzed in the planning stage as well as where the product is in the product life cycle.[4] Marketing is defined by the American Marketing Association as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large".[11] The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market with goods for sale.

From a sales process engineering perspective, Marketing is "a set of processes that are interconnected and interdependent with other functions of a business aimed at achieving customer interest and satisfaction".[12] Philip Kotler defined Marketing as "Satisfying needs and wants through an exchange process".[13] and a decade later defines it as “a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want and need through creating, offering and exchanging products of value with others.”[13] The Chartered Institute of Marketing defines Marketing as "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably".[14] A similar concept is the value-based Marketing which states the role of Marketing to contribute to increasing shareholder value.[15] In this context, Marketing can be defined as "the management process that seeks to maximise returns to shareholders by developing relationships with valued customers and creating a competitive advantage".[15] In the past, Marketing practice tended to be seen as a creative industry, which included advertising, distribution and selling.

However, because the academic study of Marketing makes extensive use of social sciences, psychology, sociology, mathematics, economics, anthropology and neuroscience, the profession is now widely recognized as a science,[16] allowing numerous universities to offer Master-of-Science (MSc) programs.[17] The process of Marketing is that of bringing a product to market, which includes these steps: broad market research; market targeting and market segmentation; determining distribution, pricing and promotion strategies; developing a communications strategy; budgeting; and visioning long-term market development goals.[18] Many parts of the Marketing process (e.g.

product design, art director, brand management, advertising, inbound Marketing, copywriting etc.) involve use of the creative arts.[citation needed][19] The 'Marketing concept' proposes that to complete its organizational objectives, an organization should anticipate the needs and wants of potential consumers and satisfy them more effectively than its competitors.

This concept originated from Adam Smith's book The Wealth of Nations but would not become widely used until nearly 200 years later.[20] Marketing and Marketing Concepts are directly related.

Given the centrality of customer needs, and wants in Marketing, a rich understanding of these concepts is essential:[21] Marketing research, conducted for the purpose of new product development or product improvement, is often concerned with identifying the consumer's unmet needs.[22] Customer needs are central to market segmentation which is concerned with dividing markets into distinct groups of buyers on the basis of "distinct needs, characteristics, or behaviors who might require separate products or Marketing mixes."[23] Needs-based segmentation (also known as benefit segmentation) "places the customers' desires at the forefront of how a company designs and markets products or services."[24] Although needs-based segmentation is difficult to do in practice, it has been proved to be one of the most effective ways to segment a market.[25][22] In addition, a great deal of advertising and promotion is designed to show how a given product's benefits meet the customer's needs, wants or expectations in a unique way.[26] The two major segments of Marketing are business-to-business (B2B) Marketing and business-to-consumer (B2C) Marketing.

[4] B2B (business-to-business) Marketing refers to any Marketing strategy or content that is geared towards a business or organization.

Any company that sells products or services to other businesses or organizations (vs.

consumers) typically uses B2B Marketing strategies.

Examples of products sold through B2B Marketing include: The four major categories of B2B product purchasers are: Business-to-consumer Marketing, or B2C Marketing, refers to the tactics and strategies in which a company promotes its products and services to individual people.

Traditionally, this could refer to individuals shopping for personal products in a broad sense.

More recently the term B2C refers to the online selling of consumer products.[27] Consumer-to-business Marketing or C2B Marketing is a business model where the end consumers create products and services which are consumed by businesses and organizations.

It is diametrically opposed to the popular concept of B2C or Business- to- Consumer where the companies make goods and services available to the end consumers.

Customer to customer Marketing or C2C Marketing represents a market environment where one customer purchases goods from another customer using a third-party business or platform to facilitate the transaction.

C2C companies are a new type of model that has emerged with e-commerce technology and the sharing economy.[28] The different goals of B2B and B2C Marketing lead to differences in the B2B and B2C markets.

The main differences in these markets are demand, purchasing volume, number of customers, customer concentration, distribution, buying nature, buying influences, negotiations, reciprocity, leasing and promotional methods.[4] A Marketing orientation has been defined as a "philosophy of business management."[5] or "a corporate state of mind"[29] or as an "organisation[al] culture"[30] Although scholars continue to debate the precise nature of specific orientations that inform Marketing practice, the most commonly cited orientations are as follows:[31] A firm employing a product orientation is mainly concerned with the quality of its product.

A product orientation is based on the assumption that all things being equal, consumers will purchase products of superior quality.

The approach is most effective when the firm has deep insights into customer needs and desires as derived from research or intuition and understands consumer's quality expectations and price consumers are willing to pay.

Although the product orientation has largely been supplanted by the Marketing orientation, firms practicing a product orientation can still be found in haute couture and arts Marketing.[32][33] A sales orientation focuses on the selling/promotion of the firm's existing products, rather than developing new products to satisfy unmet needs or wants.

This orientation seeks to attain the highest possible sales through promotion and direct sales techniques.[34] The sales orientation "is typically practiced with unsought goods."[35] One study found that industrial companies are more likely to hold a sales orientation than consumer goods companies.[36] The approach may also suit scenarios in which a firm holds dead stock, or otherwise sells a product that is in high demand, with little likelihood of changes in consumer tastes diminishing demand.

A 2011 meta analyses[37] found that the factors with the greatest impact on sales performance are a salesperson's sales related knowledge (knowledge of market segments, sales presentation skills, conflict resolution, and products), degree of adaptiveness (changing behavior based on the aforementioned knowledge), role clarity (salesperson's role is expressly to sell), cognitive aptitude (intelligence) and work engagement (motivation and interest in a sales role).

A firm focusing on a production orientation specializes in producing as much as possible of a given product or service in order to achieve economies of scale or economies of scope.

A production orientation may be deployed when a high demand for a product or service exists, coupled with certainty that consumer tastes and preferences remain relatively constant (similar to the sales orientation).

The so-called production era is thought to have dominated Marketing practice from the 1860s to the 1930s, but other theorists argue that evidence of the production orientation can still be found in some companies or industries.

Specifically, Kotler and Armstrong note that the production philosophy is "one of the oldest philosophies that guides sellers...

[and] is still useful in some situations."[38] The Marketing orientation is the most common orientation used in contemporary Marketing.

It is a customer-centric approach that involves a firm basing its Marketing program around products that suit new consumer tastes.

Firms adopting a Marketing orientation typically engage in extensive market research to gauge consumer desires, use R&D (Research & Development) to develop a product attuned to the revealed information, and then utilize promotion techniques to ensure consumers are aware of the product's existence and the benefits it can deliver.[39] Scales designed to measure a firm's overall market orientation have been developed and found to be robust in a variety of contexts.[40] The Marketing orientation has three prime facets, which are: A number of scholars and practitioners have argued that marketers have a greater social responsibility than simply satisfying customers and providing them with superior value.

Marketing organizations that have embraced the societal Marketing concept typically identify key stakeholder groups such as employees, customers, and local communities.

Companies that adopt a societal Marketing perspective typically practice triple bottom line reporting whereby they publish social impact and environmental impact reports alongside financial performance reports.

Sustainable Marketing or green Marketing is an extension of societal Marketing.[41] A Marketing mix is a foundational tool used to guide decision making in Marketing.

The Marketing mix represents the basic tools that marketers can use to bring their products or services to the market.

They are the foundation of managerial Marketing and the Marketing plan typically devotes a section to the Marketing mix.

The traditional Marketing mix refers to four broad levels of Marketing decision, namely: product, price, promotion, and place.[6][42] One of the limitations of the 4Ps approach is its emphasis of an inside out-view.

[45] An inside-out approach is the traditional planning approach where the organisation identifies its desired goals and objectives, which are often based around what has always been done.

Marketing's task then becomes one of "selling" the organization's products and messages to the "outside" or external stakeholders.[43] In contrast, an outside-in approach first seeks to understand the needs and wants of the consumer.[46] From a model-building perspective, the 4 Ps has attracted a number of criticisms.

Well-designed models should exhibit clearly defined categories that are mutually exclusive, with no overlap.

Yet, the 4 Ps model has extensive overlapping problems.

Several authors stress the hybrid nature of the fourth P, mentioning the presence of two important dimensions, "communication" (general and informative communications such as public relations and corporate communications) and "promotion" (persuasive communications such as advertising and direct selling).

Certain Marketing activities, such as personal selling, may be classified as either promotion or as part of the place (i.e., distribution) element.[47] Some pricing tactics, such as promotional pricing, can be classified as price variables or promotional variables and, therefore, also exhibit some overlap.

Other important criticisms include that the Marketing mix lacks a strategic framework and is, therefore, unfit to be a planning instrument, particularly when uncontrollable, external elements are an important aspect of the Marketing environment.[48] To overcome the deficiencies of the 4P model, some authors have suggested extensions or modifications to the original model.

Extensions of the four P's are often included in cases such as services Marketing where unique characteristics (i.e.

intangibility, perishability, heterogeneity and the inseparability of production and consumption) warrant additional consideration factors.

Other extensions have been found necessary for retail Marketing, industrial Marketing, and internet Marketing include "people", "process", and "physical evidence" and are often applied in the case of services Marketing[49] Other extensions have been found necessary in retail Marketing, industrial Marketing and internet Marketing.

In response to environmental and technological changes in Marketing, as well as criticisms towards the 4Ps approach, the 4Cs has emerged as a modern Marketing mix model.

Consumer (or Client) The consumer refers to the person or group that will acquire the product.

This aspect of the model focuses on fulfilling the wants or needs of the consumer.

[7] Cost Cost refers to what is exchanged in return for the product.

Cost mainly consists of the monetary value of the product.

Cost also refers to anything else the consumer must sacrifice to attain the product, such as time or money spent on transportation to acquire the product.

[7] Convenience Like "Place" in the 4Ps model, convenience refers to where the product will be sold.

This, however, not only refers to physical stores but also whether the product is available in person or online.

The convenience aspect emphasizes making it as easy as possible for the consumer to attain the product, thus making them more likely to do so.

[7] Communication Like "Promotion" in the 4Ps model, communication refers to how consumers find out about a product.

Unlike, promotion, communication not only refers to the one-way communication of advertising, but also the two-way communication available through social media.

[7] The term "Marketing environment" relates to all of the factors (whether internal, external, direct or indirect) that affect a firm's Marketing decision-making/planning.

A firm's Marketing environment consists of three main areas, which are: A firm's Marketing macro-environment consists of a variety of external factors that manifest on a large (or macro) scale.

These include factors that are: A common method of assessing a firm's macro-environment is via a PESTLE (Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, Ecological) analysis.

Within a PESTLE analysis, a firm would analyze national political issues, culture and climate, key macroeconomic conditions, health and indicators (such as economic growth, inflation, unemployment, etc.), social trends/attitudes, and the nature of technology's impact on its society and the business processes within the society.

[8] A firm's micro-environment comprises factors pertinent to the firm itself, or stakeholders closely connected with the firm or company.

A firm's micro-environment typically spans: In contrast to the macro-environment, an organization holds a greater (though not complete) degree of control over these factors.[8] A firms internal environment consists of factors inside of the actual company.

These are factors controlled by the firm and they affect the relationship that a firm has with its customers.

These include factors such as: Marketing research is a systematic process of analyzing data that involves conducting research to support Marketing activities and the statistical interpretation of data into information.

This information is then used by managers to plan Marketing activities, gauge the nature of a firm's Marketing environment and to attain information from suppliers.

A distinction should be made between Marketing research and market research.

Market research involves gathering information about a particular target market.

As an example, a firm may conduct research in a target market, after selecting a suitable market segment.

In contrast, Marketing research relates to all research conducted within Marketing.

Market research is a subset of Marketing research.

Marketing researchers use statistical methods (such as quantitative research, qualitative research, hypothesis tests, Chi-square tests, linear regression, correlation coefficients, frequency distributions, Poisson and binomial distributions, etc.) to interpret their findings and convert data into information.[52] The stages of research include: Market segmentation consists of taking the total heterogeneous market for a product and dividing it into several sub-markets or segments, each of which tends to be homogeneous in all significant aspects.[10] The process is conducted for two main purposes: better allocation of a firm's finite resources and to better serve the more diversified tastes of contemporary consumers.

A firm only possesses a certain amount of resources.

Thus, it must make choices (and appreciate the related costs) in servicing specific groups of consumers.

Moreover, with more diversity in the tastes of modern consumers, firms are noting the benefit of servicing a multiplicity of new markets.

Market segmentation can be defined in terms of the STP acronym, meaning Segment, Target, and Position.

Segmentation involves the initial splitting up of consumers into persons of like needs/wants/tastes.

Commonly used criteria include: Once a segment has been identified to target, a firm must ascertain whether the segment is beneficial for them to service.

The DAMP acronym is used as criteria to gauge the viability of a target market.

The elements of DAMP are: The next step in the targeting process is the level of differentiation involved in a segment serving.

Three modes of differentiation exist, which are commonly applied by firms.

These are: Positioning concerns how to position a product in the minds of consumers and inform what attributes differentiate it from the competitor's products.

A firm often performs this by producing a perceptual map, which denotes similar products produced in the same industry according to how consumers perceive their price and quality.

From a product's placing on the map, a firm would tailor its Marketing communications to meld with the product's perception among consumers and its position among competitors' offering.

[54] The promotional mix outlines how a company will market its product.

It consists of five tools: personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, advertising and social media Personal selling involves an oral presentation given by a salesperson who approaches an individual or a group of potential customers.

Personal selling allows for two-way communication and relationship building that can aid both the buyer and the seller in their goals.

Personal selling is most commonly seen in business-to-business Marketing (e.g.: selling machinery to a factory, selling paper to a print shop), but it can also be found in business-to-consumer Marketing (e.g.: selling cars at a dealership).

[4]Sales promotion involves short-term incentives to encourage the buying of products.

Examples of these incentives include: Depending on the incentive, one or more of the other elements of the promotional mix may be used in conjunction with sales promotion to inform customers of the incentives.

[4] Public relations is the use of media tools to promote a positive view of a company or product in the public's eye.

Public relations monitors the public opinion of a company or product and generates publicity to either sustain a positive opinion or lessen or change a negative opinion.

Public relations can include interviews, speeches/presentations, corporate literature, social media, news releases and special events.

[4] Advertising occurs when a firm directly pays a media channel to publicize its product.

Common examples of advertising include: Social media is used to facilitate two-way communication between companies and their customers.

Social media outlets such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Snapchat and YouTube allow brands to start a conversation with regular and prospective customers.

Viral Marketing can be greatly facilitated by social media and if successful, allows key Marketing messages and content in reaching a large number of target audiences within a short time frame.

Additionally, social media platforms can also house advertising and public relations content..[4] The area of Marketing planning involves forging a plan for a firm's Marketing activities.

A Marketing plan can also pertain to a specific product, as well as to an organization's overall Marketing strategy.

An organization's Marketing planning process is derived from its overall business strategy.

Thus, when top management are devising the firm's strategic direction/mission, the intended Marketing activities are incorporated into this plan.

Within the overall strategic Marketing plan, the stages of the process are listed as thus: As stated previously, the senior management of a firm would formulate a general business strategy for a firm.

However, this general business strategy would be interpreted and implemented in different contexts throughout the firm.

At the corporate level, Marketing objectives are typically broad-based in nature, and pertain to the general vision of the firm in the short, medium or long-term.

As an example, if one pictures a group of companies (or a conglomerate), top management may state that sales for the group should increase by 25% over a ten-year period.

A strategic business unit (SBU) is a subsidiary within a firm, which participates within a given market/industry.

The SBU would embrace the corporate strategy, and attune it to its own particular industry.

For instance, an SBU may partake in the sports goods industry.

It thus would ascertain how it would attain additional sales of sports goods, in order to satisfy the overall business strategy.

The functional level relates to departments within the SBUs, such as Marketing, finance, HR, production, etc.

The functional level would adopt the SBU's strategy and determine how to accomplish the SBU's own objectives in its market.

To use the example of the sports goods industry again, the Marketing department would draw up Marketing plans, strategies and communications to help the SBU achieve its Marketing aims.

The product life cycle (PLC) is a tool used by Marketing managers to gauge the progress of a product, especially relating to sales or revenue accrued over time.

The PLC is based on a few key assumptions, including: In the introduction stage, a product is launched onto the market.

To stimulate the growth of sales/revenue, use of advertising may be high, in order to heighten awareness of the product in question.

During the growth stage, the product's sales/revenue is increasing, which may stimulate more Marketing communications to sustain sales.

More entrants enter into the market, to reap the apparent high profits that the industry is producing.

When the product hits maturity, its starts to level off, and an increasing number of entrants to a market produce price falls for the product.

Firms may use sales promotions to raise sales.

During decline, demand for a good begins to taper off, and the firm may opt to discontinue the manufacture of the product.

This is so, if revenue for the product comes from efficiency savings in production, over actual sales of a good/service.

However, if a product services a niche market, or is complementary to another product, it may continue the manufacture of the product, despite a low level of sales/revenue being accrued.

[4]

Business marketing

Business marketing is a marketing practice of individuals or organizations (including commercial businesses, governments and institutions).

It allows them to sell products or services to other companies or organizations that resell them, use them in their products or services or use them to support their works.

It is a way to promote business and improve profit too.

Business marketing is also known as industrial marketing or business-to-business (B2B) marketing.

Business-to-government marketing, while still classified within the B2B discipline due to the sharing of dynamics, does differ slightly.

The practice of a purveyor of goods trading with another may be as old as commerce itself.

In relation to marketing today, its history is more recent.

Michael Morris, Leyland Pitt, and Earl Dwight Honeycutt say that for several years Business marketing took "a back seat" to consumer marketing.[1] This entailed providers of goods or services selling directly to households through mass media and retail channels.

David Lichtenthal (professor of marketing at Zicklin School of Business) notes in his research that Business marketing has existed since the mid-19th century.

He adds that the bulk of research on Business marketing has come in the last 25 years.[2] This began to change in the middle to late 1970s.

Academic periodicals, including the Journal of Business-to-Business marketing[3] and the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing[4] now publish studies on the subject regularly.

Professional conferences on Business marketing are held every year[citation needed] and courses are commonplace at many universities today.

According to Jeremy Kourdi, more than half of marketing majors start their careers in Business marketing rather than consumer marketing.[5] Business markets have derived demand – a demand in them exists because of demand in the consumer market.

An example would be a government wishing to purchase equipment for a nuclear power plant.

Another example would be when items are in popular demand.

The underlying consumer demand that has triggered this is that people are consuming more electricity (by using more household devices such as washing machines and computers).

Business markets do not exist in isolation.

A single consumer market demand can give rise to hundreds of business market demands.

The demand for cars creates demands for castings, forgings, plastic components, steel and tires.

In turn, this creates demands for casting sand, forging machines, mining materials, polymers, rubber.

Each of these growing demands has triggered more demands.

As the spending power of citizens increases, countries generally see an upward wave in their economy.

Cities or countries with growing consumption are generally growing business markets.

Despite the differences between business and consumer marketing from a surface perspective being seemingly obvious, there are more subtle distinctions between the two with substantial ramifications.

Dwyer and Tanner note that Business marketing generally entails shorter and more direct channels of distribution.

While consumer marketing is aimed at large groups through mass media and retailers, the negotiation process between the buyer and seller is more personal in Business marketing.

According to Hutt and Speh (2004), most business marketers commit only a small part of their promotional budgets to advertising, and that is usually through direct mail efforts and trade journals.

While advertising is limited, it often helps the business marketer set up successful sales calls.

Both business to business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing is done with the ultimate intention of making a profit to the seller (business-to-Business marketing).

In B2C, B2B and B2G marketing situations, the marketer must always: These are the fundamental principles of the 4 Ps of marketing (the marketing mix) first documented by E.

Jerome McCarthy in 1960.[6] While "other businesses" might seem like the simple answer, Dwyer and Tanner say business customers fall into four broad categories: companies that consume products or services, government agencies, institutions and resellers.

The first category includes original equipment manufacturers, such as large auto-makers who buy gauges to put in their cars and also small firms owned by 1-2 individuals who purchase products to run their business.

The second category - government agencies, is the biggest.

In fact, the U.S.

government is the biggest single purchaser of products and services in the country, spending more than $300 billion annually.

But this category also includes state and local governments.

The third category, institutions, includes schools, hospitals and nursing homes, churches and charities.

Finally, resellers consist of wholesalers, brokers and industrial distributors.

So what are the meaningful differences between B2B and B2C marketing? A B2C sale is to a "Consumer" i.e.

to a single person who pays for the transaction.

A B2B sale is to a "Business" i.e.

organization or firm.

Given the complexity of organizational structure, B2B sales typically involve multiple decision makers.

While the structure of a B2B sale involving an organization is understood, the psychology of a B2B sale, particularly from a marketing perspective, is not always devoid of human emotion.

According to Bill Blaney (2012), a B2C and a B2B sale can be differentiated by the customer as either a "want" or a "need." While retail consumer sales rarely hinge upon a product or service that customers "need" in order to survive (pharmaceutical and other health industry products notwithstanding), business sales are more directly applied to the growth and survival of that particular company, organization or institution.

As a result, marketing to businesses relies on communication that can provide the company buyer with a level of comfort in the long-term performance of their product or service, and support in its continued efficacy.

The marketing mix is affected by the B2B uniqueness which include complexity of business products and services, diversity of demand and the differing nature of the sales itself (including fewer customers buying larger volumes).[7] Because there are some important subtleties to the B2B sale, the issues are broken down beyond just the original 4 Ps of marketing developed by McCarthy.

B2B branding is different from B2C in some crucial ways, including the need to align corporate brands, divisional brands and product/service brands and to apply brand standards to material often considered “informal” such as email and other electronic correspondence.

It is mainly of large scale when compared with B2C.

Due to the fact that business customers are focused on creating shareholder value for themselves, the cost-saving or revenue-producing benefits of products and services are important to factor in throughout the product development and marketing cycles.

Quite often, the target market for a business product or service is smaller and has more specialized needs reflective of a specific industry or niche.[8] A B2B niche, a segment of the market, can be described in terms of firmographics which requires marketers to have good business intelligence in order to increase response rates.

Regardless of the size of the target market, the business customer is making an organizational purchase decision and the dynamics of this, both procedurally and in terms of how they value the product offered, differ dramatically from the consumer market.

There may be multiple influencers on the purchase decision, which may also have to be marketed to, though they may not be members of the decision making unit.[9] In addition the research and decision making process a B2B buyer undertakes will be more extensive.[10] Finally the purchase information that buyers are researching changes as they go through the buying process (see sample decision map).[11] The business market can be convinced to pay premium prices more often than the consumer market with appropriate pricing structure and payment terms.

This pricing premium is particularly achievable if it is supported with a strong brand.[12] Promotion planning is relatively easy when the decision making habits of the customer base and the vocabulary unique to their segment are known.

Specific trade shows, analysts, publications, blogs and retail/wholesale outlets tend to be fairly common to each industry/product area.

Once it is figured out for the industry/product, writing the promotion plan is simple.

Promotion techniques rely heavily on marketing communications strategies (see below).[13] The importance of a knowledgeable, experienced and effective direct (inside or outside) sales force is often critical in the business market.

When selling through distribution channels also, the number and type of sales forces can vary tremendously and success as a marketer is highly dependent on their success.

One of the distinguishing features of the B2B sales cycle is its comparably longer lead times compared to B2C.[14] The result of this longer lead cycle affects the entire B2B marketing process.

The purpose of B2B marketing communications is to support the organizations' sales effort and improve company profitability.

B2B marketing communications tactics generally include advertising, public relations, direct mail, trade show support, sales collateral, branding, and interactive services such as website design and search engine optimization.

The Business marketing Association[15] is the trade organization that serves B2B marketing professionals.

It was founded in 1922 and offers certification programs, research services, conferences, industry awards and training programs.

An important first step in business to Business marketing is the development of a positioning statement.

This is a statement of what is done and how it will be better and more efficient than competitors.

The next step is to develop messages.

There is usually a primary message that conveys more strongly to customers, what is done and how the customers benefit from it.

This is often supported by a number of secondary messages, each of which may have a number of supporting arguments, facts and figures.

A comprehensive plan to target resources where they will deliver the best return on investment.

The infrastructure to support each stage of the marketing process has to be in place and the entire organization must be geared up to handle the inquiries appropriately.

A standard briefing document is usually a good idea for briefing an agency, as well as focusing the agency on what is important in the campaign.

It serves as a checklist of all the important things to consider as part of the brief.

Typical elements to an agency brief are: objectives, target market, target audience, product, campaign description, product positioning, graphical considerations, corporate guidelines, and any other supporting material and distribution.

The value in results measurement is in tying the marketing campaign back to business results.

Metrics to measure the impact are e.g.

cost per acquisition, cost per lead or tangible changes in customer perception.

Hutt and Speh (2001) note that "business marketers serve the largest market of all; the dollar volume of transactions in the industrial or business market significantly exceeds that of the ultimate consumer market." For example, they note that companies such as GE, DuPont and IBM spend more than $60 million a day on purchases to support their operations.

Dwyer and Tanner (2006) say the purchases made by companies, government agencies and institutions "account for more than half of the economic activity in industrialized countries such as the United States, Canada and France." A 2003 study sponsored by the Business marketing Association estimated that business-to-business marketers in the United States spend about $85 billion a year to promote their goods and services.

The BMA study breaks that spending out as follows (figures are in billions of dollars): The tremendous growth and change that Business marketing is experiencing is largely due to three "revolutions" occurring around the world today, according to Morris, Pitt and Honeycutt (2001).

The Internet has become an integral component of the customer relationship management strategy for business marketers.

Dwyer and Tanner (2006) note that business marketers not only use the Internet to improve customer service but also to gain opportunities with distributors.

According to Anderson and Narus (2004), two new types of resellers have emerged as by-products of the Internet: infomediaries and metamediaries.

Infomediaries, such as Google and Yahoo, are search engine companies that also function as brokers, or middlemen, in the Business marketing world.

They charge companies fees to find information on the Web as well as for banner and pop-up ads and search engine optimization services.

Metamediaries are companies with robust Internet sites that furnish customers with multiproduct, multivendor and multiservice marketspace in return for commissions on sales.

With the advent of b-to-b exchanges, the Internet ushered in an enthusiasm for collaboration that never existed before—and in fact might have even seemed ludicrous 10 years ago.

For example, a decade ago who would have imagined Ford, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler entering into a joint venture? That's exactly what happened after all three of the Big Three began moving their purchases online in the late 1990s.

All three companies were pursuing their own initiatives when they realized the economies of scale they could achieve by pooling their efforts.

Thus was born what then was the world's largest Internet business when Ford's Auto-Xchange and GM's TradeXchange merged, with DaimlerChrysler representing the third partner.

While this exchange did not stand the test of time, others have, including Agentrics, which was formed in 2005 with the merger of WorldWide Retail Exchange and GlobalNetXchange, or GNX.

Agentrics serves more 50 retailers around the world and more than 300 customers, and its members have combined sales of about $1 trillion.

Hutt and Speh (2001) note that such virtual marketplaces enable companies and their suppliers to conduct business in real time as well as simplify purchase processes and cut costs.

B2B design often relies heavily on gradients.

This is seen by some to represent the fluid nature of the sector and the democratic approach to design employed by B2B agencies.

[16]

Flightpath (marketing agency)

Flightpath is a New York-based digital creative agency.

Founded in 1994, Flightpath has worked with clients such as Goya Foods, Sherwin-Williams, Showtime, BMW and Newsday.[1] Flightpath has taken home honors from the Interactive Media Awards, iMedia Awards, W3 Awards and the WebAwards for their client work.[citation needed] Flightpath was founded in 1994 by Jon Fox as X Communications, NYC Inc.

in the early era of internet service and technology.

The company focused primarily on website production for clients.

In 2000, the company was renamed Xworld, and creative director Steven Louie joined the company as principal.

Xworld was a website production agency from 2000 to 2007, when it transitioned to a full service digital agency under the name Flightpath.[2] Flightpath offices are located in the Flatiron district of NYC.[3]

Email marketing

Email marketing is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email.

In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered Email marketing.

It involves using email to send advertisements, request business, or solicit sales or donations.

Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives, to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness.

The term usually refers to sending email messages with the purpose of enhancing a merchant's relationship with current or previous customers, encouraging customer loyalty and repeat business, acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately, and sharing third-party ads.

Email marketing has evolved rapidly alongside the technological growth of the 21st century.

Prior to this growth, when emails were novelties to the majority of customers, Email marketing was not as effective.

In 1978, Gary Thuerk of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) sent out the first mass email[1] to approximately 400 potential clients via the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET).

He claims that this resulted in $13 million worth of sales in DEC products,[2] and highlighted the potential of marketing through mass emails.

However, as Email marketing developed as an effective means of direct communication, in the 1990s, users increasingly began referring to it as "spam", and began blocking out content from emails with filters and blocking programs.

In order to effectively communicate a message through email, marketers had to develop a way of pushing content through to the end user, without being cut out by automatic filters and spam removing software.

Historically, it has been difficult to measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns because target markets cannot be adequately defined.

Email marketing carries the benefit of allowing marketers to identify returns on investment and measure and improve efficiency.[citation needed] Email marketing allows marketers to see feedback from users in real time, and to monitor how effective their campaign is in achieving market penetration, revealing a communication channel's scope.

At the same time, however, it also means that the more personal nature of certain advertising methods, such as television advertisements, cannot be captured.

Email marketing can be carried out through different types of emails: Transactional emails are usually triggered based on a customer's action with a company.

To be qualified as transactional or relationship messages, these communications' primary purpose must be "to facilitate, complete, or confirm a commercial transaction that the recipient has previously agreed to enter into with the sender" along with a few other narrow definitions of transactional messaging.[3] Triggered transactional messages include dropped basket messages, password reset emails, purchase or order confirmation emails, order status emails, reorder emails, and email receipts.

The primary purpose of a transactional email is to convey information regarding the action that triggered it.

But, due to their high open rates (51.3% compared to 36.6% for email newsletters), transactional emails are an opportunity to introduce or extend the email relationship with customers or subscribers; to anticipate and answer questions; or to cross-sell or up-sell products or services.[4] Many email newsletter software vendors offer transactional email support, which gives companies the ability to include promotional messages within the body of transactional emails.

There are also software vendors that offer specialized transactional Email marketing services, which include providing targeted and personalized transactional email messages and running specific marketing campaigns (such as customer referral programs).[citation needed] Direct email involves sending an email solely to communicate a promotional message (for example, a special offer or a product catalog).

Companies usually collect a list of customer or prospect email addresses to send direct promotional messages to, or they rent a list of email addresses from service companies.[citation needed] There are both advantages and disadvantages to using Email marketing in comparison to traditional advertising mail.

Email marketing is popular with companies for several reasons: Opt-in email advertising, or permission marketing, is advertising via email whereby the recipient of the advertisement has consented to receive it.

[11] A common example of permission marketing is a newsletter sent to an advertising firm's customers.

Such newsletters inform customers of upcoming events or promotions, or new products.[12] In this type of advertising, a company that wants to send a newsletter to their customers may ask them at the point of purchase if they would like to receive the newsletter.

With a foundation of opted-in contact information stored in their database, marketers can send out promotional materials automatically using autoresponders—known as drip marketing.

They can also segment their promotions to specific market segments.[13] The Australian Spam Act 2003 is enforced by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, widely known as "ACMA".

The act defines the term unsolicited electronic messages, states how unsubscribe functions must work for commercial messages, and gives other key information.

Fines range with 3 fines of AU$110,000 being issued to Virgin Blue Airlines (2011), Tiger Airways Holdings Limited (2012) and Cellar master Wines Pty Limited (2013).[14] The "Canada Anti-Spam Law" (CASL) went into effect on July 1, 2014.[15] CASL requires an explicit or implicit opt-in from users, and the maximum fines for noncompliance are CA$1 million for individuals and $10 million for businesses.[16] In 2002 the European Union (EU) introduced the Directive on Privacy and Electronic Communications.

Article 13 of the Directive prohibits the use of personal email addresses for marketing purposes.

The Directive establishes the opt-in regime, where unsolicited emails may be sent only with prior agreement of the recipient; this does not apply to business email addresses.

The directive has since been incorporated into the laws of member states.

In the UK it is covered under the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003[17] and applies to all organizations that send out marketing by some form of electronic communication.

The GDPR in 2018 imposed "a number of new requirements on companies that collect, store and process personal data from EU users, which impacts email marketers"[18] - in particular, users' right to access information held about them; and the right to have all such information deleted at their request.[18] The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 was passed by Congress as a direct response to the growing number of complaints over spam emails.[citation needed] Congress determined that the US government was showing an increased interest in the regulation of commercial electronic mail nationally, that those who send commercial emails should not mislead recipients over the source or content of them, and that all recipients of such emails have a right to decline them.

The act authorizes a US$16,000 penalty per violation for spamming each individual recipient.[19] However, it does not ban spam emailing outright, but imposes laws on using deceptive marketing methods through headings which are "materially false or misleading".

In addition there are conditions which email marketers must meet in terms of their format, their content and labeling.

As a result, many commercial email marketers within the United States utilize a service or special software to ensure compliance with the act.

A variety of older systems exist that do not ensure compliance with the act.

To comply with the act's regulation of commercial email, services also typically require users to authenticate their return address and include a valid physical address, provide a one-click unsubscribe feature, and prohibit importing lists of purchased addresses that may not have given valid permission.[citation needed] In addition to satisfying legal requirements, email service providers (ESPs) began to help customers establish and manage their own Email marketing campaigns.

The service providers supply email templates and general best practices, as well as methods for handling subscriptions and cancellations automatically.

Some ESPs will provide insight and assistance with deliverability issues for major email providers.

They also provide statistics pertaining to the number of messages received and opened, and whether the recipients clicked on any links within the messages.

The CAN-SPAM Act was updated with some new regulations including a no-fee provision for opting out, further definition of "sender", post office or private mail boxes count as a "valid physical postal address" and definition of "person".

These new provisions went into effect on July 7, 2008.[20] [21]

Internet celebrity

An Internet celebrity (also known as a social media influencer) is a celebrity who has acquired or developed their fame and notability through the Internet.

The rise of social media has helped people increase their outreach to a global audience.

Internet celebrities may be recruited by companies for influencer marketing to advertise products to their fans and followers on their platforms.

Internet celebrities often function as lifestyle gurus who promote a particular lifestyle or attitude.

In this role, they may be crucial influencers or multipliers for trends in genres including fashion, beauty, technology, video games, politics, and entertainment.[1] In 1991 with the wide public availability of the Internet and the World Wide Web, numerous websites were created to serve as forums for topics of shared interest.

In some topic areas, this allowed users to get advice and help from experienced users in that field, the type of information that was typically lacking in mainstream print media or corporate websites.[2] Dedicated social media sites arose from these, where users could create profiles and make friends with other users; the first such social media site was SixDegrees.com in 1997.[3] Similarly, websites that supported blogging arose around 1997, and gave a means for users to post long-form articles and stories of their own.[2] Since then, forums, social media, and blogging have become a central part of communication, social life, businesses, and news publishing.

Popular social media platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter, WeChat, WhatsApp, and YouTube.[4] A 2001 study from Rutgers University had found that people were using "internet forums as influential sources of consumer information".

This study suggested that consumers were using Internet forums and social media to make purchasing decisions over traditional advertising and print sources.[5] The early 2000s saw corporate attempts to use the Internet for influencing with some companies engaged with forums for promotion or to offer bloggers free products in exchange for positive reviews.

Some of these practices were considered unethical.[2] The Blogstar Network, launched in 2004 by Ted Murphy of MindComet, invited bloggers to an email list to receive paid offers from corporations based on the type of posts they made, such as being paid a few dollars for reviewing a fast-food meal in their blog.

Blogstar is considered the first influencer marketing network.[2] Murphy followed Blogstar with PayPerPost, launched in 2006, which paid influential posters at the larger forum and social media sides for each post about a corporate product, with payment rates based on the influencer status of the individual.[2] PayPerPost, while popular and creating several other similar programs from other companies, received a great deal of criticism as these influencers were not required to disclose their involvement with PayPerPost as traditional journalism would have,[6] and made the public aware that there was a drive-by corporate interests to influence what some people were posting to these sites.[2] Despite concerns, influencing marketing networks continued to grow through the rest of the 2000s and into the 2010s.

The influencer marketing industry is on track to be worth up to $15 billion by 2022, up from as much as $8 billion in 2019, according to Business Insider Intelligence estimates, based on Mediakix data.[7] Self-branding, also known as personal branding, describes the development of a public image for commercial gain or social or cultural capital.[8] The rise of social media has been exploited by individuals seeking personal fame and product sales.

Platforms such as Instagram, Snapchat, VSCO, and YouTube are the most common social media outlets on which online influencers attempt to build a following.

Fame can be attained through different avenues and media forms, including art, humor, modeling, and podcasts.

Marketing experts have concluded that "[people no longer] need to be familiar with complex coding languages or other technicalities to build websites because virtually anyone can upload text, pictures, and video instantly to a site from a personal computer or phone.

With technological barriers crumbling and its near ubiquity, the web has become the perfect platform for personal branding".[9] Depending on their rise to fame, Internet celebrities may reach their audiences in different ways.

Millions of people write online journals or blogs, but most fail to become Internet celebrities.

In many cases, content does not reach a large audience and maybe intended for a smaller, niche audience.

If a creator has or develops a distinctive personality, it may bring them more notoriety than their content does.[10] In some cases, people might rise to fame through a single viral event or viral video.

The Internet allows videos, news articles, and jokes to circulate rapidly.

Depending on its reach, the content may become an Internet meme.

For example, Zach Anner, a comedian from Austin, Texas, gained worldwide attention after submitting a video to Oprah Winfrey's "Search for the Next TV Star" competition.[11] The Internet celebrity concept echoes Andy Warhol's famous quote about 15 minutes of fame.

A more recent adaptation of Warhol's quote—possibly prompted by the rise of online social networking, blogging, and similar online phenomena—is the claim that "In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people" or, in some renditions, "On the Web, everyone will be famous to fifteen people."[12] This quote, though attributed to David Weinberger, was said to have originated from the Scottish artist Momus.[12][13] Internet celebrities, or influencers, can be broken into five different sizes: Nano, Micro, Macro, Mega, and Celebrity.[14] Nano influencers generally have under 5,000 followers on Instagram.

Micro influencers have between 5,000 and 100,000 followers on Instagram.

Macro influencers have between 100,000 and 500,000 followers on Instagram.

Mega influencers have between 500,000 to 5,000,000 followers on Instagram.

And finally, Celebrities are defined as having over 5,000,000 followers on Instagram.[15] YouTube has risen as one of the biggest platforms for launching Internet celebrities.

Individual users can record videos of their daily lives and upload them online through YouTube.

This activity is known as video blogging, or vlogging.

YouTube creators (known as YouTubers), regardless of the genres or types of videos they make, have created an industry that can generate revenue from video views and online popularity.

For example, Swedish Internet celebrity PewDiePie uploads gaming and comedy videos on YouTube.

As of September 2019[update], he has around 100 million subscribers and is the most-subscribed non-corporation YouTuber.

Every minute, 300 hours of videos are uploaded to YouTube, and 5 billion videos are watched every day.[16] Individuals can create videos and upload them onto YouTube and other platforms in return for income.

In August 2014, Variety wrote that YouTubers are more popular than mainstream celebrities among U.S.

teens.[17] Advertisers, in an effort to reach teenagers and millennials who do not watch regular television and movies, have started contacting YouTubers and other Internet celebrities.[18] As of 2017[update], YouTube has 1.5 billion monthly active users, and many YouTubers have millions of subscribers.[19] YouTubers appear to have a greater influence on millennials than traditional celebrities.

One of the main reasons is that the majority of millennials do not watch TV, but instead prefer to use platforms they can access from their mobile devices.[20] 70% of YouTube users have said that YouTubers change and shape pop culture, and 60% of them have said they would make buying decisions based on the recommendations of their favorite YouTuber over those of a TV or movie star.[20] A micro-celebrity, also known as a micro-influencer, is a person famous within a niche group of users on a social media platform.

Micro-celebrities often present themselves as public figures.[21] The concept of the micro-celebrity was originally developed by Theresa Senft in her 2008 book, Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in the Age of Social Networks.[22] According to Senft, the concept of the micro-celebrity "is best understood as a new style of online performance that involves people 'amping up' their popularity over the Web using technologies like video, blogs and social networking sites".[23] Other individuals who have researched micro-celebrities include Crystal Abidin,[24] Anne Jerslev,[25] Alice Marwick [26] and Tobias Raun.[27] According to Raun, a micro-celebrity is "a form of identity linked almost exclusively to the Internet, characterizing a process by which people express, create and share their identities online".[28] According to Senft and Marwick, micro-celebrities differ from more traditional forms of celebrities associated with Hollywood stars because a micro-celebrity's popularity is often directly linked to their audience, and the audience comes to expect a certain degree of authenticity and transparency.[23] The Internet allows the masses to wrest control of fame from traditional media, creating micro-celebrities with the click of a mouseWanghong (Chinese: 网红; pinyin: wǎnghóng; lit.: 'Internet fame') is the Chinese version of Internet stardom.

The Wanghong economy is a Chinese digital economy based on influencer marketing in social media.[30] Wanghong have been predominantly used to generate profits via retail or e-commerce, through attracting the attention of celebrities' followers.

Internet celebrities have also become a popular phenomenon in China.

For example, Sister Furong (Furong Jiejie) received worldwide notoriety and fame for her self-promotion efforts through online posts.[31] According to CBN Data, a commercial data company affiliated with Alibaba Group, the Internet celebrities economy was estimated to be worth CN¥58 billion (US$8.4 billion) in 2016, which was more than China's total cinema box office revenue in 2015.[32] There are two main business models in the Wanghong economy: Social Media Advertising, and Online retail.

In the online retailing business model, e-commerce-based Wanghong involves the use of social media platforms to sell self-branded products to potential buyers among followers via Chinese customer-to-customer (C2C) websites, such as Taobao.

Internet celebrities work as the models of their shops by posting pictures or videos of themselves, wearing the clothes or accessories they sell, or giving distinctive makeup or fashion tips.[33] They serve as key opinion leaders for their followers, who either aspire to be like them or look up to them.

Zhang Dayi—one of China's best-known Wanghong according to BBC News, with 4.9 million followers on Sina Weibo—has an online shop on Taobao, reportedly earning CN¥300 million (US$46 million) per year.[34] This is comparable to the US$21 million made by Fan Bingbing, a top Chinese actress.

Li Ziqi, a celebrity food blogger with more than 16 million followers on Weibo, has inspired many bloggers to post similar content on traditional Chinese cooking and crafts.[35] Censorship in China has created an entire social media ecosystem that has become wildly successful in its own way.[36] For every Western social media platform, there is a Chinese version that can be equally successful.

Chinese social media platforms can be used differently from those in the West, but the results are the same—the platforms generate revenue.

The greatest difference between Chinese Internet celebrities and their Western counterparts is that the profits generated by Chinese celebrities can be immense.

Unlike YouTube, which takes 45% of advertising revenue,[37] Weibo, one of the largest Chinese social media platforms, is not involved in advertising, which allows Internet celebrities to be more independent.

The monthly income of Chinese influencers can exceed CN¥10 million (US$1.5 million).[38] Different types of Internet celebrities can make money in various ways, but most of them earn money from endorsements.

Internet celebrities can use their fame to promote products or experiences to their followers, and are believed to provide credibility to products.[39] In social media advertising, Internet celebrities can be paid to advertise products.

When they have garnered sufficient attention and following, they can be approached by advertising companies to help advertise products and reach a wider audience.[40] In 1991 with the wide public availability of the Internet and the World Wide Web, numerous websites were created to serve as forums for topics of shared interest.

In some topic areas, this allowed users to get advice and help from experienced users in that field, the type of information that was typically lacking in mainstream print media or corporate websites.[2] Dedicated social media sites arose from these, where users could create profiles and make friends with other users; the first such social media site was SixDegrees.com in 1997.[3] Similarly, websites that supported blogging arose around 1997, and gave a means for users to post long-form articles and stories of their own.[2] Since then, forums, social media, and blogging have become a central part of communication, social life, businesses, and news publishing.

Popular social media platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, Twitter, WeChat, WhatsApp, and YouTube.[4] YouTubers can make money directly through their YouTube channels by using ads or sponsoring products.

YouTube's AdSense program allows YouTubers to earn revenue from ads and views.

AdSense has certain requirements—a YouTuber must have more than 1,000 subscribers, live in an eligible country, and have more than 4,000 hours of watch time within a year to be eligible.[41] YouTube can be a lucrative platform for Internet celebrities like PewDiePie, who made US$15.5 million in 2018.[citation needed] YouTubers can also expand their source of revenue by creating their own products or merchandise to sell.[42] Similarly, fashion bloggers and Instagram celebrities can earn money by promoting brands on their platforms or developing their own brands.

Bloggers can feature sponsored posts in social media to make profits.[43] For instance, fashion blogger Chiara Ferragni started as an online blogger, and then gained millions of followers on Instagram.

She later created her brand, the Chiara Ferragni Collection.

Like many other Instagram celebrities, Ferragni started by charging money per post for promoting brands.

She now earns revenue from promotional Instagram posts and the sale of her own products.[44] Meetups are often a way Internet celebrities interact with fans in real life.

Occasionally, an Internet celebrity might organize a meetup and invite fans to meet them at a certain place and time without proper organization.

This can attract crowds of fans, causing disorderly or even unsafe situations.

For example, Tanacon was an organization involving a group of Internet celebrities who were set to meet paying fans, but did not follow through.

Because of the disorganized setup, the meetup resulted in chaos.[45] Alternatively, events can be organized at a venue with security personnel.

VidCon is an annual organized video conference designed for people interested in online videos.

It invites Internet content creators to participate in events for paying fans, such as performances, panels, and meet-and-greets.[46] It can be difficult to define what is and isn't ethically correct in the business world of internet celebrities and the products they endorse.

Social media holds arguable one of the most influential factors of ethics.

Ethics of Celebrities and Their Increasing Influence in 21st Century Society Advertisers are leaning more each and every day towards internet celebrities using their platform to endorse their products and create revenue.

Unethical behavior in this business transaction can become present when the non expert opinion of such influencers takes rule over that of experts.

Consumers can be driven to purchase products endorsed by internet celebrities due to their extensive content and outreach which an expert such as a dermatologist, for example, does not have.

A highly unethical conflict would arise as an influencer recommends the use of a product that they do not use or give their fraudulent opinion on, while receiving a monetary gain.

Impact of Celebrity Endorsement on Consumer Buying Behavior

Travel agency

A Travel agency is a private retailer or public service that provides travel and tourism-related services to the general public on behalf of accommodation or travel suppliers.

Travel agencies can provide outdoor recreation activities, airlines, car rentals, cruise lines, hotels, railways, travel insurance, package tours, insurance, guide books, public transport timetables, car rentals, and bureau de change services.

Travel agencies can also serve as general sales agents for airlines that do not have offices in a specific region.

A Travel agency's main function is to act as an agent, selling travel products and services on behalf of a supplier.

They do not keep inventory in-hand unless they have pre-booked hotel rooms or cabins on a cruise ship for a group travel event such as a wedding, honeymoon, or other group event.

Travel agencies often receive commissions and other benefits and incentives from providers or may charge a fee to the end users.[1] Hotel owners and tour operators typically pay a higher commission rate to travel agencies, whereas airlines typically pay a low commission.[2] The customer is normally not made aware of how much the travel agent is earning in commissions and other benefits.[3] A 2016 survey of 1,193 travel agents in the United States found that on average 78% of their revenue was from commissions and 22% was generated from fees.[4] Travel agencies use the services of the major computer reservations systems, also known as global distribution systems (GDS), including: Amadeus CRS, Galileo GDS, Sabre, and Worldspan, which is a subsidiary of Travelport, which allow for comparison and sorting of hotel and flight rates with multiple companies.[5] Bookings made via travel agents, including online travel agents, may or may not be confirmed instantly.

Unlike online travel agencies, metasearch engines and scraper sites, such as Skyscanner, Kayak.com, Rome2rio, and TripAdvisor, may or may not have their own booking engine, and instead provide results for search queries and then divert traffic to service providers or online travel agencies for booking.[6][7][8] Travel agents may also work with airline consolidators.[9][10] Booking Holdings and Expedia Group, both online travel agencies, are the largest travel agencies on the list of top earning travel companies.[11] Travel agencies can be multinational companies, referred to as "multiples" in the United Kingdom.

They can also be medium-sized organizations, referred to as "miniples" in the United Kingdom, or can be independent, small companies.

They can be structured as a limited liability company, a sole proprietorship, or can be set up as a host, franchising, or consortium structure, such as in the case of CWT.

A traditional travel agent may work for a Travel agency or work freelance.[12][13][14][15] Helloworld Travel is an example of a franchised Travel agency, giving agents access to internal systems for product and bookings.[16] While most point-to-point travel is now booked online, traditional agents specialize in niche markets such as corporate travel, luxury travel, cruises, complicated and important trips, and specialty trips.[17] Other niche markets include travelers with disabilities, travelers over the age of 60, women traveling alone, LGBT tourism,[18] the needs of residents in an upmarket commuter town or suburb, or a particular group interested in a similar activity, such as a sport.[19][20][21] Examples include StudentUniverse and STA Travel, which specialize in youth travel, or CWT, which caters to corporate travel.

Many use telecommuting to reduce overhead or provide concierge services.

Agents can act as "travel consultants" with flawless knowledge of destination regions and specialize in topics like nautical tourism or cultural tourism.[22] Many traditional agents prefer the term "travel advisor" as opposed to "travel agent" to emphasize their advice, expertise, and connections that are of great value.[23] Outbound travel agencies offer multi-destinations; inbound travel agencies are based in the destination and deliver an expertise on that location.[24] In many countries, all travel agencies are required to be licensed by the International Air Transport Association (IATA).[25] Many are also bonded and represented by IATA, and, for those that issue air tickets, the Air Travel Organisers' Licensing (ATOL) in the United Kingdom, and the Airline Reporting Corporation in the United States also serve those purposes.[26] ABTA – The Travel Association and the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA), represent travel agencies in the United Kingdom and the United States, respectively.[27][28] In 1758, Cox & Kings became the first Travel agency in modern history.[29][30] In 1840, the Abreu Agency was established in Porto by Bernardo Abreu, becoming the world's first agency to open its services to the public.

In 1841, Thomas Cook, a Baptist preacher who believed that alcohol was to blame for social problems, reached an agreement with the Midland Railway to organize the transportation of 500 members of his temperance movement from the Leicester Campbell Street railway station to a rally in Loughborough in exchange for a commission.[31][32] He formed Thomas Cook & Son, which later became The Thomas Cook Group.

It filed bankruptcy and underwent liquidation in 2019.[33] In 1871, Dean and Dawson was founded in the United Kingdom and in the 1950s, it was acquired by Thomas Cook.[34] In 1886, the Polytechnic Touring Association was founded in the United Kingdom.

In 1887, Walter T.

Brownell established Brownell Travel, the first Travel agency in the United States, and led 10 travelers on a European tour setting sail from New York on the SS Devonia.[35] Originally, travel agencies largely catered to middle and upper-class customers but they became more commonplace with the development of commercial aviation.

In 1923, after being treated badly by a British Travel agency, K.

P.

Chen formed what became the China Travel Service, the first Travel agency in China.[36] The industry suffered during World War II.

However, the Post–World War II economic expansion in mass-market package tours resulted in the proliferation of travel agencies catering to the working class.[37] In 1905, Nippon Travel agency became the first Travel agency in Japan.[38] In 1929, Intourist was formed as the official state Travel agency of the Soviet Union, with the goal of convincing outsiders to visit the country.[39] During the Cold War, travel agents were used by people from Western countries to travel behind the Iron Curtain.[40] In 1951, the precursor to Helloworld Travel became one of the first travel agencies in Australia.

In 1955, Henderson Travel Service became the first black-owned travel company and the first to take large groups of black tourists to Africa.[41][42] In the early 1980s, American Airlines' Sabre unit created a direct-to-consumer booking tool for flights, hotels and cars called eAAsySabre.[43] In 1989, with the liberalization of travel for South Koreans, Mode Tour became the first Travel agency in the country.[44] In 1991, Hotel Reservations Network, the precursor of Hotels.com, was founded.

At first, hotels did not pay much in commissions.[43] With the advent of the internet, travel agencies migrated online and underwent disintermediation by the reduction in costs caused by removing layers from the package holiday distribution network.[45] In 1994, Travelweb.com launched as the first online directory of hotels.[46] In 1995, Internet Travel Network sold the first airline ticket via the World Wide Web.[46] In October 1996, Expedia.com, funded with hundreds of millions of dollars by Microsoft launched as the first large online Travel agency.[43] At the same time, Cheapflights started as a listing service for flight deals from consolidators.[43] In 1998, Lastminute.com was founded in the United Kingdom.[46] In 1999, European airlines began eliminating or reducing commissions,[47] while Singapore Airlines did so in parts of Asia.

In 2002, several airlines in the United States did the same, which led to an unsuccessful lawsuit alleging collusion among the airlines, that was decided on appeal in 2009.[48][49] In 2007, the launch of the iPhone and related mobile apps increased travel bookings made online.[46] In 2008, the launch of Airbnb created an online marketplace for spare bedrooms and apartments.[46] In 2011, the launch of HotelTonight highlighted instantaneous same-day hotel room booking.[46] According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2018, there were 78,800 people who were worked as travel agents for their full-time jobs.

That number is projected to decrease by 6% over the next 10 years.

The average salary was $40,660 per year, in 2019.[50] Several reports show that the number of people using travel agents to book travel has been increasing.[51][52]

Marketing communications

Marketing research

Marketing research is "the process or set of processes that links the producers, customers, and end users to the marketer through information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems; generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process.

Marketing research specifies the information required to address these issues, designs the method for collecting information, manages and implements the data collection process, analyzes the results, and communicates the findings and their implications."[1] It is the systematic gathering, recording, and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data about issues relating to marketing products and services.

The goal of Marketing research is to identify and assess how changing elements of the marketing mix impacts customer behavior.

The term is commonly interchanged with market research; however, expert practitioners may wish to draw a distinction, in that market research is concerned specifically with markets, while Marketing research is concerned specifically about marketing processes.[2] Marketing research is often partitioned into two sets of categorical pairs, either by target market: Or, alternatively, by methodological approach: Consumer Marketing research is a form of applied sociology that concentrates on understanding the preferences, attitudes, and behaviors of consumers in a market-based economy, and it aims to understand the effects and comparative success of marketing campaigns.[citation needed] Thus, Marketing research may also be described as the systematic and objective identification, collection, analysis, and dissemination of information for the purpose of assisting management in decision making related to the identification and solution of problems and opportunities in marketing.[3] The goal of market research is to obtain and provide management with viable information about the market (e.g.

competitors), consumers, the product/service itself etc.

The purpose of Marketing research (MR) is to provide management with relevant, accurate, reliable, valid, and up to date market information.

Competitive marketing environment and the ever-increasing costs attributed to poor decision making require that Marketing research provide sound information.

Sound decisions are not based on gut feeling, intuition, or even pure judgment.

Managers make numerous strategic and tactical decisions in the process of identifying and satisfying customer needs.

They make decisions about potential opportunities, target market selection, market segmentation, planning and implementing marketing programs, marketing performance, and control.

These decisions are complicated by interactions between the controllable marketing variables of product, pricing, promotion, and distribution.

Further complications are added by uncontrollable environmental factors such as general economic conditions, technology, public policies and laws, political environment, competition, and social and cultural changes.

Another factor in this mix is the complexity of consumers.

Marketing research helps the marketing manager link the marketing variables with the environment and the consumers.

It helps remove some of the uncertainty by providing relevant information about the marketing variables, environment, and consumers.

In the absence of relevant information, consumers' response to marketing programs cannot be predicted reliably or accurately.

Ongoing Marketing research programs provide information on controllable and non-controllable factors and consumers; this information enhances the effectiveness of decisions made by marketing managers.[4] Traditionally, Marketing researchers were responsible for providing the relevant information and marketing decisions were made by the managers.

However, the roles are changing and Marketing researchers are becoming more involved in decision making, whereas marketing managers are becoming more involved with research.

The role of Marketing research in managerial decision making is explained further using the framework of the DECIDE model.

Evidence for commercial research being gathered informally dates to the Medieval period.

In 1380, the German textile manufacturer, Johann Fugger, travelled from Augsburg to Graben in order to gather information on the international textile industry.

He exchanged detailed letters on trade conditions in relevant areas.

Although, this type of information would have been termed "commercial intelligence" at the time, it created a precedent for the systemic collection of marketing information.[5] During the European age of discovery, industrial houses began to import exotic, luxury goods - calico cloth from India, porcelain, silk and tea from China, spices from India and South-East Asia and tobacco, sugar, rum and coffee from the New World.[6] International traders began to demand information that could be used for marketing decisions.

During this period, Daniel Defoe, a London merchant, published information on trade and economic resources of England and Scotland.

Defoe was a prolific publisher and among his many publications are titles devoted to the state of trade including; Trade of Britain Stated, (1707); Trade of Scotland with France, (1713) and The Trade to India Critically and Calmly Considered, (1720) - all of which provided merchants and traders with important information on which to base business decisions.[7] Until the late 18th-century, European and North-American economies were characteristed by local production and consumption.

Produce, household goods and tools were produced by local artisans or farmers with exchange taking place in local markets or fairs.

Under these conditions, the need for marketing information was minimal.

However, the rise of mass-production following the industrial revolution, combined with improved transportation systems of the early 19th-century, led to the creation of national markets and ultimately, stimulated the need for more detailed information about customers, competitors, distribution systems and market communications.[8] By the 19th-century, manufacturers were exploring ways to understand the different market needs and behaviours of groups of consumers.

A study of the German book trade found examples of both product differentiation and market segmentation as early as the 1820s.[9] From the 1880s, German toy manufacturers were producing models of tin toys for specific geographic markets; London omnibuses and ambulances destined for the British market; French postal delivery vans for Continental Europe and American locomotives intended for sale in America.[10] Such activities suggest that sufficient market information was collected to support detailed market segmentation.

In 1895, American advertising agency, N.

H.

Ayer & Son, used telegraph to contact publishers and state officials throughout the country about grain production, in an effort to construct an advertising schedule for client, Nichols-Shephard company, an agricultural machinery company in what many scholars believe is the first application of Marketing research to solve a marketing/ advertising problem)[11] Between 1902 and 1910, George B Waldron, working at Mahin's Advertising Agency in the United States used tax registers, city directories and census data to show advertisers the proportion of educated vs illiterate consumers and the earning capacity of different occupations in a very early example of simple market segmentation.[12][13] In 1911 Charles Coolidge Parlin was appointed as the Manager of the Commercial Research Division of the Advertising Department of the Curtis Publishing Company, thereby establishing the first in-house market research department - an event that has been described as marking the beginnings of organised Marketing research.[14] His aim was to turn market research into a science.

Parlin published a number of studies of various product-markets including agriculture (1911); consumer goods (c.1911); department store lines (1912) a five-volume study of automobiles (1914).[15] In 1924 Paul Cherington improved on primitive forms of demographic market segmentation when he developed the 'ABCD' household typology; the first socio-demographic segmentation tool.[12][16] By the 1930s, market researchers such as Ernest Dichter recognised that demographics alone were insufficient to explain different marketing behaviours and began exploring the use of lifestyles, attitudes, values, beliefs and culture to segment markets.[17] In the first three decades of the 20th-century, advertising agencies and marketing departments developed the basic techniques used in quantitative and qualitative research - survey methods, questionnaires, gallup polls etc.

As early as 1901, Walter B Scott was undertaking experimental research for the Agate Club of Chicago.[18] In 1910, George B Waldron was carrying out qualitative research for Mahins Advertising Agency.[18] In 1919, the first book on commercial research was published, Commercial Research: An Outline of Working Principles by Professor C.S.

Duncan of the University of Chicago.[19] Adequate knowledge of consumer preferences was a key to survival in the face of increasingly competitive markets.[20] By the 1920s, advertising agencies, such as J Walter Thompson (JWT), were conducting research on the how and why consumers used brands, so that they could recommend appropriate advertising copy to manufacturers.[19] The advent of commercial radio in the 1920s, and television in the 1940s, led a number of market research companies to develop the means to measure audience size and audience composition.

In 1923, Arthur Nielsen founded market research company, A C Nielsen and over next decade pioneered the measurement of radio audiences.

He subsequently applied his methods to the measurement of television audiences.

Around the same time, Daniel Starch developed measures for testing advertising copy effectiveness in print media (newspapers and magazines), and these subsequently became known as Starch scores (and are still used today).

During, the 1930s and 1940s, many of the data collection methods, probability sampling methods, survey methods, questionnaire design and key metrics were developed.

By the 1930s, Ernest Dichter was pioneering the focus group method of qualitative research.

For this, he is often described as the 'father of market research.'[21] Dichter applied his methods on campaigns for major brands including Chrysler, Exxon/Esso where he used methods from psychology and cultural anthropology to gain consumer insights.

These methods eventually lead to the development of motivational research.[22] Marketing historians refer to this period as the "Foundation Age" of market research.

By the 1930s, the first courses on Marketing research were taught in universities and colleges.[23] The text-book, Market Research and Analysis by Lyndon O.

Brown (1937) became one of the popular textbooks during this period.[24] As the number of trained research professionals proliferated throughout the second half of the 20th-century, the techniques and methods used in Marketing research became increasingly sophisticated.

Marketers, such as Paul Green, were instrumental in developing techniques such as conjoint analysis and multidimensional scaling, both of which are used in positioning maps, market segmentation, choice analysis and other marketing applications.[25] Web analytics were born out of the need to track the behavior of site visitors and, as the popularity of e-commerce and web advertising grew, businesses demanded details on the information created by new practices in web data collection, such as click-through and exit rates.

As the Internet boomed, websites became larger and more complex and the possibility of two-way communication between businesses and their consumers became a reality.

Provided with the capacity to interact with online customers, Researchers were able to collect large amounts of data that were previously unavailable, further propelling the Marketing research industry.

In the new millennium, as the Internet continued to develop and websites became more interactive, data collection and analysis became more commonplace for those Marketing research firms whose clients had a web presence.

With the explosive growth of the online marketplace came new competition for companies; no longer were businesses merely competing with the shop down the road — competition was now represented by a global force.

Retail outlets were appearing online and the previous need for bricks-and-mortar stores was diminishing at a greater pace than online competition was growing.

With so many online channels for consumers to make purchases, companies needed newer and more compelling methods, in combination with messages that resonated more effectively, to capture the attention of the average consumer.

Having access to web data did not automatically provide companies with the rationale behind the behavior of users visiting their sites, which provoked the Marketing research industry to develop new and better ways of tracking, collecting and interpreting information.

This led to the development of various tools like online focus groups and pop-up or website intercept surveys.

These types of services allowed companies to dig deeper into the motivations of consumers, augmenting their insights and utilizing this data to drive market share.

As information around the world became more accessible, increased competition led companies to demand more of market researchers.

It was no longer sufficient to follow trends in web behavior or track sales data; companies now needed access to consumer behavior throughout the entire purchase process.

This meant the Marketing research Industry, again, needed to adapt to the rapidly changing needs of the marketplace, and to the demands of companies looking for a competitive edge.

Today, Marketing research has adapted to innovations in technology and the corresponding ease with which information is available.

B2B and B2C companies are working hard to stay competitive and they now demand both quantitative (“What”) and qualitative (“Why?”) Marketing research in order to better understand their target audience and the motivations behind customer behaviors.[citation needed] This demand is driving Marketing researchers to develop new platforms for interactive, two-way communication between their firms and consumers.

Mobile devices such as Smart Phones are the best example of an emerging platform that enables businesses to connect with their customers throughout the entire buying process.[citation needed] As personal mobile devices become more capable and widespread, the Marketing research industry will look to further capitalize on this trend.

Mobile devices present the perfect channel for research firms to retrieve immediate impressions from buyers and to provide their clients with a holistic view of the consumers within their target markets, and beyond.

Now, more than ever, innovation is the key to success for Marketing researchers.

Marketing research Clients are beginning to demand highly personalized and specifically-focused products from the Marketing research firms; big data is great for identifying general market segments, but is less capable of identifying key factors of niche markets, which now defines the competitive edge companies are looking for in this mobile-digital age.[citation needed] First, Marketing research is systematic.

Thus systematic planning is required at all the stages of the Marketing research process.

The procedures followed at each stage are methodologically sound, well documented, and, as much as possible, planned in advance.

Marketing research uses the scientific method in that data are collected and analyzed to test prior notions or hypotheses.

Experts in Marketing research have shown that studies featuring multiple and often competing hypotheses yield more meaningful results than those featuring only one dominant hypothesis.[26] Marketing research is objective.

It attempts to provide accurate information that reflects a true state of affairs.

It should be conducted impartially.

While research is always influenced by the researcher's research philosophy, it should be free from the personal or political biases of the researcher or the management.

Research which is motivated by personal or political gain involves a breach of professional standards.

Such research is deliberately biased so as to result in predetermined findings.

The objective nature of Marketing research underscores the importance of ethical considerations.

Also, researchers should always be objective with regard to the selection of information to be featured in reference texts because such literature should offer a comprehensive view on marketing.

Research has shown, however, that many marketing textbooks do not feature important principles in Marketing research.[27] Other forms of business research include: Organizations engage in Marketing research for two reasons: firstly, to identify and, secondly, to solve marketing problems.

This distinction serves as a basis for classifying Marketing research into problem identification research and problem solving research.

Problem identification research is undertaken to help identify problems which are, perhaps, not apparent on the surface and yet exist or are likely to arise in the future like company image, market characteristics, sales analysis, short-range forecasting, long range forecasting, and business trends research.

Research of this type provides information about the marketing environment and helps diagnose a problem.

For example, the findings of problem solving research are used in making decisions which will solve specific marketing problems.

The Stanford Research Institute, on the other hand, conducts an annual survey of consumers that is used to classify persons into homogeneous groups for segmentation purposes.

The National Purchase Diary panel (NPD) maintains the largest diary panel in the United States.

Standardized services are research studies conducted for different client firms but in a standard way.

For example, procedures for measuring advertising effectiveness have been standardized so that the results can be compared across studies and evaluative norms can be established.

The Starch Readership Survey is the most widely used service for evaluating print advertisements; another well-known service is the Gallup and Robinson Magazine Impact Studies.

These services are also sold on a syndicated basis.

Marketing research techniques come in many forms, including: All of these forms of Marketing research can be classified as either problem-identification research or as problem-solving research.

There are two main sources of data — primary and secondary.

Primary research is conducted from scratch.

It is original and collected to solve the problem in hand.

Secondary research already exists since it has been collected for other purposes.

It is conducted on data published previously and usually by someone else.

Secondary research costs far less than primary research, but seldom comes in a form that exactly meets the needs of the researcher.

A similar distinction exists between exploratory research and conclusive research.

Exploratory research provides insights into and comprehension of an issue or situation.

It should draw definitive conclusions only with extreme caution.

Conclusive research draws conclusions: the results of the study can be generalized to the whole population.

Exploratory research is conducted to explore a problem to get some basic idea about the solution at the preliminary stages of research.

It may serve as the input to conclusive research.

Exploratory research information is collected by focus group interviews, reviewing literature or books, discussing with experts, etc.

This is unstructured and qualitative in nature.

If a secondary source of data is unable to serve the purpose, a convenience sample of small size can be collected.

Conclusive research is conducted to draw some conclusion about the problem.

It is essentially, structured and quantitative research, and the output of this research is the input to management information systems (MIS).

Exploratory research is also conducted to simplify the findings of the conclusive or descriptive research, if the findings are very hard to interpret for the marketing managers.

Methodologically, Marketing research uses the following types of research designs:[28] Researchers often use more than one research design.

They may start with secondary research to get background information, then conduct a focus group (qualitative research design) to explore the issues.

Finally they might do a full nationwide survey (quantitative research design) in order to devise specific recommendations for the client.

Business to business (B2B) research is inevitably more complicated than consumer research.

The researchers need to know what type of multi-faceted approach will answer the objectives, since seldom is it possible to find the answers using just one method.

Finding the right respondents is crucial in B2B research since they are often busy, and may not want to participate.

Encouraging them to “open up” is yet another skill required of the B2B researcher.

Last, but not least, most business research leads to strategic decisions and this means that the business researcher must have expertise in developing strategies that are strongly rooted in the research findings and acceptable to the client.

There are four key factors that make B2B market research special and different from consumer markets:[30] Marketing research does not only occur in huge corporations with many employees and a large budget.

Marketing information can be derived by observing the environment of their location and the competitions location.

Small scale surveys and focus groups are low cost ways to gather information from potential and existing customers.

Most secondary data (statistics, demographics, etc.) is available to the public in libraries or on the internet and can be easily accessed by a small business owner.

Below are some steps that could be done by SME (Small Medium Enterprise) to analyze the market: International Marketing research follows the same path as domestic research, but there are a few more problems that may arise.

Customers in international markets may have very different customs, cultures, and expectations from the same company.

In this case, Marketing research relies more on primary data rather than secondary information.

Gathering the primary data can be hindered by language, literacy and access to technology.

Basic Cultural and Market intelligence information will be needed to maximize the research effectiveness.

Some of the steps that would help overcoming barriers include: Market research techniques resemble those used in political polling and social science research.

Meta-analysis (also called the Schmidt-Hunter technique) refers to a statistical method of combining data from multiple studies or from several types of studies.

Conceptualization means the process of converting vague mental images into definable concepts.

Operationalization is the process of converting concepts into specific observable behaviors that a researcher can measure.

Precision refers to the exactness of any given measure.

Reliability refers to the likelihood that a given operationalized construct will yield the same results if re-measured.

Validity refers to the extent to which a measure provides data that captures the meaning of the operationalized construct as defined in the study.

It asks, “Are we measuring what we intended to measure?” Some of the positions available in Marketing research include vice president of Marketing research, research director, assistant director of research, project manager, field work director, statistician/data processing specialist, senior analyst, analyst, junior analyst and operational supervisor.[31] The most common entry-level position in Marketing research for people with bachelor's degrees (e.g., BBA) is as operational supervisor.

These people are responsible for supervising a well-defined set of operations, including field work, data editing, and coding, and may be involved in programming and data analysis.

Another entry-level position for BBAs is assistant project manager.

An assistant project manager will learn and assist in questionnaire design, review field instructions, and monitor timing and costs of studies.

In the Marketing research industry, however, there is a growing preference for people with master's degrees.

Those with MBA or equivalent degrees are likely to be employed as project managers.[31] A small number of business schools also offer a more specialized Master of Marketing research (MMR) degree.

An MMR typically prepares students for a wide range of research methodologies and focuses on learning both in the classroom and the field.

The typical entry-level position in a business firm would be junior research analyst (for BBAs) or research analyst (for MBAs or MMRs).

The junior analyst and the research analyst learn about the particular industry and receive training from a senior staff member, usually the Marketing research manager.

The junior analyst position includes a training program to prepare individuals for the responsibilities of a research analyst, including coordinating with the marketing department and sales force to develop goals for product exposure.

The research analyst responsibilities include checking all data for accuracy, comparing and contrasting new research with established norms, and analyzing primary and secondary data for the purpose of market forecasting.

As these job titles indicate, people with a variety of backgrounds and skills are needed in Marketing research.

Technical specialists such as statisticians obviously need strong backgrounds in statistics and data analysis.

Other positions, such as research director, call for managing the work of others and require more general skills.

To prepare for a career in Marketing research, students usually:

Relationship marketing

Relationship marketing is a form of marketing developed from direct response marketing campaigns that emphasizes customer retention and satisfaction rather than sales transactions.[1][2] It differentiates from other forms of marketing in that it recognises the long-term value of customer relationships and extends communication beyond intrusive advertising and sales promotional messages.[3] With the growth of the Internet and mobile platforms, Relationship marketing has continued to evolve as technology opens more collaborative and social communication channels such as tools for managing relationships with customers that go beyond demographics and customer service data collection.

Relationship marketing extends to include inbound marketing, a combination of search optimization and strategic content, public relations, social media and application development.

Relationship marketing refers to an arrangement where both the buyer and seller have an interest in a more satisfying exchange.

This approach aims to transcend the post-purchase-exchange process with a customer in order to make richer contact by providing a more personalised purchase, using the experience to create stronger ties.

A main focus on a long-term relationship with customers differentiates Relationship marketing from other marketing techniques.

The technique was first proposed by American marketing scholars Berry (1983) and Jackson (1985).

Berry (1983) argued in a conference about the field of service marketing that Relationship marketing is a marketing activity for enterprises to obtain, maintain and promote effective relationships with customers.

After a long-term study on the marketing process of the service industry, it was concluded that the ultimate goal of enterprise marketing is not only to develop new customers but also to focus on maintaining existing customers.

Ultimately, the goal is to improve the long-term interests of both parties through cooperative relationships.

The study also argues that the cost of maintaining an old customer is far lower than the cost of developing a new customer and that maintaining a relationship with old consumers is more economical than developing new customers.

Jackson (1985) further modified the concept in the aspect of industry marketing.

He argued that the essence of Relationship marketing is to attract, establish and maintain a close relationship with enterprise customers.

Furthermore, other studies have concluded that the essence of Relationship marketing is the actual maintenance of existing customers, which creates long-term interest in a product.

This research conclusion has been generally recognised after the original proposal of Relationship marketing.

The research scope, however, is limited to the relationship with old customers, easily ignoring the dynamic development of customers because long-term customers are developed from new customers.

If an enterprise is restricted to the maintenance of existing customers, it is impossible for it to achieve any progress or compete in the market since it cannot attract long-term customers in the first place.

From a social anthropological perspective, Relationship marketing theory and practice can be interpreted as commodity exchange that instrumentalises features of gift exchange.[4] Marketers, consciously or intuitively, are recognizing reciprocity, a 'pre-modern' form of exchange, and have begun to use it.

Thus Relationship marketing revolves around gaining loyal customers.

According to Liam Alvey, Relationship marketing can be applied where there are competitive product alternatives for customers to choose from and an ongoing desire for that product.[5] Research studying Relationship marketing suggests that companies can do this through one of the three value strategies: best price, best product or best service.

Hence companies can relay their Relationship marketing message through value statements.[6] The practice of Relationship marketing has been facilitated by several generations of customer relationship management software, which track and analyze each customer's preferences and activities.

For example, an automobile manufacturer maintaining a database of when and how repeat customers buy their products, including data concerning their choices and purchase financing, can more efficiently develop one-to-one marketing offers and product benefits.

Moreover, extensive use of such software is found in web applications.

A consumer shopping profile can be built as a person shops online and is then used to compute his likely preferences.

These predicted offerings can then be presented to the customer through cross-sell, email recommendation and other channels.

Relationship marketing has also migrated back into direct mail.

Marketers can use the technological capabilities of digital, toner-based printing presses to produce unique, personalised pieces for each recipient through variable data printing.

They can personalise documents by information contained in their databases, including name, address, demographics, purchase history and dozens to hundreds of other variables.

The result is a printed piece that reflects the individual needs and preferences of each recipient, increasing the relevance of the piece and increasing the response rate.

Additionally, Relationship marketing has been strongly influenced by reengineering.

According to process reengineering theory, organizations should be structured according to complete tasks and processes rather than functions.

Thus cross-function teams should be responsible for a whole process from beginning to end rather than having the work go from one functional department to another, whereas traditional marketing uses the functional (or 'silo') department approach where stages of production are handled by different departments.

The legacy of traditional marketing can still be seen in the traditional four Ps of the marketing mix: pricing, product management, promotion, and placement.

According to Gordon (1999), the marketing mix approach is too limited to provide a usable framework for assessing and developing customer relationships in many industries and should be replaced by the Relationship marketing alternative model where the focus is on customers, relationships and interaction over time rather than markets and products.

In contrast, Relationship marketing is cross-functional, organised around processes that involve all aspects of an organization.

In fact, some commentators prefer to call Relationship marketing 'relationship management' because it involves much more than that which is included in normal marketing.

Because of its broad scope, Relationship marketing can be effective in many contexts.

As well as being relevant to 'for profit' businesses, research indicates that Relationship marketing can be useful for organizations in the voluntary sector[7] and in the public sector.[8][9] Martin Christopher, Adrian Payne and David Ballantyne at the Cranfield School of Management claim that Relationship marketing has the potential to forge a synthesis between quality management, customer service management and marketing.[10] Relationship marketing relies on the communication and acquisition of consumer requirements solely from existing customers in a mutually beneficial exchange usually involving permission for contact by the customer through an opt-in system.[11] With particular relevance to customer satisfaction, the relative price and quality of goods and services produced or sold through a company alongside customer service generally determine the amount of sales relative to that of competing companies.

Although groups targeted through Relationship marketing may be large, accuracy of communication and overall relevance to the customer remains higher than that of direct marketing.

However, Relationship marketing has less potential for generating new leads than direct marketing and is limited to viral marketing for acquiring customers.[citation needed] A principle of Relationship marketing is the retention of customers in order to ensure repeated trade from preexisting customers by satisfying requirements above those of competing companies through a mutually beneficial relationship.[11][12] This technique balances new customers and opportunities with current and existing customers to maximise profit and counteracts the leaky bucket theory of business, where new customers in older direct marketing-oriented businesses are gained at the expense of the loss of older customers.[13][14] This process of 'churning' is less economically viable than retaining all or the majority of customers using both direct and relationship management because securing new customers requires more investment.[15] Many companies in competing markets redirect or allocate large amounts of resources towards customer retention.

In markets with increasing competition, attracting new customers may cost up to five times more than retaining current customers because direct or 'offensive' marketing requires much more to cause defection from competitors.[15] However, it is suggested that because extensive classic marketing theories center on means of attracting customers and creating transactions rather than maintaining them, the predominant usage of direct marketing used in the past is now gradually being used more with Relationship marketing as the latter's importance becomes more recognizable.[15] Reichheld and Sasser (1990) claim that a 5% improvement in customer retention can cause an increase in profitability of between 25 and 85 percent in terms of net present value depending on the industry.[16] However, Carrol and Reichheld dispute these calculations, claiming that they result from faulty cross-sectional analysis.[17] Research by John Fleming and Jim Asplund indicates that engaged customers generate 1.7 times more revenue than normal customers while having engaged employees and engaged customers returns a revenue gain of 3.4 times the normal return.[18] According to Buchanan and Gilles, the increased profitability associated with customer retention efforts occurs because of several factors once a relationship has been established with a customer: The relationship ladder of customer loyalty groups types of customers according to their level of loyalty.

The ladder's first rung consists of prospects, non-customers who are likely to become customers in the future.

This is followed by the successive rungs of customer, client, supporter, advocate, and partner.

The relationship marketer's objective is to 'help' customers climb the ladder as high up as possible.

This usually involves providing more personalised service and providing service quality that exceeds expectations at each step.

Customer retention efforts involve multiple considerations: A technique to calculate the value to a firm of a sustained customer relationship has been developed.

This calculation is typically called customer lifetime value, a prediction of the net profit of a customer's relationship with a company.

Retention strategies may also include building barriers to customer switching by product bundling (combining several products or services into one package and offering them at a single price), cross-selling (selling related products to current customers), cross-promotions (giving discounts or other promotional incentives to purchasers of related products), loyalty programs (giving incentives for frequent purchases), increasing switching costs (adding termination costs such as mortgage termination fees), and integrating computer systems of multiple organizations (primarily in industrial marketing).

Many relationship marketers use a team-based approach due to the concept that the more points of contact between the organization and customer, the stronger the bond and the more secure the relationship.

Relationship marketing and traditional or transactional marketing are not mutually exclusive, and there is no need for a conflict between them.

In practice, a relationship-oriented marketer still has choices depending on the situation.

Most firms blend the two approaches in order to reach a short-term marketing goal or long-term marketing strategy.[20] Many products have a service component to them, which has been growing in recent decades.

Relationship marketing aims to strengthen the relationship with clients and secure them.

Morgan and Hunt(1994) made a distinction between economic and social exchange on the basis of exchange theory and concluded that the basic guarantee of social exchange was the spirit of the contract of trust and commitment.

The transition from economic exchange theory to social exchange theory is where the one-time transaction's prevalence is reduced.

Besides, the theoretical core of enterprise Relationship marketing in this period is the cooperative relationship based on commitment, which defines Relationship marketing from the perspective of exchange theory and emphasizes that Relationship marketing is an activity related to the progress, maintenance and development of all marketing activities.

The theory states that trading enterprises are composed of trust and commitment and that the basis of marketing activities to establish long-term relations.

Factors affecting cooperation from both sides include communication, power, cost and benefit and opportunism behavior; but the relationship effect is mainly formed by trust and commitment.

Moreover, Copulsky and Wolf (1990) introduced terminology like 'one to one' marketing that leverages IT to target customers with specific offers.[21] Enterprise has an incentive to improve the effect of relationships with customer.

When access to data and information that improves the relationship with the customer has a low cost, enterprises pay the cost in order to improve relations with customers.

Due to the development of communication and Internet technology, information costs have decreased substantially.

Liker and Klamath (1998) introduced the relationship between enterprises and suppliers into the scope of relational marketing, claiming that in the marketing process manufacturers make suppliers assume corresponding responsibilities and enable them to exploit technological and resource advantages in the production process, improving their marketing innovation.

Meanwhile, Lukas and Ferrell (2000) believe that the implementation of customer-oriented marketing can greatly promote marketing innovation and encourage enterprises to break through the traditional relationship model between enterprises and customers and propose new products.

Lethe (2006) confirms the relationship between enterprises and customers through the observation of the benchmarking customer research, finding a positive correlation to innovation.

He posits that good relations between enterprises and customers results in more efficient benchmarking, identifying new potential products, reduce the cost of new product development and increase market acceptance of products.

Also he proposes that all relationships established with relevant parties for enterprise marketing are centered on the establishment of good customer relations: the core concept of Relationship marketing is maintaining a relationship with customers.

Guinness (1994) propounds that Relationship marketing is a consciousness that regards the marketing process as the interaction between enterprises and various aspects of relationships and networks.

According to his research, enterprise faces four relations: its relationship with the macro-environment, that with the micro-environment, market relations and relations with a special market.

In addition, enterprises in the implementation of Relationship marketing are often able to use networks to promote all aspects of relationship coordination and progress.[citation needed] Relationship marketing stresses internal marketing, which is using a marketing orientation within an organization itself.

Many Relationship marketing attributes like collaboration, loyalty and trust determine internal customers' words and actions.

According to this theory, every employee, team and department in the company is simultaneously a supplier and a customer of services and products.

An employee obtains a service at a point in the value chain and then provides a service to another employee further along the value chain.

If internal marketing is effective, every employee both provides and receives exceptional service to and from other employees.

It also helps employees understand the significance of their roles and how their roles relate to others'.

If implemented well, it can encourage every employee to see the process in terms of the customer's perception of value and the organization's strategic mission.

Further, an effective internal marketing program is a prerequisite for effective external marketing efforts (W.

George 1990).[22] Christopher, Payne and Ballantyne (1991) identify six markets that they claim to be central to Relationship marketing: internal markets, supplier markets, recruitment markets, referral markets, influence markets and customer markets.[10] Referral marketing is the development and implementation of a marketing plan in order to stimulate referrals.

Marketing to suppliers is aimed at ensuring a long-term conflict-free relationship in which all parties understand the others' needs and exceed their expectations.

Such a strategy can reduce costs and improve quality.

Meanwhile, Influence markets involve a wide range of sub-markets, including government regulators, standards bodies, lobbyists, stockholders, bankers, venture capitalists, financial analysts, stockbrokers, consumer associations, environmental associations and labor associations.

These activities are typically carried out by the public relations department, but relationship marketers believe that marketing to all six markets is the responsibility of everyone in an organization.

Each market may require its own explicit strategies and marketing mix.

Live-in marketing (LIM) is a variant of marketing and advertising in which the target consumer is allowed to sample or use a product in a relaxed atmosphere over a long period of time.

Much like product placement in film and television, LIM was developed as a means to reach select target demographics in a non-invasive and much less garish manner than traditional advertising.

While LIM represents an entirely untapped avenue of marketing, it is not an entirely novel idea.

With the rising popularity of experiential and event marketing in North America and Europe and the relatively high ROI in terms of advertising dollars spent on experiential marketing compared to traditional big media advertising, industry analysts see LIM as a natural progression.[23] LIM functions around the premise that marketing or advertising agencies aim to appeal to companies' target demographic.

Avenues such as sponsorship or direct product placement and sampling are explored in turn.

Unlike traditional event marketing, LIM suggests that end-users can sample the product or service in a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere.

The theory posits that the end-user will have as positive as possible an interaction with the given brand, thereby leading to word-of-mouth communication and potential future purchases.[24] If the success of a traditional event and experiential marketing is shared with LIM, a lucrative and low-cost means of product promotion could be demonstrated.

However, this means of advertising is still being developed, and more research is required to determine the true success of such campaigns.

The first company to explicitly offer LIM services was Hostival Connect in late 2010.

United Talent Agency

United Talent Agency (UTA) is a talent agency representing artists and other professionals in the entertainment industry.

The Beverly Hills, California based company was established in 1991 and, as of 2017, has approximately 900 employees, around 300 of which are agents.

UTA has divisions focused on film, television, digital, books, music, video games, branding and licensing, speaking, marketing, fine arts, news and broadcasting, among others.

The agency also operates the non-profit UTA Foundation.

UTA, established in 1991, is a private company representing talent in a variety of industries, including film, television, digital media, publishing, music, and video games.[1] It is one of the largest such agencies in the world, with approximately 300 agents representing actors, directors, producers, recording artists, writers, and other professionals.[2] Its services also include brand management, film financing and packaging, licensing, marketing, strategic management, and venture capital financing for companies.[3] In addition to Beverly Hills, UTA has offices in London, Malmö, Miami, Nashville, and New York.[4] UTA has around 900 employees overall, as of February 2018.[5] The company operates as a partnership.[6] Co-founders Jim Berkus and Peter Benedek serve as chairman and director, respectively.[7] Jeremy Zimmer, also a co-founder,[8] serves as chief executive officer (CEO).[7] David Kramer and Jay Sures serve as co-presidents.[7] These executives serve on the board of directors along with Tracey Jacobs, Blair Kohan,[9] and Matt Rice.

United Talent Agency was established in 1991 through the merger of the Bauer-Benedek Agency and Leading Artists Agency.[10] Jim Berkus, Jeremy Zimmer,[11][12] and Peter Benedek are UTA's co-founders.[13][14] UTA had 10 partners and 40 agents by mid-1994.[15] The company began compiling a weekly list of mostly entry-level employment opportunities across the entertainment industry, which was described by the Los Angeles Times in 2001 as "among the most coveted documents in wannabe Hollywood".[16][17] In mid 1996, the company had expanded to 45 agents and was described in the media as one of Hollywood's "big four" agencies.[18] By the early 2000s, the agency had become known for its roster of comedians including Jim Carrey, Dave Chappelle, Will Ferrell, and Ben Stiller, along with writers for popular comedy television programs.[19][19] UTA was also known for its television talent, representing clients such as David Chase and Dick Wolf.

In 2006, the Los Angeles Times described UTA as a "tastemaker" agency, noting clients such as Don Cheadle, Johnny Depp, and M.

Night Shyamalan.[20] The agency established "UTA U" in 2008 to provide skills training to interns by partners and other executives.

The program also includes a community service component.[21] UTA was inducted into Vanity Fair's "New Establishment Hall of Fame" in 2010.[22][23] In 2011, UTA relocated its headquarters to a Civic Center Drive complex, which was renamed UTA Plaza.[24] The company acquired N.S.

Bienstock, one of the largest agencies for television news talent in the United States, in January 2014.[1][25] N.S.

Bienstock represented more than 600 television news anchors, reporters, and producers, including: Glenn Beck, Anderson Cooper, Megyn Kelly, Steve Kroft, Lara Logan, David Muir, Norah O'Donnell, Bill O'Reilly, Robin Roberts, Bob Schieffer, and Bob Simon.[1][26][25] Richard Leibner and Carole Cooper continued to serve in their roles as co-presidents of N.S.

Bienstock.[1][27] The merger made UTA the largest company representing television news talent.[1] In 2017, UTA did not renew O'Reilly's contract due to allegations of sexual harassment.[28][29] The venture was rebranded UTA News & Broadcast in 2017.[30] The agency created a new publishing imprint called Keywords Press in May 2014, to publish books by internet entertainers.

UTA partnered with Atria Publishing Group, a division of Simon & Schuster, to create the imprint.

Keywords announced deals with Shane Dawson, Connor Franta, and Joey Graceffa.[31][32] In 2015, UTA hired a dozen agents from Creative Artists Agency in what was widely characterized in the media as a "midnight raid".[33][34] Creative Artists Agency filed a lawsuit in response.[35][36][37] Also in that year, the company took a minority investment from Jeffrey W.

Ubben, founder and CEO of ValueAct Capital, who became a non-voting UTA board member.[34] ValueAct also was invested in 21st Century Fox, Adobe Systems, CB Richard Ellis, and Microsoft at the time.[26] UTA acquired The Agency Group (TAG), the world's largest independent music agency, in August 2015.

TAG had approximately 95 agents working in cities including London, Los Angeles, and New York,[26] and brought around 2,000 artists into UTA's client portfolio,[38][39] including Muse, Paramore and The Black Keys.[26] UTA expanded its New York City offices in 2016.[40][41] In early 2017, UTA held several events relating to political and social movements.

In lieu of its annual Academy Awards party, UTA organized a "United Voices" rally outside the company's Beverly Hills headquarters two days before the 89th Academy Awards, in response to President Donald Trump's signing of Executive Order 13769, commonly referred to as the "Muslim travel ban".[42][43][44] As many as 2,000 demonstrators attended in support of refugee relief and freedom of speech, including Michael J.

Fox, Gavin Newsom, Bill Nye, Wilmer Valderrama, and Kristen Wiig.[45][46][47][48] UTA also contributed $250,000, plus $70,000 collected via crowdfunding, to the American Civil Liberties Union and the International Rescue Committee.[46][47] The company hosted events for female employees in Los Angeles, New York, and Toronto as part of the Day Without a Woman.[49][50] In March 2017, UTA acquired an equity stake in the investment banking firm AGM Partners to give the agency and its clients guidance on investments in the media and entertainment sector.[51][52] UTA acquired Greater Talent Network (GTN), which focuses on public speaking engagements, in September 2017.[51][53] Don Epstein, GTN's founder and CEO who represented clients like Louis Freeh, Michael Lewis, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Ruffalo, and Lesley Stahl, was named a partner at UTA.[53] GTN continued to operate from its offices in Florida and New York City.[51] The New York Observer named UTA one of "Hollywood's 7 Most Powerful Talent Agencies" in November 2017.

In December, the agency also hosted Anita Hill at its offices during the early days of the Me Too movement,[54] and provided support to the industry's Commission on Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality in the Workplace, which Hill went on to lead.[55] UTA became a founding donor of Time's Up in early 2018, committing $1 million to the organization against sexual harassment in the workplace in response to the Weinstein effect and Me Too movement.[56][57] UTA acquired Circle Talent Agency, which focuses on dance and electronic music, in April 2018.[58] NBA agent Rich Paul was named "Power Broker of the Year" by GQ Magazine.

[59] The agency operates a non-profit organization called UTA Foundation.

The foundation's annual week-long Project Impact has worked with various organizations and encourages employees to offer community service.[60]

Viral marketing

Viral marketing or viral advertising is a business strategy that uses existing social networks to promote a product.

Its name refers to how consumers spread information about a product with other people, much in the same way that a virus spreads from one person to another.[1] It can be delivered by word of mouth or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet and mobile networks.[2] The concept is often misused or misunderstood,[3] as people apply it to any successful enough story without taking into account the word "viral".[4] Viral advertising is personal and, while coming from an identified sponsor, it does not mean businesses pay for its distribution.[5] Most of the well-known viral ads circulating online are ads paid by a sponsor company, launched either on their own platform (company web page or social media profile) or on social media websites such as YouTube.[6] Consumers receive the page link from a social media network or copy the entire ad from a website and pass it along through e-mail or posting it on a blog, web page or social media profile.

Viral marketing may take the form of video clips, interactive Flash games, advergames, ebooks, brandable software, images, text messages, email messages, or web pages.

The most commonly utilized transmission vehicles for viral messages include pass-along based, incentive based, trendy based, and undercover based.

However, the creative nature of Viral marketing enables an "endless amount of potential forms and vehicles the messages can utilize for transmission", including mobile devices.[7] The ultimate goal of marketers interested in creating successful Viral marketing programs is to create viral messages that appeal to individuals with high social networking potential (SNP) and that have a high probability of being presented and spread by these individuals and their competitors in their communications with others in a short period.[8] The term "Viral marketing" has also been used pejoratively to refer to stealth marketing campaigns—marketing strategies that advertise a product to people without them knowing they are being marketed to.[9] The emergence of "Viral marketing", as an approach to advertisement, has been tied to the popularization of the notion that ideas spread like viruses.

The field that developed around this notion, memetics, peaked in popularity in the 1990s.[10] As this then began to influence marketing gurus, it took on a life of its own in that new context.

The term viral strategy was first used in marketing in 1995, in a pre-digital marketing era, by a strategy team at Chiat / Day advertising in LA (now TBWA LA), lead by Lorraine Ketch and Fred Satler, for the launch of the first PlayStation for Sony Computer Entertainment.[citation needed] Born from a need to combat huge target cynicism the insight was that people reject things pushed at them but seek out things that elude them.[citation needed] Chiat / Day created a 'stealth' campaign to go after influencers and opinion leaders, using street teams for the first time in brand marketing and layered an intricate omni-channel web of info and intrigue.[citation needed] Insiders picked up on it and spread the word.[citation needed] Within 6 months, PlayStation was number one in its category—Sony's most successful launch in history.[citation needed] There is debate on the origin and the popularization of the specific term Viral marketing, though some of the earliest uses of the current term are attributed to the Harvard Business School graduate Tim Draper and faculty member Jeffrey Rayport.[citation needed] The term was later popularized by Rayport in the 1996 Fast Company article "The Virus of Marketing",[11] and Tim Draper and Steve Jurvetson of the venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson in 1997 to describe Hotmail's practice of appending advertising to outgoing mail from their users.[12] An earlier attestation of the term is found in PC User magazine in 1989, but with a somewhat differing meaning.[13][14] Among the first to write about Viral marketing on the Internet was the media critic Doug Rushkoff.[15] The assumption is that if such an advertisement reaches a "susceptible" user, that user becomes "infected" (i.e., accepts the idea) and shares the idea with others "infecting them", in the viral analogy's terms.

As long as each infected user shares the idea with more than one susceptible user on average (i.e., the basic reproductive rate is greater than one—the standard in epidemiology for qualifying something as an epidemic), the number of infected users grows according to an exponential curve.

Of course, the marketing campaign may be successful even if the message spreads more slowly, if this user-to-user sharing is sustained by other forms of marketing communications, such as public relations or advertising.[citation needed] Bob Gerstley was among the first to write about algorithms designed to identify people with high "social networking potential."[16] Gerstley employed SNP algorithms in quantitative marketing research.

In 2004, the concept of the alpha user was coined to indicate that it had now become possible to identify the focal members of any viral campaign, the "hubs" who were most influential.

Alpha users could be targeted for advertising purposes most accurately in mobile phone networks, due to their personal nature.[citation needed] In early 2013 the first ever Viral Summit was held in Las Vegas.

It attempted to identify similar trends in Viral marketing methods for various media.

According to the book Contagious: Why Things Catch On,[17] there are six key factors that drive virality.[18] They are organized in an acronym called STEPPS which stands for: According to marketing professors Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein, to make Viral marketing work, three basic criteria must be met, i.e., giving the right message to the right messengers in the right environment:[19] Whereas Kaplan, Haenlein and others reduce the role of marketers to crafting the initial viral message and seeding it, futurist and sales and marketing analyst Marc Feldman, who conducted IMT Strategies' Viral marketing study in 2001,[citation needed] carves a different role for marketers which pushes the 'art' of Viral marketing much closer to 'science'.[21] To clarify and organize the information related to potential measures of viral campaigns, the key measurement possibilities should be considered in relation to the objectives formulated for the viral campaign.

In this sense, some of the key cognitive outcomes of Viral marketing activities can include measures such as the number of views, clicks, and hits for specific content, as well as the number of shares in social media, such as likes on Facebook or retweets on Twitter, which demonstrate that consumers processed the information received through the marketing message.

Measures such as the number of reviews for a product or the number of members for a campaign web page quantify the number of individuals who have acknowledged the information provided by marketers.

Besides statistics that are related to online traffic, surveys can assess the degree of product or brand knowledge, though this type of measurement is more complicated and requires more resources.[22][23] Related to consumers' attitudes toward a brand or even toward the marketing communication, different online and social media statistics, including the number of likes and shares within a social network, can be used.

The number of reviews for a certain brand or product and the quality assessed by users are indicators of attitudes.

Classical measures of consumer attitude toward the brand can be gathered through surveys of consumers.

Behavioral measures are very important because changes in consumers' behavior and buying decisions are what marketers hope to see through viral campaigns.

There are numerous indicators that can be used in this context as a function of marketers' objectives.

Some of them include the most known online and social media statistics such as number and quality of shares, views, product reviews, and comments.

Consumers' brand engagement can be measured through the K-factor, the number of followers, friends, registered users, and time spent on the website.

Indicators that are more bottom-line oriented focus on consumers' actions after acknowledging the marketing content, including the number of requests for information, samples, or test-drives.

Nevertheless, responses to actual call-to-action messages are important, including the conversion rate.

Consumers' behavior is expected to lead to contributions to the bottom line of the company, meaning increase in sales, both in quantity and financial amount.

However, when quantifying changes in sales, managers need to consider other factors that could potentially affect sales besides the Viral marketing activities.

Besides positive effects on sales, the use of Viral marketing is expected to bring significant reductions in marketing costs and expenses.[24][25] Viral marketing often involves and utilizes: Viral target marketing is based on three important principles:[26] By applying these three important disciplines to an advertising model, a VMS company is able to match a client with their targeted customers at a cost-effective advantage.

The Internet makes it possible for a campaign to go viral very fast; it can, so to speak, make a brand famous overnight.

However, the Internet and social media technologies themselves do not make a brand viral; they just enable people to share content to other people faster.

Therefore, it is generally agreed that a campaign must typically follow a certain set of guidelines in order to potentially be successful: The growth of social networks significantly contributed to the effectiveness of Viral marketing.[28] As of 2009, two thirds of the world's Internet population visits a social networking service or blog site at least every week.[29] Facebook alone has over 1 billion active users.[30] In 2009, time spent visiting social media sites began to exceed time spent emailing.[31] A 2010 study found that 52% of people who view news online forward it on through social networks, email, or posts.[32] The introduction of social media has caused a change in how Viral marketing is used and the speed at which information is spread and users interact.[33] This has prompted many companies to use social media as a way to market themselves and their products, with Elsamari Botha and Mignon Reyneke stating that viral messages are "playing an increasingly important role in influencing and shifting public opinion on corporate reputations, brands, and products as well as political parties and public personalities to name but a few."[33] 'The influencers in order to communicate marketing messages to the audiences you seek to reach'.[34] In business, it is indicated that people prefer interaction with humans to a logo.[35] Therefore, it seems that influencers are on behalf of a company to build up a relationship between the brand and their customers.

Companies would be left behind if they neglected the trend of influencers in Viral marketing, as over 60% of global brands have used influencers in marketing in 2016.[36] The influencer types come along with the level of customers' involvement in companies' marketing.[37] First, unintentional influences,[38][37] because of brand satisfaction and low involvement, their action is just to deliver a company's message to a potential user.[39] Secondly, users will become salesmen or promoters for a particular company with incentives.[38][37] For example, ICQ offered their users benefits to create the awareness of their friends.

Finally, the mass reached influencers are those who have a huge range of followers on the social network.

Recent trend in businesses activity is to offer incentives to individual users for re-posting the advertisement messages to their own profiles.

Marketers and agencies commonly consider celebrities as a good influencer with endorsement work.

This conception is similar to celebrity marketing.

Based on a survey, 69% of company marketing department and 74% of agencies are currently working with celebrities in the UK.

The celebrity types come along with their working environment.

Traditional celebrities are considered as singles, dancers, actors or models.

These types of public characters are continuing to be the most commonly used by company marketers.

The survey found that 4 in 10 company having worked with these traditional celebrities in the prior year.

However, people these years are spending more time on social media rather than traditional media such as TV.

The researchers also claim that customers are not firmly believed celebrities are effectively influential.[40][41] Social media stars among a kind of influencer on Viral marketing since consumers are spending more time on the Internet than before.

And companies and agencies start to consider collaborating with social media stars as their product endorser.

Social media stars such as YouTuber Zoella or Instagrammer Aimee Song are followed by millions of people online.

These online celebrities are having more connection and influence with their followers because they have more frequent and realistic conversation and interaction on the Internet in terms of comments or likes.[42] This trend captured by marketers who are used to explore new potential customers.

Agencies are placing social media stars alongside singers and musicians at the top of the heap of celebrity types they had worked with.

And there are more than 28% of company marketers having worked with one social media celebrity in the previous year.[41] Using influencers in Viral marketing provides companies several benefits.

It enables companies to spend little time and budget on their marketing communication and brand awareness promotion.[43] For example, Alberto Zanot, in the 2006 FIFA Football World Cup, shared Zinedine Zidane's headbutt against Italy and engaged more than 1.5 million viewers in less than the very first hour.

Secondly, it enhances the credibility of messages.[44][45][46][47][48] These trust-based relationships grab the audience's attention, create customers' demand, increase sales and loyalty, or simply drive customers' attitude and behavior.[46][47] In the case of Coke, Millennials changed their mind about the product, from parents' drink to the beverage for teens.[49] It built up Millennials' social needs by 'sharing a Coke' with their friends.

This created a deep connection with Gen Y, dramatically increased sales (+11% compared with last year) and market share (+1.6%).[49] No doubt that harnessing influencers would be a lucrative business for both companies and influencers.[50] The concept of 'influencer' is no longer just an 'expert' but also anyone who delivers and influence on the credibility of a message (e.g.

blogger)[45] In 2014, BritMums, network sharing family's daily life, had 6,000 bloggers and 11,300 views per month on average[51][52] and became endorsers for some particular brand such as Coca-Cola, Morrison.

Another case, Aimee Song who had over 3.6m followers on the Instagram page and became Laura Mercier's social media influencers, gaining $500,000 monthly.[51] Decision-making process seems to be hard for customers these days.

Millers (1956) argued that people suffered from short-term memory.[53] This links to difficulties in customers' decision-making process and Paradox of Choice,[54] as they face various adverts and newspapers daily.[55] Influencers serve as a credible source for customers' decision-making process.[45][39] Neilsen reported that 80% of consumers appreciated a recommendation of their acquaintances,[56] as they have reasons to trust in their friends delivering the messages without benefits[56] and helping them reduce perceived risks behind choices.[57][58] The main risk coming from the company is for it to target the wrong influencer or segment.

Once the content is online, the sender won't be able to control it anymore.[59] It is therefore vital to aim at a particular segment when releasing the message.

This is what happened to the company BlendTech which released videos showing the blender could blend anything, and encouraged users to share videos.

This mainly caught the attention of teenage boys who thought it funny to blend and destroy anything they could;[60] even though the videos went viral, they did not target potential buyers of the product.

This is considered to be one of the major factors that affects the success of the online promotion.

It is critical and inevitable for the organisations to target the right audience.

Another risk with internet is that a company's video could end up going viral on the other side of the planet where their products are not even for sale.[61] According to a paper by Duncan Watts and colleagues entitled: "Everyone's an influencer",[62] the most common risk in Viral marketing is that of the influencer not passing on the message, which can lead to the failure of the Viral marketing campaign.

A second risk is that the influencer modifies the content of the message.

A third risk is that influencers pass on the wrong message.

This can result from a misunderstanding or as a deliberate move.

Between 1996–1997, Hotmail was one of the first internet businesses to become extremely successful utilizing Viral marketing techniques by inserting the tagline "Get your free e-mail at Hotmail" at the bottom of every e-mail sent out by its users.

Hotmail was able to sign up 12 million users in 18 months.[63] At the time, this was historically the fastest growth of any user based media company.[64] By the time Hotmail reached 66 million users, the company was establishing 270,000 new accounts each day.[64] In 2000, Slate.com described TiVo's unpublicized gambit of giving free systems to web-savvy enthusiasts to create "viral" word of mouth, pointing out that a viral campaign differs from a publicity stunt.[65] Burger King has used several marketing campaigns.

Its The Subservient Chicken campaign, running from 2004 until 2007, was an example of viral or word-of-mouth marketing.[66] The Blendtec viral video series Will It Blend? debuted in 2006.

In the show, Tom Dickson, Blendtec founder and CEO, attempts to blend various unusual items in order to show off the power of his blender.

Will it Blend? has been nominated for the 2007 YouTube award for Best Series, winner of .Net Magazine's 2007 Viral Video campaign of the year and winner of the Bronze level Clio Award for Viral Video in 2008.[67] In 2010, Blendtec claimed the top spot on the AdAge list of "Top 10 Viral Ads of All Time".[68] The Will It Blend page on YouTube currently shows over 200 million video views.[69] The Big Word Project, launched in 2008, aimed to redefine the Oxford English Dictionary by allowing people to submit their website as the definition of their chosen word.

The project, created to fund two Masters students' educations, attracted the attention of bloggers worldwide, and was featured on Daring Fireball and Wired Magazine.[70] Companies may also be able to use a viral video that they did not create for marketing purposes.

A notable example is the viral video "The Extreme Diet Coke & Mentos Experiments" created by Fritz Grobe and Stephen Voltz of EepyBird.

After the initial success of the video, Mentos was quick to offer its support.

They shipped EepyBird thousands of mints for their experiments.

Coke was slower to get involved.[71] On March 6, 2012, Dollar Shave Club launched their online video campaign.

In the first 48 hours of their video debuting on YouTube they had over 12,000 people signing up for the service.

The video cost just $4500 to make and as of November 2015 has had more than 21 million views.

The video was considered as one of the best Viral marketing campaigns of 2012 and won "Best Out-of-Nowhere Video Campaign" at the 2012 AdAge Viral Video Awards.

In 2014, A.L.S.

Ice Bucket Challenge was among the best Viral marketing challenges examples in the social network.

Millions of people on the social media started filming themselves, pouring a bucket of ice water over their heads and sharing the video with their friends.

The challenge was created to give support for fighting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also called Lou Gehrig's disease.

People finished the challenge and then nominated the next person they knew on the social media to take the same challenge.

By following this trend, Ice Bucket Challenge became a 'fab' on social media with many online celebrities such as Tyler Oakley, Zoe Sugg and huge celebrities and entrepreneurs like Justin Bieber, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates participating.[72] Until September 2014, over 2.4 million ice bucket-related videos had been posted on Facebook, and 28 million people had uploaded, commented on or liked ice bucket-related posts.

And about 3.7 million videos had been uploaded on Instagram with the hashtags #ALSicebucketchallenge and #icebucketchallenge.[73] The ALS association didn't invent the ice bucket challenge, but they received a huge amount of donation from this activity.

It raised a reported $220 million worldwide for A.L.S.

organisations, and this amount is thirteen times as much donation as what it had in the whole preceding year in just eight weeks.[74] In mid 2016, an Indian tea company (TE-A-ME) has delivered 6,000 tea bags[75] to Donald Trump and launched a video on YouTube.[76] and Facebook[77] The video campaign received various awards including most creative PR stunt[78] in Southeast Asia after receiving 52000+ video shares, 3.1M video view in first 72-hour and hundreds of publication mentions (including Mashable, Quartz,[79] Indian Express,[80] Buzzfeed[81]) across 80+ countries.

Fruition

Fruition is a full service digital marketing agency based in Denver, Colorado that provides web design & development and Internet marketing services to multiple international corporations.[6][7] The company is also known for its Google Penalty Checker tool.[8][9][10][11] Founded in 2000[12] by current CEO Brad Anderson,[2] Fruition initially began as an SEO company.

It later expanded to the larger niche of digital marketing.[12] The company's core services now include SEO, website development & design,[13] app development, digital marketing, and brand & reputation management.[4][5] Fruition was first trademarked in 2002, and registered with the World Intellectual Property Organization in 2007.[14] In 2013, Fruition released its Google Penalty Checker tool, which has notably been the subject of multiple news reports.[9][10][11][15][16][17] It is a proprietary tool that uses statistical analysis and third-party data to determine if a website had been hit by a Google penalty, as well as which particular update caused it.[18][19] Once the tool is granted access to a Google Analytics account,[10][20] it uses algorithms involving bounce rates, organic traffic, new vs.

repeat visits, and page views, among other data, to evaluate a possible Google penalty[3][9][16][17] due to a recent update.[11] It provides a graph of all the updates and the percentage of their effect on the site.[10] The tool is free for up to two sites, after which pricing is applicable.[9][20] The tool has been noted to be beneficial for businesses that do not stay up to date with Google updates.[11]

Internet

The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices.

It is a network of networks that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies.

The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, telephony, and file sharing.

The origins of the Internet date back to the development of packet switching and research commissioned by the United States Department of Defense in the 1960s to enable time-sharing of computers.[1] The primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1970s.

The funding of the National Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial extensions, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies, and the merger of many networks.[2] The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet,[3] and generated a sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were connected to the network.

Although the Internet was widely used by academia in the 1980s, commercialization incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern life.

Most traditional communication media, including telephony, radio, television, paper mail and newspapers are reshaped, redefined, or even bypassed by the Internet, giving birth to new services such as email, Internet telephony, Internet television, online music, digital newspapers, and video streaming websites.

Newspaper, book, and other print publishing are adapting to website technology, or are reshaped into blogging, web feeds and online news aggregators.

The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking.

Online shopping has grown exponentially both for major retailers and small businesses and entrepreneurs, as it enables firms to extend their "brick and mortar" presence to serve a larger market or even sell goods and services entirely online.

Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries.

The Internet has no single centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage; each constituent network sets its own policies.[4] The overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address (IP address) space and the Domain Name System (DNS), are directed by a maintainer organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.[5] In November 2006, the Internet was included on USA Today's list of New Seven Wonders.[6] When the term Internet is used to refer to the specific global system of interconnected Internet Protocol (IP) networks, the word is a proper noun according to the Chicago Manual of Style[7] that should be written with an initial capital letter.

In common use and the media, it is often not capitalized, viz.

the Internet.

Some guides specify that the word should be capitalized when used as a noun, but not capitalized when used as an adjective.[8] The Internet is also often referred to as the Net, as a short form of network.

Historically, as early as 1849, the word Internetted was used uncapitalized as an adjective, meaning interconnected or interwoven.[9] The designers of early computer networks used Internet both as a noun and as a verb in shorthand form of Internetwork or Internetworking, meaning interconnecting computer networks.[10][11] The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably in everyday speech; it is common to speak of "going on the Internet" when using a web browser to view web pages.

However, the World Wide Web or the Web is only one of a large number of Internet services.[12][13] The Web is a collection of interconnected documents (web pages) and other web resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs.[14] The term Interweb is a portmanteau of Internet and World Wide Web typically used sarcastically to parody a technically unsavvy user.

The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the United States Department of Defense funded research into time-sharing of computers in the 1960s.[15][16][17] Meanwhile, research into packet switching, one of the fundamental Internet technologies, started in the work of Paul Baran in the early 1960s and, independently, Donald Davies in 1965.[1][18] Packet switching was incorporated into the proposed design for the ARPANET in 1967 and other packet-switched networks such as the NPL network, the Merit Network, and CYCLADES which were developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s.[19] ARPANET development began with two network nodes which were interconnected between the Network Measurement Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science directed by Leonard Kleinrock, and the NLS system at SRI International (SRI) by Douglas Engelbart in Menlo Park, California, on 29 October 1969.[20] The third site was the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by the University of Utah Graphics Department.

In a sign of future growth, fifteen sites were connected to the young ARPANET by the end of 1971.[21][22] These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.

Early international collaborations for the ARPANET were rare.

Connections were made in 1973 to the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR) via a satellite station in Tanum, Sweden, and to Peter Kirstein's research group at University College London which provided a gateway to British academic networks.[23][24] The ARPANET project and international working groups led to the development of various protocols and standards by which multiple separate networks could become a single network or "a network of networks".[25] In 1974, Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn used the term Internet as a shorthand for Internetwork in .mw-parser-output cite.citation{font-style:inherit}.mw-parser-output .citation q{quotes:"\"""\"""'""'"}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-free a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-free a{background-image:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Lock-green.svg/9px-Lock-green.svg.png");background-image:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Lock-green.svg");background-repeat:no-repeat;background-size:9px;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .id-lock-registration a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-limited a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-registration a{background-image:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-gray-alt-2.svg.png");background-image:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Lock-gray-alt-2.svg");background-repeat:no-repeat;background-size:9px;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .id-lock-subscription a,.mw-parser-output .citation .cs1-lock-subscription a{background-image:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg/9px-Lock-red-alt-2.svg.png");background-image:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/aa/Lock-red-alt-2.svg");background-repeat:no-repeat;background-size:9px;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration{color:#555}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription span,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration span{border-bottom:1px dotted;cursor:help}.mw-parser-output .cs1-ws-icon a{background-image:url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg/12px-Wikisource-logo.svg.png");background-image:linear-gradient(transparent,transparent),url("//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Wikisource-logo.svg");background-repeat:no-repeat;background-size:12px;background-position:right .1em center}.mw-parser-output code.cs1-code{color:inherit;background:inherit;border:inherit;padding:inherit}.mw-parser-output .cs1-hidden-error{display:none;font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-visible-error{font-size:100%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-maint{display:none;color:#33aa33;margin-left:0.3em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-subscription,.mw-parser-output .cs1-registration,.mw-parser-output .cs1-format{font-size:95%}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-left,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-left{padding-left:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-right,.mw-parser-output .cs1-kern-wl-right{padding-right:0.2em}.mw-parser-output .citation .mw-selflink{font-weight:inherit}RFC 675,[11] and later RFCs repeated this use.[26] Cerf and Khan credit Louis Pouzin with important influences on TCP/IP design.[27] Commercial PTT providers were concerned with developing X.25 public data networks.[28] Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET).

In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized, which permitted worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks.

TCP/IP network access expanded again in 1986 when the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNet) provided access to supercomputer sites in the United States for researchers, first at speeds of 56 kbit/s and later at 1.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s.[29] The NSFNet expanded into academic and research organizations in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan in 1988–89.[30][31][32][33] Although other network protocols such as UUCP had global reach well before this time, this marked the beginning of the Internet as an intercontinental network.

Commercial Internet service providers (ISPs) emerged in 1989 in the United States and Australia.[34] The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990.

Steady advances in semiconductor technology and optical networking created new economic opportunities for commercial involvement in the expansion of the network in its core and for delivering services to the public.

In mid-1989, MCI Mail and Compuserve established connections to the Internet, delivering email and public access products to the half million users of the Internet.[35] Just months later, on 1 January 1990, PSInet launched an alternate Internet backbone for commercial use; one of the networks that added to the core of the commercial Internet of later years.

In March 1990, the first high-speed T1 (1.5 Mbit/s) link between the NSFNET and Europe was installed between Cornell University and CERN, allowing much more robust communications than were capable with satellites.[36] Six months later Tim Berners-Lee would begin writing WorldWideWeb, the first web browser after two years of lobbying CERN management.

By Christmas 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools necessary for a working Web: the HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) 0.9,[37] the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the first Web browser (which was also a HTML editor and could access Usenet newsgroups and FTP files), the first HTTP server software (later known as CERN httpd), the first web server,[38] and the first Web pages that described the project itself.

In 1991 the Commercial Internet eXchange was founded, allowing PSInet to communicate with the other commercial networks CERFnet and Alternet.

Stanford Federal Credit Union was the first financial institution to offer online Internet banking services to all of its members in October 1994.[39] In 1996 OP Financial Group, also a cooperative bank, became the second online bank in the world and the first in Europe.[40] By 1995, the Internet was fully commercialized in the U.S.

when the NSFNet was decommissioned, removing the last restrictions on use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic.[41] As technology advanced and commercial opportunities fueled reciprocal growth, the volume of Internet traffic started experiencing similar characteristics as that of the scaling of MOS transistors, exemplified by Moore's law, doubling every 18 months.

This growth, formalized as Edholm's law, was catalyzed by advances in MOS technology, laser lightwave systems, and noise performance.[44] Since 1995, the Internet has tremendously impacted culture and commerce, including the rise of near instant communication by email, instant messaging, telephony (Voice over Internet Protocol or VoIP), two-way interactive video calls, and the World Wide Web[45] with its discussion forums, blogs, social networking, and online shopping sites.

Increasing amounts of data are transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber optic networks operating at 1-Gbit/s, 10-Gbit/s, or more.

The Internet continues to grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information and knowledge, commerce, entertainment and social networking.[46] During the late 1990s, it was estimated that traffic on the public Internet grew by 100 percent per year, while the mean annual growth in the number of Internet users was thought to be between 20% and 50%.[47] This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network.[48] As of 31 March 2011[update], the estimated total number of Internet users was 2.095 billion (30.2% of world population).[49] It is estimated that in 1993 the Internet carried only 1% of the information flowing through two-way telecommunication, by 2000 this figure had grown to 51%, and by 2007 more than 97% of all telecommunicated information was carried over the Internet.[50] The Internet is a global network that comprises many voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks.

It operates without a central governing body.

The technical underpinning and standardization of the core protocols (IPv4 and IPv6) is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing technical expertise.

To maintain interoperability, the principal name spaces of the Internet are administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

ICANN is governed by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and other non-commercial communities.

ICANN coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers for use on the Internet, including domain names, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, application port numbers in the transport protocols, and many other parameters.

Globally unified name spaces are essential for maintaining the global reach of the Internet.

This role of ICANN distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body for the global Internet.[51] Regional Internet registries (RIRs) were established for five regions of the world.

The African Network Information Center (AfriNIC) for Africa, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) for North America, the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC) for Asia and the Pacific region, the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry (LACNIC) for Latin America and the Caribbean region, and the Réseaux IP Européens – Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) for Europe, the Middle East, and Central Asia were delegated to assign Internet Protocol address blocks and other Internet parameters to local registries, such as Internet service providers, from a designated pool of addresses set aside for each region.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, an agency of the United States Department of Commerce, had final approval over changes to the DNS root zone until the IANA stewardship transition on 1 October 2016.[52][53][54][55] The Internet Society (ISOC) was founded in 1992 with a mission to "assure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of all people throughout the world".[56] Its members include individuals (anyone may join) as well as corporations, organizations, governments, and universities.

Among other activities ISOC provides an administrative home for a number of less formally organized groups that are involved in developing and managing the Internet, including: the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Internet Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), Internet Research Task Force (IRTF), and Internet Research Steering Group (IRSG).

On 16 November 2005, the United Nations-sponsored World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis established the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss Internet-related issues.

The communications infrastructure of the Internet consists of its hardware components and a system of software layers that control various aspects of the architecture.

As with any computer network, the Internet physically consists of routers, media (such as cabling and radio links), repeaters, modems etc.

However, as an example of Internetworking, many of the network nodes are not necessarily Internet equipment per se, the Internet packets are carried by other full-fledged networking protocols with the Internet acting as a homogeneous networking standard, running across heterogeneous hardware, with the packets guided to their destinations by IP routers.

Internet service providers (ISPs) establish the worldwide connectivity between individual networks at various levels of scope.

End-users who only access the Internet when needed to perform a function or obtain information, represent the bottom of the routing hierarchy.

At the top of the routing hierarchy are the tier 1 networks, large telecommunication companies that exchange traffic directly with each other via very high speed fibre optic cables and governed by peering agreements.

Tier 2 and lower level networks buy Internet transit from other providers to reach at least some parties on the global Internet, though they may also engage in peering.

An ISP may use a single upstream provider for connectivity, or implement multihoming to achieve redundancy and load balancing.

Internet exchange points are major traffic exchanges with physical connections to multiple ISPs.

Large organizations, such as academic institutions, large enterprises, and governments, may perform the same function as ISPs, engaging in peering and purchasing transit on behalf of their internal networks.

Research networks tend to interconnect with large subnetworks such as GEANT, GLORIAD, Internet2, and the UK's national research and education network, JANET.

Both the Internet IP routing structure and hypertext links of the World Wide Web are examples of scale-free networks.[57][disputed (for: unclear whether citation supports claim empirically) – discuss] Computers and routers use routing tables in their operating system to direct IP packets to the next-hop router or destination.

Routing tables are maintained by manual configuration or automatically by routing protocols.

End-nodes typically use a default route that points toward an ISP providing transit, while ISP routers use the Border Gateway Protocol to establish the most efficient routing across the complex connections of the global Internet.

An estimated 70 percent of the world's Internet traffic passes through Ashburn, Virginia.[58][59][60][61] Common methods of Internet access by users include dial-up with a computer modem via telephone circuits, broadband over coaxial cable, fiber optics or copper wires, Wi-Fi, satellite, and cellular telephone technology (e.g.

3G, 4G).

The Internet may often be accessed from computers in libraries and Internet cafes.

Internet access points exist in many public places such as airport halls and coffee shops.

Various terms are used, such as public Internet kiosk, public access terminal, and Web payphone.

Many hotels also have public terminals that are usually fee-based.

These terminals are widely accessed for various usages, such as ticket booking, bank deposit, or online payment.

Wi-Fi provides wireless access to the Internet via local computer networks.

Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi cafes, where users need to bring their own wireless devices such as a laptop or PDA.

These services may be free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based.

Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks.

Commercial Wi-Fi services that cover large areas are available in many cities, such as New York, London, Vienna, Toronto, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Pittsburgh, where the Internet can then be accessed from places such as a park bench.[62] Experiments have also been conducted with proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet, various high-speed data services over cellular networks, and fixed wireless services.

Modern smartphones can also access the Internet through the cellular carrier network.

For Web browsing, these devices provide applications such as Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox and a wide variety of other Internet software may be installed from app-stores.

Internet usage by mobile and tablet devices exceeded desktop worldwide for the first time in October 2016.[63] The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) estimated that, by the end of 2017, 48% of individual users regularly connect to the Internet, up from 34% in 2012.[64] Mobile Internet connectivity has played an important role in expanding access in recent years especially in Asia and the Pacific and in Africa.[65] The number of unique mobile cellular subscriptions increased from 3.89 billion in 2012 to 4.83 billion in 2016, two-thirds of the world's population, with more than half of subscriptions located in Asia and the Pacific.

The number of subscriptions is predicted to rise to 5.69 billion users in 2020.[66] As of 2016[update], almost 60% of the world's population had access to a 4G broadband cellular network, up from almost 50% in 2015 and 11% in 2012[disputed – discuss].[66] The limits that users face on accessing information via mobile applications coincide with a broader process of fragmentation of the Internet.

Fragmentation restricts access to media content and tends to affect poorest users the most.[65] Zero-rating, the practice of Internet service providers allowing users free connectivity to access specific content or applications without cost, has offered opportunities to surmount economic hurdles, but has also been accused by its critics as creating a two-tiered Internet.

To address the issues with zero-rating, an alternative model has emerged in the concept of 'equal rating' and is being tested in experiments by Mozilla and Orange in Africa.

Equal rating prevents prioritization of one type of content and zero-rates all content up to a specified data cap.

A study published by Chatham House, 15 out of 19 countries researched in Latin America had some kind of hybrid or zero-rated product offered.

Some countries in the region had a handful of plans to choose from (across all mobile network operators) while others, such as Colombia, offered as many as 30 pre-paid and 34 post-paid plans.[67] A study of eight countries in the Global South found that zero-rated data plans exist in every country, although there is a great range in the frequency with which they are offered and actually used in each.[68] The study looked at the top three to five carriers by market share in Bangladesh, Colombia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Peru and Philippines.</ref> Across the 181 plans examined, 13 per cent were offering zero-rated services.

Another study, covering Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, found Facebook's Free Basics and Wikipedia Zero to be the most commonly zero-rated content.[69] The Internet standards describe a framework known as the Internet protocol suite (also called TCP/IP, based on the first two components.) This is a model architecture that divides methods into a layered system of protocols, originally documented in RFC 1122 and RFC 1123.

The software layers correspond to the environment or scope in which their services operate.

At the top is the application layer, space for the application-specific networking methods used in software applications.

For example, a web browser program uses the client-server application model and a specific protocol of interaction between servers and clients, while many file-sharing systems use a peer-to-peer paradigm.

Below this top layer, the transport layer connects applications on different hosts with a logical channel through the network with appropriate data exchange methods.

It provides several services including ordered, reliable delivery (TCP), and an unreliable datagram service (UDP).

Underlying these layers are the networking technologies that interconnect networks at their borders and exchange traffic across them.

The Internet layer implements the Internet Protocol which enables computers to identify and locate each other by Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, and route their traffic via intermediate (transit) networks.[70] The Internet protocol layer code is independent of the type of network that it is physically running over.

At the bottom of the architecture is the link layer, which provides logical connectivity between hosts.

The link layer code is usually the only software part customized to the type of physical networking link protocol.

Many link layers have been implemented and each operates over a type of network link, such as within a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (e.g.

Wi-Fi or Ethernet or a dial-up connection, ATM etc.).

The most prominent component of the Internet model is the Internet Protocol (IP).

IP enables Internetworking and, in essence, establishes the Internet itself.

Two versions of the Internet Protocol exist, IPV4 and IPV6.

For locating individual computers on the network, the Internet provides IP addresses.

IP addresses are used by the Internet infrastructure to direct Internet packets to their destinations.

They consist of fixed-length numbers, which are found within the packet.

IP addresses are generally assigned to equipment either automatically via DHCP, or are configured.

However the network also supports other addressing systems.

Users generally enter domain names (e.g.

"en.wikipedia.org") instead of IP addresses because they are easier to remember, they are converted by the Domain Name System (DNS) into IP addresses which are more efficient for routing purposes.

Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) defines an IP address as a 32-bit number.[71] Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4) is the initial version used on the first generation of the Internet and is still in dominant use.

It was designed to address up to ≈4.3 billion (109) hosts.

However, the explosive growth of the Internet has led to IPv4 address exhaustion, which entered its final stage in 2011,[72] when the global IPv4 address allocation pool was exhausted.

Because of the growth of the Internet and the depletion of available IPv4 addresses, a new version of IP IPv6, was developed in the mid-1990s, which provides vastly larger addressing capabilities and more efficient routing of Internet traffic.

IPv6 uses 128 bits for the IP address and was standardized in 1998.[73][74][75] IPv6 deployment has been ongoing since the mid-2000s.

IPv6 is currently in growing deployment around the world, since Internet address registries (RIRs) began to urge all resource managers to plan rapid adoption and conversion.[76] IPv6 is not directly interoperable by design with IPv4.

In essence, it establishes a parallel version of the Internet not directly accessible with IPv4 software.

Thus, translation facilities must exist for Internetworking or nodes must have duplicate networking software for both networks.

Essentially all modern computer operating systems support both versions of the Internet Protocol.

Network infrastructure, however, has been lagging in this development.

Aside from the complex array of physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is facilitated by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts, e.g., peering agreements, and by technical specifications or protocols that describe the exchange of data over the network.

Indeed, the Internet is defined by its interconnections and routing policies.

A subnetwork or subnet is a logical subdivision of an IP network.[77]:1,16 The practice of dividing a network into two or more networks is called subnetting.

Computers that belong to a subnet are addressed with an identical most-significant bit-group in their IP addresses.

This results in the logical division of an IP address into two fields, the network number or routing prefix and the rest field or host identifier.

The rest field is an identifier for a specific host or network interface.

The routing prefix may be expressed in Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) notation written as the first address of a network, followed by a slash character (/), and ending with the bit-length of the prefix.

For example, 198.51.100.0/24 is the prefix of the Internet Protocol version 4 network starting at the given address, having 24 bits allocated for the network prefix, and the remaining 8 bits reserved for host addressing.

Addresses in the range 198.51.100.0 to 198.51.100.255 belong to this network.

The IPv6 address specification 2001:db8::/32 is a large address block with 296 addresses, having a 32-bit routing prefix.

For IPv4, a network may also be characterized by its subnet mask or netmask, which is the bitmask that when applied by a bitwise AND operation to any IP address in the network, yields the routing prefix.

Subnet masks are also expressed in dot-decimal notation like an address.

For example, 255.255.255.0 is the subnet mask for the prefix 198.51.100.0/24.

Traffic is exchanged between subnetworks through routers when the routing prefixes of the source address and the destination address differ.

A router serves as a logical or physical boundary between the subnets.

The benefits of subnetting an existing network vary with each deployment scenario.

In the address allocation architecture of the Internet using CIDR and in large organizations, it is necessary to allocate address space efficiently.

Subnetting may also enhance routing efficiency, or have advantages in network management when subnetworks are administratively controlled by different entities in a larger organization.

Subnets may be arranged logically in a hierarchical architecture, partitioning an organization's network address space into a tree-like routing structure.

While the hardware components in the Internet infrastructure can often be used to support other software systems, it is the design and the standardization process of the software that characterizes the Internet and provides the foundation for its scalability and success.

The responsibility for the architectural design of the Internet software systems has been assumed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).[78] The IETF conducts standard-setting work groups, open to any individual, about the various aspects of Internet architecture.

Resulting contributions and standards are published as Request for Comments (RFC) documents on the IETF web site.

The principal methods of networking that enable the Internet are contained in specially designated RFCs that constitute the Internet Standards.

Other less rigorous documents are simply informative, experimental, or historical, or document the best current practices (BCP) when implementing Internet technologies.

The Internet carries many applications and services, most prominently the World Wide Web, including social media, electronic mail, mobile applications, multiplayer online games, Internet telephony, file sharing, and streaming media services.

Most servers that provide these services are today hosted in data centers, and content is often accessed through high-performance content delivery networks.

The World Wide Web is a global collection of documents, images, multimedia, applications, and other resources, logically interrelated by hyperlinks and referenced with Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs), which provide a global system of named references.

URIs symbolically identify services, web servers, databases, and the documents and resources that they can provide.

Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the main access protocol of the World Wide Web.

Web services also use HTTP for communication between software systems for information transfer, sharing and exchanging business data and logistic and is one of many languages or protocols that can be used for communication on the Internet.[79] World Wide Web browser software, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer/Edge, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple's Safari, and Google Chrome, lets users navigate from one web page to another via the hyperlinks embedded in the documents.

These documents may also contain any combination of computer data, including graphics, sounds, text, video, multimedia and interactive content that runs while the user is interacting with the page.

Client-side software can include animations, games, office applications and scientific demonstrations.

Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines like Yahoo!, Bing and Google, users worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information.

Compared to printed media, books, encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled the decentralization of information on a large scale.

The Web has enabled individuals and organizations to publish ideas and information to a potentially large audience online at greatly reduced expense and time delay.

Publishing a web page, a blog, or building a website involves little initial cost and many cost-free services are available.

However, publishing and maintaining large, professional web sites with attractive, diverse and up-to-date information is still a difficult and expensive proposition.

Many individuals and some companies and groups use web logs or blogs, which are largely used as easily updatable online diaries.

Some commercial organizations encourage staff to communicate advice in their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the corporation as a result.

Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce, which is the sale of products and services directly via the Web, continues to grow.

Online 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.

In 2011, Internet advertising revenues in the United States surpassed those of cable television and nearly exceeded those of broadcast television.[80]:19 Many common online advertising practices are controversial and increasingly subject to regulation.

When the Web developed in the 1990s, a typical web page was stored in completed form on a web server, formatted in HTML, complete for transmission to a web browser in response to a request.

Over time, the process of creating and serving web pages has become dynamic, creating a flexible design, layout, and content.

Websites are often created using content management software with, initially, very little content.

Contributors to these systems, who may be paid staff, members of an organization or the public, fill underlying databases with content using editing pages designed for that purpose while casual visitors view and read this content in HTML form.

There may or may not be editorial, approval and security systems built into the process of taking newly entered content and making it available to the target visitors.

Email is an important communications service available via the Internet.

The concept of sending electronic text messages between parties, analogous to mailing letters or memos, predates the creation of the Internet.[81][82] Pictures, documents, and other files are sent as email attachments.

Email messages can be cc-ed to multiple email addresses.

Internet telephony is a common communications service realized with the Internet.

The name of the principle Internetworking protocol, the Internet Protocol, lends its name to voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

The idea began in the early 1990s with walkie-talkie-like voice applications for personal computers.

VoIP systems now dominate many markets, and are as easy to use and as convenient as a traditional telephone.

The benefit has been in substantial cost savings over traditional telephone calls, especially over long distances.

Cable, ADSL, and mobile data networks provide Internet access in customer premises[83] and inexpensive VoIP network adapters provide the connection for traditional analog telephone sets.

The voice quality of VoIP often exceeds that of traditional calls.

Remaining problems for VoIP include the situation that emergency services may not be universally available, and that devices rely on a local power supply, while older traditional phones are powered from the local loop, and typically operate during a power failure.

File sharing is an example of transferring large amounts of data across the Internet.

A computer file can be emailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment.

It can be uploaded to a website or File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server for easy download by others.

It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues.

The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networks.

In any of these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication, the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption, and money may change hands for access to the file.

The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example, a credit card whose details are also passed—usually fully encrypted—across the Internet.

The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 or other message digests.

These simple features of the Internet, over a worldwide basis, are changing the production, sale, and distribution of anything that can be reduced to a computer file for transmission.

This includes all manner of print publications, software products, news, music, film, video, photography, graphics and the other arts.

This in turn has caused seismic shifts in each of the existing industries that previously controlled the production and distribution of these products.

Streaming media is the real-time delivery of digital media for the immediate consumption or enjoyment by end users.

Many radio and television broadcasters provide Internet feeds of their live audio and video productions.

They may also allow time-shift viewing or listening such as Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features.

These providers have been joined by a range of pure Internet "broadcasters" who never had on-air licenses.

This means that an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to access on-line media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a television or radio receiver.

The range of available types of content is much wider, from specialized technical webcasts to on-demand popular multimedia services.

Podcasting is a variation on this theme, where—usually audio—material is downloaded and played back on a computer or shifted to a portable media player to be listened to on the move.

These techniques using simple equipment allow anybody, with little censorship or licensing control, to broadcast audio-visual material worldwide.

Digital media streaming increases the demand for network bandwidth.

For example, standard image quality needs 1 Mbit/s link speed for SD 480p, HD 720p quality requires 2.5 Mbit/s, and the top-of-the-line HDX quality needs 4.5 Mbit/s for 1080p.[84] Webcams are a low-cost extension of this phenomenon.

While some webcams can give full-frame-rate video, the picture either is usually small or updates slowly.

Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in the Panama Canal, traffic at a local roundabout or monitor their own premises, live and in real time.

Video chat rooms and video conferencing are also popular with many uses being found for personal webcams,

Advertising

Advertising is a marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service or idea.[1]:465 Sponsors of Advertising are typically businesses wishing to promote their products or services.

Advertising is differentiated from public relations in that an advertiser pays for and has control over the message.

It differs from personal selling in that the message is non-personal, i.e., not directed to a particular individual.[1]:661,672 Advertising is communicated through various mass media,[2] including traditional media such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio, outdoor Advertising or direct mail; and new media such as search results, blogs, social media, websites or text messages.

The actual presentation of the message in a medium is referred to as an advertisement, or "ad" or advert for short.

Commercial ads often seek to generate increased consumption of their products or services through "branding", which associates a product name or image with certain qualities in the minds of consumers.

On the other hand, ads that intend to elicit an immediate sale are known as direct-response Advertising.

Non-commercial entities that advertise more than consumer products or services include political parties, interest groups, religious organizations and governmental agencies.

Non-profit organizations may use free modes of persuasion, such as a public service announcement.

Advertising may also help to reassure employees or shareholders that a company is viable or successful.

Modern Advertising originated with the techniques introduced with tobacco Advertising in the 1920s, most significantly with the campaigns of Edward Bernays, considered the founder of modern, "Madison Avenue" Advertising.[3][4] Worldwide spending on Advertising in 2015 amounted to an estimated US$529.43 billion.[5] Advertising's projected distribution for 2017 was 40.4% on TV, 33.3% on digital, 9% on newspapers, 6.9% on magazines, 5.8% on outdoor and 4.3% on radio.[6] Internationally, the largest ("Big Five") Advertising-agency groups are Dentsu, Interpublic, Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP.[7] In Latin, advertere means "to turn towards".[8] Egyptians used papyrus to make sales messages and wall posters.[9] Commercial messages and political campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Arabia.

Lost and found Advertising on papyrus was common in ancient Greece and ancient Rome.

Wall or rock painting for commercial Advertising is another manifestation of an ancient Advertising form, which is present to this day in many parts of Asia, Africa, and South America.

The tradition of wall painting can be traced back to Indian rock art paintings that date back to 4000 BC.[10] In ancient China, the earliest Advertising known was oral, as recorded in the Classic of Poetry (11th to 7th centuries BC) of bamboo flutes played to sell confectionery.

Advertisement usually takes in the form of calligraphic signboards and inked papers.

A copper printing plate dated back to the Song dynasty used to print posters in the form of a square sheet of paper with a rabbit logo with "Jinan Liu's Fine Needle Shop" and "We buy high-quality steel rods and make fine-quality needles, to be ready for use at home in no time" written above and below[11] is considered the world's earliest identified printed Advertising medium.[12] In Europe, as the towns and cities of the Middle Ages began to grow, and the general population was unable to read, instead of signs that read "cobbler", "miller", "tailor", or "blacksmith", images associated with their trade would be used such as a boot, a suit, a hat, a clock, a diamond, a horseshoe, a candle or even a bag of flour.

Fruits and vegetables were sold in the city square from the backs of carts and wagons and their proprietors used street callers (town criers) to announce their whereabouts.

The first compilation of such advertisements was gathered in "Les Crieries de Paris", a thirteenth-century poem by Guillaume de la Villeneuve.[13] In the 18th century advertisements started to appear in weekly newspapers in England.

These early print advertisements were used mainly to promote books and newspapers, which became increasingly affordable with advances in the printing press; and medicines, which were increasingly sought after.

However, false Advertising and so-called "quack" advertisements became a problem, which ushered in the regulation of Advertising content.

Thomas J.

Barratt of London has been called "the father of modern Advertising".[14][15][16] Working for the Pears Soap company, Barratt created an effective Advertising campaign for the company products, which involved the use of targeted slogans, images and phrases.

One of his slogans, "Good morning.

Have you used Pears' soap?" was famous in its day and into the 20th century.[17][18] Barratt introduced many of the crucial ideas that lie behind successful Advertising and these were widely circulated in his day.

He constantly stressed the importance of a strong and exclusive brand image for Pears and of emphasizing the product's availability through saturation campaigns.

He also understood the importance of constantly reevaluating the market for changing tastes and mores, stating in 1907 that "tastes change, fashions change, and the advertiser has to change with them.

An idea that was effective a generation ago would fall flat, stale, and unprofitable if presented to the public today.

Not that the idea of today is always better than the older idea, but it is different – it hits the present taste."[15] As the economy expanded across the world during the 19th century, Advertising grew alongside.

In the United States, the success of this Advertising format eventually led to the growth of mail-order Advertising.

In June 1836, French newspaper La Presse was the first to include paid Advertising in its pages, allowing it to lower its price, extend its readership and increase its profitability and the formula was soon copied by all titles.

Around 1840, Volney B.

Palmer established the roots of the modern day Advertising agency in Philadelphia.

In 1842 Palmer bought large amounts of space in various newspapers at a discounted rate then resold the space at higher rates to advertisers.

The actual ad – the copy, layout, and artwork – was still prepared by the company wishing to advertise; in effect, Palmer was a space broker.

The situation changed when the first full-service Advertising agency of N.W.

Ayer & Son was founded in 1869 in Philadelphia.

Ayer & Son offered to plan, create, and execute complete Advertising campaigns for its customers.

By 1900 the Advertising agency had become the focal point of creative planning, and Advertising was firmly established as a profession.

[19] Around the same time, in France, Charles-Louis Havas extended the services of his news agency, Havas to include advertisement brokerage, making it the first French group to organize.

At first, agencies were brokers for advertisement space in newspapers.[19] Advertising increased dramatically in the United States as industrialization expanded the supply of manufactured products.

In 1919 it was 2.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the US, and it averaged 2.2 percent of GDP between then and at least 2007, though it may have declined dramatically since the Great Recession.

Industry could not benefit from its increased productivity without a substantial increase in consumer spending.

This contributed to the development of mass marketing designed to influence the population's economic behavior on a larger scale.[20] In the 1910s and 1920s, advertisers in the U.S.

adopted the doctrine that human instincts could be targeted and harnessed – "sublimated" into the desire to purchase commodities.[21] Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, became associated with the method and is sometimes called the founder of modern Advertising and public relations.[22] Bernays claimed that:"[The] general principle, that men are very largely actuated by motives which they conceal from themselves, is as true of mass as of individual psychology.

It is evident that the successful propagandist must understand the true motives and not be content to accept the reasons which men give for what they do."[23]In other words, selling products by appealing to the rational minds of customers (the main method used prior to Bernays) was much less effective than selling products based on the unconscious desires that Bernays felt were the true motivators of human action.

"Sex sells" became a controversial issue, with techniques for titillating and enlarging the audience posing a challenge to conventional morality.[24][25] In the 1920s, under Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, the American government promoted Advertising.

Hoover himself delivered an address to the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World in 1925 called 'Advertising Is a Vital Force in Our National Life."[26] In October 1929, the head of the U.S.

Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Julius Klein, stated "Advertising is the key to world prosperity."[27] This was part of the "unparalleled" collaboration between business and government in the 1920s, according to a 1933 European economic journal.[28] The tobacco companies became major advertisers in order to sell packaged cigarettes.[29] The tobacco companies pioneered the new Advertising techniques when they hired Bernays to create positive associations with tobacco smoking.[3][4] Advertising was also used as a vehicle for cultural assimilation, encouraging workers to exchange their traditional habits and community structure in favor of a shared "modern" lifestyle.[30] An important tool for influencing immigrant workers was the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers (AAFLN).

The AAFLN was primarily an Advertising agency but also gained heavily centralized control over much of the immigrant press.[31][32] At the turn of the 20th century, Advertising was one of the few career choices for women.

Since women were responsible for most household purchasing done, advertisers and agencies recognized the value of women's insight during the creative process.

In fact, the first American Advertising to use a sexual sell was created by a woman – for a soap product.

Although tame by today's standards, the advertisement featured a couple with the message "A skin you love to touch".[33] In the 1920s psychologists Walter D.

Scott and John B.

Watson contributed applied psychological theory to the field of Advertising.

Scott said, "Man has been called the reasoning animal but he could with greater truthfulness be called the creature of suggestion.

He is reasonable, but he is to a greater extent suggestible".[34] He demonstrated this through his Advertising technique of a direct command to the consumer.

In the early 1920s, the first radio stations were established by radio equipment manufacturers, followed by non-profit organizations such as schools, clubs and civic groups who also set up their own stations.[35] Retailer and consumer goods manufacturers quickly recognised radio's potential to reach consumers in their home and soon adopted Advertising techniques that would allow their messages to stand out; slogans, mascots, and jingles began to appear on radio in the 1920s and early television in the 1930s.[36] The rise of mass media communications allowed manufacturers of branded goods to bypass retailers by Advertising directly to consumers.

This was a major paradigm shift which forced manufacturers to focus on the brand and stimulated the need for superior insights into consumer purchasing, consumption and usage behaviour; their needs, wants and aspirations.[37] The earliest radio drama series were sponsored by soap manufacturers and the genre became known as a soap opera.[38] Before long, radio station owners realized they could increase Advertising revenue by selling 'air-time' in small time allocations which could be sold to multiple businesses.

By the 1930s, these Advertising spots, as the packets of time became known, were being sold by the station's geographical sales representatives, ushering in an era of national radio Advertising.[39] By the 1940s, manufacturers began to recognize the way in which consumers were developing personal relationships with their brands in a social/psychological/anthropological sense.[40] Advertisers began to use motivational research and consumer research to gather insights into consumer purchasing.

Strong branded campaigns for Chrysler and Exxon/Esso, using insights drawn research methods from psychology and cultural anthropology, led to some of the most enduring campaigns of the 20th-century.[41] In the early 1950s, the DuMont Television Network began the modern practice of selling advertisement time to multiple sponsors.

Previously, DuMont had trouble finding sponsors for many of their programs and compensated by selling smaller blocks of Advertising time to several businesses.

This eventually became the standard for the commercial television industry in the United States.

However, it was still a common practice to have single sponsor shows, such as The United States Steel Hour.

In some instances the sponsors exercised great control over the content of the show – up to and including having one's Advertising agency actually writing the show.[citation needed] The single sponsor model is much less prevalent now, a notable exception being the Hallmark Hall of Fame.[citation needed] The late 1980s and early 1990s saw the introduction of cable television and particularly MTV.

Pioneering the concept of the music video, MTV ushered in a new type of Advertising: the consumer tunes in for the Advertising message, rather than it being a by-product or afterthought.

As cable and satellite television became increasingly prevalent, specialty channels emerged, including channels entirely devoted to Advertising, such as QVC, Home Shopping Network, and ShopTV Canada.[42] With the advent of the ad server, online Advertising grew, contributing to the "dot-com" boom of the 1990s.[43] Entire corporations operated solely on Advertising revenue, offering everything from coupons to free Internet access.

At the turn of the 21st century, some websites, including the search engine Google, changed online Advertising by personalizing ads based on web browsing behavior.

This has led to other similar efforts and an increase in interactive Advertising.[44] The share of Advertising spending relative to GDP has changed little across large changes in media since 1925.

In 1925, the main Advertising media in America were newspapers, magazines, signs on streetcars, and outdoor posters.

Advertising spending as a share of GDP was about 2.9 percent.

By 1998, television and radio had become major Advertising media; by 2017, the balance between broadcast and online Advertising had shifted, with online spending exceeding broadcast.[45] Nonetheless, Advertising spending as a share of GDP was slightly lower – about 2.4 percent.[46] Guerrilla marketing involves unusual approaches such as staged encounters in public places, giveaways of products such as cars that are covered with brand messages, and interactive Advertising where the viewer can respond to become part of the Advertising message.

This type of Advertising is unpredictable, which causes consumers to buy the product or idea.[47] This reflects an increasing trend of interactive and "embedded" ads, such as via product placement, having consumers vote through text messages, and various campaigns utilizing social network services such as Facebook or Twitter.[48] The Advertising business model has also been adapted in recent years.[when?][clarification needed] In media for equity, Advertising is not sold, but provided to start-up companies in return for equity.

If the company grows and is sold, the media companies receive cash for their shares.

Domain name registrants (usually those who register and renew domains as an investment) sometimes "park" their domains and allow Advertising companies to place ads on their sites in return for per-click payments.

These ads are typically driven by pay per click search engines like Google or Yahoo, but ads can sometimes be placed directly on targeted domain names through a domain lease or by making contact with the registrant of a domain name that describes a product.

Domain name registrants are generally easy to identify through WHOIS records that are publicly available at registrar websites.[49] Advertising may be categorized in a variety of ways, including by style, target audience, geographic scope, medium, or purpose.[2]:9–15 For example, in print Advertising, classification by style can include display Advertising (ads with design elements sold by size) vs.

classified Advertising (ads without design elements sold by the word or line).

Advertising may be local, national or global.

An ad campaign may be directed toward consumers or to businesses.

The purpose of an ad may be to raise awareness (brand Advertising), or to elicit an immediate sale (direct response Advertising).

The term above the line (ATL) is used for Advertising involving mass media; more targeted forms of Advertising and promotion are referred to as below the line (BTL).[50][51] The two terms date back to 1954 when Procter & Gamble began paying their Advertising agencies differently from other promotional agencies.[52] In the 2010s, as Advertising technology developed, a new term, through the line (TTL) began to come into use, referring to integrated Advertising campaigns.[53][54] Virtually any medium can be used for Advertising.

Commercial Advertising media can include wall paintings, billboards, street furniture components, printed flyers and rack cards, radio, cinema and television adverts, web banners, mobile telephone screens, shopping carts, web popups, skywriting, bus stop benches, human billboards and forehead Advertising, magazines, newspapers, town criers, sides of buses, banners attached to or sides of airplanes ("logojets"), in-flight advertisements on seatback tray tables or overhead storage bins, taxicab doors, roof mounts and passenger screens, musical stage shows, subway platforms and trains, elastic bands on disposable diapers, doors of bathroom stalls, stickers on apples in supermarkets, shopping cart handles (grabertising), the opening section of streaming audio and video, posters, and the backs of event tickets and supermarket receipts.

Any situation in which an "identified" sponsor pays to deliver their message through a medium is Advertising.[55] A new Advertising approach is known as advanced Advertising, which is data-driven Advertising, using large quantities of data, precise measuring tools and precise targeting.[66] Advanced Advertising also makes it easier for companies which sell ad-space to attribute customer purchases to the ads they display or broadcast.[67] Increasingly, other media are overtaking many of the "traditional" media such as television, radio and newspaper because of a shift toward the usage of the Internet for news and music as well as devices like digital video recorders (DVRs) such as TiVo.[68] Online Advertising began with unsolicited bulk e-mail Advertising known as "e-mail spam".

Spam has been a problem for e-mail users since 1978.[69] As new online communication channels became available, Advertising followed.

The first banner ad appeared on the World Wide Web in 1994.[70] Prices of Web-based Advertising space are dependent on the "relevance" of the surrounding web content and the traffic that the website receives.[citation needed] In online display Advertising, display ads generate awareness quickly.

Unlike search, which requires someone to be aware of a need, display Advertising can drive awareness of something new and without previous knowledge.

Display works well for direct response.

Display is not only used for generating awareness, it's used for direct response campaigns that link to a landing page with a clear 'call to action'.[71] As the mobile phone became a new mass medium in 1998 when the first paid downloadable content appeared on mobile phones in Finland,[72][citation needed] mobile Advertising followed, also first launched in Finland in 2000.[citation needed] By 2007 the value of mobile Advertising had reached $2 billion and providers such as Admob delivered billions of mobile ads.[citation needed] More advanced mobile ads include banner ads, coupons, Multimedia Messaging Service picture and video messages, advergames and various engagement marketing campaigns.

A particular feature driving mobile ads is the 2D barcode, which replaces the need to do any typing of web addresses, and uses the camera feature of modern phones to gain immediate access to web content.

83 percent of Japanese mobile phone users already are active users of 2D barcodes.[citation needed] Some companies have proposed placing messages or corporate logos on the side of booster rockets and the International Space Station.[citation needed] Unpaid Advertising (also called "publicity Advertising"), can include personal recommendations ("bring a friend", "sell it"), spreading buzz, or achieving the feat of equating a brand with a common noun (in the United States, "Xerox" = "photocopier", "Kleenex" = tissue, "Vaseline" = petroleum jelly, "Hoover" = vacuum cleaner, and "Band-Aid" = adhesive bandage).

However, some companies[which?] oppose the use of their brand name to label an object.

Equating a brand with a common noun also risks turning that brand into a generic trademark – turning it into a generic term which means that its legal protection as a trademark is lost.[73][disputed – discuss] From time to time, The CW Television Network airs short programming breaks called "Content Wraps", to advertise one company's product during an entire commercial break.

The CW pioneered "content wraps" and some products featured were Herbal Essences, Crest, Guitar Hero II, CoverGirl, and Toyota.[74][75] A new promotion concept has appeared, "ARvertising", Advertising on augmented reality technology.[76] Controversy exists on the effectiveness of subliminal Advertising (see mind control), and the pervasiveness of mass messages (propaganda).

With the Internet came many new Advertising opportunities.

Pop-up, Flash, banner, pop-under, advergaming, and email advertisements (all of which are often unwanted or spam in the case of email) are now commonplace.

Particularly since the rise of "entertaining" Advertising, some people may like an advertisement enough to wish to watch it later or show a friend.[citation needed] In general, the Advertising community has not yet made this easy, although some have used the Internet to widely distribute their ads to anyone willing to see or hear them.

In the last three quarters of 2009, mobile and Internet Advertising grew by 18% and 9% respectively, while older media Advertising saw declines: −10.1% (TV), −11.7% (radio), −14.8% (magazines) and −18.7% (newspapers).[citation needed] Between 2008 and 2014, U.S.

newspapers lost more than half their print Advertising revenue.[78] Another significant trend regarding future of Advertising is the growing importance of the niche market using niche or targeted ads.

Also brought about by the Internet and the theory of the long tail, advertisers will have an increasing ability to reach specific audiences.

In the past, the most efficient way to deliver a message was to blanket the largest mass market audience possible.[citation needed] However, usage tracking, customer profiles and the growing popularity of niche content brought about by everything from blogs to social networking sites, provide advertisers with audiences that are smaller but much better defined,[citation needed] leading to ads that are more relevant to viewers and more effective for companies' marketing products.

Among others, Comcast Spotlight is one such advertiser employing this method in their video on demand menus.

These advertisements are targeted to a specific group and can be viewed by anyone wishing to find out more about a particular business or practice, from their home.

This causes the viewer to become proactive and actually choose what advertisements they want to view.[79] Niche marketing could also be helped by bringing the issue of colour into advertisements.

Different colours play major roles when it comes to marketing strategies, for example, seeing the blue can promote a sense of calmness and gives a sense of security which is why many social networks such as Facebook use blue in their logos.

Google AdSense is an example of niche marketing.

Google calculates the primary purpose of a website and adjusts ads accordingly; it uses keywords on the page (or even in emails) to find the general ideas of topics disused and places ads that will most likely be clicked on by viewers of the email account or website visitors.

The concept of crowdsourcing has given way to the trend of user-generated advertisements.

User-generated ads are created by people, as opposed to an Advertising agency or the company themselves, often resulting from brand sponsored Advertising competitions.

For the 2007 Super Bowl, the Frito-Lays division of PepsiCo held the "Crash the Super Bowl" contest, allowing people to create their own Doritos commercials.[80] Chevrolet held a similar competition for their Tahoe line of SUVs.[80] Due to the success of the Doritos user-generated ads in the 2007 Super Bowl, Frito-Lays relaunched the competition for the 2009 and 2010 Super Bowl.

The resulting ads were among the most-watched and most-liked Super Bowl ads.

In fact, the winning ad that aired in the 2009 Super Bowl was ranked by the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter as the top ad for the year while the winning ads that aired in the 2010 Super Bowl were found by Nielsen's BuzzMetrics to be the "most buzzed-about".[81][82] Another example of companies using crowdsourcing successfully is the beverage company Jones Soda that encourages consumers to participate in the label design themselves.[83] This trend has given rise to several online platforms that host user-generated Advertising competitions on behalf of a company.

Founded in 2007, Zooppa has launched ad competitions for brands such as Google, Nike, Hershey's, General Mills, Microsoft, NBC Universal, Zinio, and Mini Cooper.[84] Crowdsourcing remains controversial, as the long-term impact on the Advertising industry is still unclear.[85] Advertising has gone through five major stages of development: domestic, export, international, multi-national, and global.

For global advertisers, there are four, potentially competing, business objectives that must be balanced when developing worldwide Advertising: building a brand while speaking with one voice, developing economies of scale in the creative process, maximising local effectiveness of ads, and increasing the company's speed of implementation.

Born from the evolutionary stages of global marketing are the three primary and fundamentally different approaches to the development of global Advertising executions: exporting executions, producing local executions, and importing ideas that travel.[86] Advertising research is key to determining the success of an ad in any country or region.

The ability to identify which elements and/or moments of an ad contribute to its success is how economies of scale are maximized.

Once one knows what works in an ad, that idea or ideas can be imported by any other market.

Market research measures, such as Flow of Attention, Flow of Emotion and branding moments provide insight into what is working in an ad in any country or region because the measures are based on the visual, not verbal, elements of the ad.[87] Foreign governments,[which?] particularly those that own marketable commercial products or services, often promote their interests and positions through the Advertising of those goods because the target audience is not only largely unaware of the forum as a vehicle for foreign messaging but also willing to receive the message while in a mental state of absorbing information from advertisements during television commercial breaks, while reading a periodical, or while passing by billboards in public spaces.

A prime example of this messaging technique is Advertising campaigns to promote international travel.

While Advertising foreign destinations and services may stem from the typical goal of increasing revenue by drawing more tourism, some travel campaigns carry the additional or alternative intended purpose of promoting good sentiments or improving existing ones among the target audience towards a given nation or region.

It is common for Advertising promoting foreign countries to be produced and distributed by the tourism ministries of those countries, so these ads often carry political statements and/or depictions of the foreign government's desired international public perception.

Additionally, a wide range of foreign airlines and travel-related services which advertise separately from the destinations, themselves, are owned by their respective governments; examples include, though are not limited to, the Emirates airline (Dubai), Singapore Airlines (Singapore), Qatar Airways (Qatar), China Airlines (Taiwan/Republic of China), and Air China (People's Republic of China).

By depicting their destinations, airlines, and other services in a favorable and pleasant light, countries market themselves to populations abroad in a manner that could mitigate prior public impressions.

In the realm of Advertising agencies, continued industry diversification has seen observers note that "big global clients don't need big global agencies any more".[88] This is reflected by the growth of non-traditional agencies in various global markets, such as Canadian business TAXI and SMART in Australia and has been referred to as "a revolution in the ad world".[89] The ability to record shows on digital video recorders (such as TiVo) allow watchers to record the programs for later viewing, enabling them to fast forward through commercials.

Additionally, as more seasons of pre-recorded box sets are offered for sale of television programs; fewer people watch the shows on TV.

However, the fact that these sets are sold, means the company will receive additional profits from these sets.

To counter this effect, a variety of strategies have been employed.

Many advertisers have opted for product placement on TV shows like Survivor.

Other strategies include integrating Advertising with internet-connected program guidess (EPGs), Advertising on companion devices (like smartphones and tablets) during the show, and creating mobile apps for TV programs.

Additionally, some like brands have opted for social television sponsorship.[90] The emerging technology of drone displays has recently been used for Advertising purposes.[91] In recent years there have been several media literacy initiatives, and more specifically concerning Advertising, that seek to empower citizens in the face of media Advertising campaigns.[92] Advertising education has become popular with bachelor, master and doctorate degrees becoming available in the emphasis.[citation needed] A surge in Advertising interest is typically attributed to the strong relationship Advertising plays in cultural and technological changes, such as the advance of online social networking.[citation needed] A unique model for teaching Advertising is the student-run Advertising agency, where Advertising students create campaigns for real companies.[93] Organizations such as the American Advertising Federation establish companies with students to create these campaigns.[citation needed] Advertising is at the front of delivering the proper message to customers and prospective customers.

The purpose of Advertising is to inform the consumers about their product and convince customers that a company's services or products are the best, enhance the image of the company, point out and create a need for products or services, demonstrate new uses for established products, announce new products and programs, reinforce the salespeople's individual messages, draw customers to the business, and to hold existing customers.[94] Sales promotions are another way to advertise.

Sales promotions are double purposed because they are used to gather information about what type of customers one draws in and where they are, and to jump start sales.

Sales promotions include things like contests and games, sweepstakes, product giveaways, samples coupons, loyalty programs, and discounts.

The ultimate goal of sales promotions is to stimulate potential customers to action.[95] While Advertising can be seen as necessary for economic growth,[27] it is not without social costs.

Unsolicited commercial e-mail and other forms of spam have become so prevalent as to have become a major nuisance to users of these services, as well as being a financial burden on internet service providers.[96] Advertising is increasingly invading public spaces, such as schools, which some critics argue is a form of child exploitation.[97] This increasing difficulty in limiting exposure to specific audiences can result in negative backlash for advertisers.[98] In tandem with these criticisms, the Advertising industry has seen low approval rates in surveys and negative cultural portrayals.[99] One of the most controversial criticisms of advertisement in the present day is that of the predominance of Advertising of foods high in sugar, fat, and salt specifically to children.

Critics claim that food advertisements targeting children are exploitive and are not sufficiently balanced with proper nutritional education to help children understand the consequences of their food choices.

Additionally, children may not understand that they are being sold something, and are therefore more impressionable.[100] Michelle Obama has criticized large food companies for Advertising unhealthy foods largely towards children and has requested that food companies either limit their Advertising to children or advertise foods that are more in line with dietary guidelines.[101] The other criticisms include the change that are brought by those advertisements on the society and also the deceiving ads that are aired and published by the corporations.

Cosmetic and health industry are the ones which exploited the highest and created reasons of concern.[102] There have been increasing efforts to protect the public interest by regulating the content and the influence of Advertising.

Some examples include restrictions for Advertising alcohol, tobacco or gambling imposed in many countries, as well as the bans around Advertising to children, which exist in parts of Europe.

Advertising regulation focuses heavily on the veracity of the claims and as such, there are often tighter restrictions placed around advertisements for food and healthcare products.[103] The Advertising industries within some countries rely less on laws and more on systems of self-regulation.[103][104][105] Advertisers and the media agree on a code of Advertising standards that they attempt to uphold.

The general aim of such codes is to ensure that any Advertising is 'legal, decent, honest and truthful'.

Some self-regulatory organizations are funded by the industry, but remain independent, with the intent of upholding the standards or codes like the Advertising Standards Authority in the UK.[106] In the UK, most forms of outdoor Advertising such as the display of billboards is regulated by the UK Town and County Planning system.

Currently, the display of an advertisement without consent from the Planning Authority is a criminal offense liable to a fine of £2,500 per offense.[107] In the US, many communities believe that many forms of outdoor Advertising blight the public realm.[108] As long ago as the 1960s in the US, there were attempts to ban billboard Advertising in the open countryside.[109] Cities such as São Paulo have introduced an outright ban[110] with London also having specific legislation to control unlawful displays.

Some governments restrict the languages that can be used in advertisements, but advertisers may employ tricks to try avoiding them.

In France for instance, advertisers sometimes print English words in bold and French translations in fine print to deal with Article 120 of the 1994 Toubon Law limiting the use of English.[111] The Advertising of pricing information is another topic of concern for governments.

In the United States for instance, it is common for businesses to only mention the existence and amount of applicable taxes at a later stage of a transaction.[112] In Canada and New Zealand, taxes can be listed as separate items, as long as they are quoted up-front.[113][114] In most other countries, the advertised price must include all applicable taxes, enabling customers to easily know how much it will cost them.[115][116][117] Various competing models of hierarchies of effects attempt to provide a theoretical underpinning to Advertising practice.[clarification needed][118] The marketing mix was proposed by professor E.

Jerome McCarthy in the 1960s.[122] It consists of four basic elements called the "four Ps".

Product is the first P representing the actual product.

Price represents the process of determining the value of a product.

Place represents the variables of getting the product to the consumer such as distribution channels, market coverage and movement organization.

The last P stands for Promotion which is the process of reaching the target market and convincing them to buy the product.

In the 1990s, the concept of four Cs was introduced as a more customer-driven replacement of four P's.[123] There are two theories based on four Cs: Lauterborn's four Cs (consumer, cost, communication, convenience) [124] and Shimizu's four Cs (commodity, cost, communication, channel) in the 7Cs Compass Model (Co-marketing).

Communications can include Advertising, sales promotion, public relations, publicity, personal selling, corporate identity, internal communication, SNS, and MIS.[125][126][127][128] Advertising research is a specialized form of research that works to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of Advertising.

It entails numerous forms of research which employ different methodologies.

Advertising research includes pre-testing (also known as copy testing) and post-testing of ads and/or campaigns.

Pre-testing includes a wide range of qualitative and quantitative techniques, including: focus groups, in-depth target audience interviews (one-on-one interviews), small-scale quantitative studies and physiological measurement.

The goal of these investigations is to better understand how different groups respond to various messages and visual prompts, thereby providing an assessment of how well the advertisement meets its communications goals.[129] Post-testing employs many of the same techniques as pre-testing, usually with a focus on understanding the change in awareness or attitude attributable to the advertisement.

With the emergence of digital Advertising technologies, many firms have begun to continuously post-test ads using real-time data.

This may take the form of A/B split-testing or multivariate testing.

Continuous ad tracking and the Communicus System are competing examples of post-testing Advertising research types.[130] Meanings between consumers and marketers depict signs and symbols that are encoded in everyday objects.[131] Semiotics is the study of signs and how they are interpreted.

Advertising has many hidden signs and meanings within brand names, logos, package designs, print advertisements, and television advertisements.

Semiotics aims to study and interpret the message being conveyed in (for example) advertisements.

Logos and advertisements can be interpreted at two levels – known as the surface level and the underlying level.

The surface level uses signs creatively to create an image or personality for a product.[citation needed] These signs can be images, words, fonts, colors, or slogans.

The underlying level is made up of hidden meanings.

The combination of images, words, colors, and slogans must be interpreted by the audience or consumer.[132] The "key to Advertising analysis" is the signifier and the signified.

The signifier is the object and the signified is the mental concept.[133] A product has a signifier and a signified.

The signifier is the color, brand name, logo design, and technology.

The signified has two meanings known as denotative and connotative.

The denotative meaning is the meaning of the product.

A television's denotative meaning might be that it is high definition.

The connotative meaning is the product's deep and hidden meaning.

A connotative meaning of a television would be that it is top-of-the-line.[134] Apple's commercials[when?] used a black silhouette of a person that was the age of Apple's target market.

They placed the silhouet

benefits of hiring an internet marketing agency

When you hire an internet marketing agency, you can take the stress out of online marketing.

Busy professionals may not always have the time to focus on building and marketing a website, but a Boston Internet Marketing company has the necessary skills to promote your business.If you have a website, but no one can find it, its not really benefiting your business.For online marketing success, you need your target demographic to be able to find your website online easily.A Boston Internet Marketing company can help your business build an online presence, and help ensure that youre well represented in the search engines.There are many benefits to hiring an Internet marketing agency to manage your online marketing efforts.Market Precisely Employing a Boston digital agency allows you to market precisely to your target demographic.You dont have to worry about sending out broad advertisements using the Yellow Pages, billboards, or magazines, then hoping that your target market will see them.Instead, you can use the skills of an Internet marketing agency to target them precisely.For example, if you need to market to women between the ages of 25 and 35 who have one or more children, an internet marketing specialist can help you do just that.Use the Skills You Have When you contract with a Boston Internet marketing company, you can spend your billable hours doing work that youre great at, instead of devoting your time to learning new skills.It takes time to figure out social networking, Adwords advertising, and search engine optimization.You can spend the time learning to do these things yourself, but it could take you months or years to be truly effective.It simply makes more sense to have an internet professional handle your online marketing, so that you can spend your time doing the work you love.Achieve Excellent Results in Less Time When you work with a Boston Internet Marketing Company you can boost the rankings of your website quickly and effectively.Unfortunately, when you attempt to rank a website, your time is often split between online marketing tasks and the other tasks that are essential for your business.When you work with an internet marketing agency, they devote all their billable time to enhancing your businesss search engine rankings, building social network profiles, submitting articles that link back to your website, and other internet marketing tasks.You can sit back and let professionals market your business, while you work at the tasks that produce billable income for your business.When youre in business, using your time effectively is always important.By contracting with a Boston marketing agency, you can be sure that your marketing dollars are well spent and that your time is being used to develop your business and products.You can trust a local marketing firm to help you manage your online reputation and build an advertising network that you can be proud of, so that all your online and offline services are well advertised on an easy to locate website.A digital marketing agency can work with you to build an online presence for your businessFind Article, without the stress and hassle of doing the work yourself.

a digital marketing agency vs a conventional marketing agency

To someone who is pretty new to the Internet and are not sure about the different types of companies that operate in this industry they could easily get confused by hiring a conventional marketing agency.

There are specific businesses that are very skilled in working in this area and they are called digital marketing agencies.There has been a recent uptake in the amount of businesses that are now promoting themselves on the Internet.The reason is because there are more users getting online every day throughout the world.There have also been recent statistics published that most people will search for a business in their local area by using the Internet.In fact some experts say today that if you do not have a website that represents your business you could almost be invisible to a wide variety of people.It is extremely important for a business to have an online presence in todays markets because not only will they be seen by more potential customers but they can also communicate to them as well.A website is seen as another shop window.Also customers do not mind giving their e-mail address over to receive information on new special offers.Just a few years ago if a business wanted to improve the amount of customers through their door they could look to employing a conventional marketing company.This business is specialised in boosting the amount of coverage that a particular company has.They would use mediums like newspapers, magazines, billboardsFree Articles, and TV and radio advertising slots.This type of marketing can still be effective today but is not used on the Internet.A specific company called a digital marketing agency will specialise in a range of services that will be able to promote a business successfully on the Internet.The reason why a Digital Marketing Agency should be used is because there are more technical skills that are needed rather than advertising ones.For example increasing a businesss websites position in global search engine rankings or even local ones is something that an advertising team would not be able to specialise in.There are industry specific skills that are needed to promote a website properly on the Internet today.There are however many different types of advertising mediums that are available on the Internet and again these will need specialist knowledge because it is not about making a catchy campaign but rather ensuring that it is effective and gives good value for money.A digital marketing agency is the only company that specialises in Internet marketing campaigns.And a conventional marketing company is skilled in producing various marketing campaigns in the media.They are two very different companies and provide completely different services to their clients.If you are a business owner and are looking to promote your company online then you are probably going to see the results by using a digital marketing agency over a normal agency.

heres the best way to search for a top rated marketing agency today

Top London agency, are you trying to find an efficient marketing agency? As a consequence of the Internet boom, businesses now wind up fighting on a nationwide and even international scale.

Because of this, marketing efficiently is necessary if businesses are to succeed and stand out from the competition.Hence, this trend has resulted in an escalation in the number of marketing agency start-ups.

You can find, unfortunately, a lot of agencies on the market that aim to win clients over with all the big sell on the elaborate marketing plans, but they do not actually provide winning results.

You need to look for an agency that is actually going to boost your visibility, enhance the image of your brand, increase your website traffic and ultimately make certain you are generating a higher amount of earnings.

Keeping that in your mind, let us go through the key things that you should look at when searching for a marketing agency.The very first thing you should consider is the company's very own online site.

Are you amazed? A top London agency is going to have a remarkable online site giving off a solid brand character.

After all, how can you count on the agency to advertise your company effectively if their website is of a poor standard? All good marketing agencies have a portfolio section on their website that is focused on the work they've done so far.

You must take time looking through this.

You'll be able to see their level of quality, ingenuity and effectiveness.

You will instantly get a feel as to whether this is a firm you would like to work on your marketing tactic.

A great portfolio is often a diversified one - one wherein there is a varied array of clients and various techniques and services are integrated in order to reach visible end results.This directs onto the following point...

When assessing the variety of marketing agencies London, you have to find a business which supplies a vast range of services.

They shouldn't just give web design or search engine optimisation services.

They need to provide it all, from branding, to event marketing, to online site development.

All companies' needs are different.

You cannot reach your objectives if you're restricted to one avenue of marketing.

The agency also needs to have a clear process in place, the one which involves learning the needs of your company, assessing the competitors and carrying out wide-ranging research.

This is the only method to confirm the most effective end results.

Ultimately, it's also advised to view comments that have been made by former customers.

This is the simplest way to have an honest observation into the level of quality you're more likely to benefit from if you make use of the services of the business in question.Introducing Abacus Marketing AgencyOne marketing bureau that ticks all of the boxes which have been pointed out is Digital Marketing Agency London.

At Abacus, we offer a broad range of marketing support to different business sectors, from start-ups to blue-chips.

We have a wealth of experience in the business and are best placed to help your business attain the results you have to have, whether you need to drive sales, market an occasion or enhance your brand image.

We do not take shortcuts.

Our service begins with a client briefing, and then market research, strategic development, creative ideas, project execution and finally, general performance analysis.

We don't just present our solutions and then leave you to it.

We continue to observe its functionality and examine data so that we may guarantee constant improvement.

While our services are of an exceptionally high standard, we pride ourselves on giving great value for money, and thus our rates are competitive.

the best seo marketing agency

When you have a website that commands interest and attention, ultimately you need to be in the top ranking of search engines.� For this you need an SEO marketing agency you can rely on.

The internet has a lot of options, but how can you be confident that you have found the best search agency?

how does a search engine optimization agency work

Although the internet has been around for quite some time the notion of internet marketing is still new.

Until just a few years ago putting up a website and marketing it was relatively easy.

Today it has got a lot harder because there is more competition.

A search engine optimization agency is a company that specialises in marketing businesses online.The internet is growing at an outstanding pace and keeping up with it can be hard.As every day passes more people join and the amount of domains and websites that are put up every hour is simply mind blowing.In all of this there are a lot of businesses that are fighting for a slice of the tremendous traffic that the internet provides every day.The key to success on the web is to rank high in major search engines for the industry or niche that you represent.If you are not internet savvy then you can always hire the services of a Search Engine Optimization Agency.What is a search engine optimization agency?This type of company is often called an internet marketing firm.They specialise in getting businesses online and helping those who are already on the web.Their main focus is to improve the search engine rankings of a particular website and also deal with any other ad hoc tasks.This can be running pay per click campaigns or helping an individual or business choose the right payment solutions.It really does depend on the type of website that is being marketed and how big the campaign is.For example and small business owners may employ the services of a local search engine optimization agency to promote their business online.On the other end of the scale you may have large international companies with even larger budgets who will use only the biggest and best internet marketing firms.Inside a search engine optimization agencyWhether you hire a small or large search engine optimization agency you will basically get a similar service just on a different scale.Usually there will be a preliminary period where you will discuss your needs and they will also assess the competition in your industry.The amount of competition in your particular industry will play a crucial role in how much you will be paying.If you do have a lot of competitors then it is going to take longer and cost more money to bring in decent traffic to your site.This shouldnt put anyone off as there are a range of methods that will be discussed depending on what type of search engine optimization agency you are using.If you do decide not to tackle internet marketing yourself and feel it is better left with the professionals then there is a wide range of companies to choose from.It is recommended to pick a firm that suits your needs and will represent your business in the correct way.

internet marketing the answer for your business

Advertising and marketing should be a top priority for any business and with the age of the internet comes the best ever way of marketing and attracting new clients, customers and internet traffic, based on targeted online marketing.

Using an internet marketing agency or SEO consultants for your campaign is both cost-effective and fully-measurable via online statistics software so you can track every aspect of your marketing campaign

choosing your internet marketing agency

Every company should think carefully when choosing an internet marketing agency.

Making a mistake early on, could prove disastrous and may get your site banned or de-listed on the major search engines.

Good seo consultants will only use "white hat" seo strategies and techniques, and with hard work and a little patience, your results will be more than worth the wait.

steps to remind before starting an internet marketing agency

Internet marketing is endorsement of products and service applying digital sharing and social media channel to achieve users on time.

Direct marketing provides same method for communicating with audiences.

Internet marketing has increased website traffic and improve online sales conversions and also internal communications.

an elite internet marketing agency helps small businesses succeed

By getting devised and implemented customized online marketing campaigns from expert marketers of a remarkable Small Business Marketing Melbourne agency, small businesses can win more visitors and customers as well as improve their sales and profits.

Small businesses who have just arrived on the scene face the major challenge of finding customers for their products and convincing them to purchase their products.

Without enough customers, their profits would get affected which would make it difficult for them to sustain their business.

Though they can utilize various online marketing platforms for promoting and marketing themselves, they would be unable to effectively use them due to lack of proper marketing skills.The better and more convenient marketing option for a small business is to hire an established internet marketing company.

Its expert marketers have knowledge of the latest internet marketing techniques and trends.

They would frame an appropriate marketing plan and strategy for the business after comprehensively understanding its specific business needs.

Accordingly, they would devise customized online marketing campaigns for it and implement them in a proper and timely manner.The company would avail these Online Marketing Channels for Marketing the Business:1.

Search Engine Optimization:Businesses appearing on top among the search engine results page of popular search engines, are able to earn more visitors to their website and turn them into their customers.

This in turn enhances their sales and profits.

It would also help to improve their band’s visibility and make the customers trust their brand.By devising customized search engine optimization campaigns for the business, the company’s SEO experts would be able to get it ranked higher among the search engine result pages.

So it can win more visitors and customers and boost its sales and profits.2.

Email Marketing:Email marketing has been one of the most effective online sales tool.

Customized and appealing email marketing campaigns enable businesses to develop a long term relationship with their customers and inform them about exciting product offers and any special events they are conducting.

So they can influence their subscribers and customers to visit their website and enhance their product sales.The marketing company would design customized email marketing campaigns for the business driving more site traffic and boosting its sales and profits.3.

Website Updation:As the market evolves constantly and the taste and aspirations of customers change with time, it becomes necessary for a business to get its website updated to retain their interest in its business.The company’s web designers would accordingly change the business’s logo and other design elements on its website as per the current marketing trends and as per the changed customer needs.

So the business can successfully capture customers’ attention and influence them to purchase its products.

Apart from utilizing the above mentioned online marketing channels for a small business’s marketing and promotion, the internet marketing company would also evaluate the results of its already executed online marketing campaigns.

Based on them, it would accordingly modify the business’s upcoming marketing campaigns for improved results.The efforts made by the company would thus enable the business to earn more site visitors and improve its sales and profits.

It can carve a great impression of its brand in the minds of its prospective customers.

With the company taking full care of its marketing, the business can instead devote its time and resources to its other more important tasks.

In this way, the marketing company would be playing a key role in its profitability and success.Lennox Design is a leading�Small Business Marketing Melbourne agency which helps small businesses win more visitors and customers and enhance their sales and profits by devising customized and effective online marketing campaigns for them.

how to choose the best digital marketing agency in 5 easy steps

It involves choosing out a digital marketing agency for you, it’s no mean accomplishment.

a lot of usually than not, several companies select a digital marketing agency over in-house marketing, just because it's arduous to maintain.

With AN abundance of latest marketing techniques popping up daily, it will be nigh-on, not possible for busy companies to remain on top of the newest trends, figure out the simplest ways that to use completely different platforms of digital marketing.�Any business is aware of you need to effectively market your brand and what you are doing so as to achieve success.

As more and more business is conducted online, and more potential customers search for products on the web, you need to have a solid digital marketing presence and strategy in place, especially if you are launching a new business.When it involves choosing out a digital marketing agency for you, it’s no mean accomplishment.

a lot of usually than not, several companies select a digital marketing agency over in-house marketing, just because it's arduous to maintain.

With AN abundance of latest marketing techniques popping up daily, it will be nigh-on, not possible for busy companies to remain on top of the newest trends, figure out the simplest ways that to use completely different platforms of digital marketing.�But once it involves choosing the correct marketing company, it is not a decision that should be taken gently – particularly if it's your 1st time.

Follow these seven steps to confirm you're choosing the proper digital marketing agency for you.�CHOOSING A DIGITAL MARKETING AGENCY IN 5 Easy Steps�STEP 1.�DETERMINE YOUR COMPANY’S MARKETING NEEDS When you begin looking for the simplest digital marketing companies, you need to prepare and ask yourself some questions, such as what do I would like to attain with an agency and the way a lot of am I willing to spend to attain this? Understanding exactly what you would like will help you to search out and narrow down exactly what you would like, instead of wasting your valuable time and resources.�Once you’ve determined your company’s needs – whether or not that be increasing your business’ presence on-line or redesigning your brand – you're able to start actively looking for the best digital marketing agency for you.�STEP 2.��FIND AN AGENCY THAT MEETS YOUR NEEDS You will be considering “how do I select an agency for me? first, assess the packages a company is offering – do they slot in line with what you want your business to achieve? this can be a very important question to have faith in as if their marketing strategy isn’t what you're looking for, the agency isn’t ‘The One’, no matter what proportion you'll like it.Additionally, value is additionally an element to think about.

Remember, it’s really not price spending associate arm and a leg on a digital marketing package that isn’t relevant to your wants.�STEP 3.��DO YOUR BACKGROUND ANALYSIS Before you progress forward within the process, it's essential that you just perform a thorough background analysis of the digital marketing agencies you have been investigating.

Do they follow what they preach? the main way you'll be able to find out whether or not an agency is right for you, is observing the results they’ve produced themselves.

For instance, if you’re planning on hiring an agency to hold out content marketing, however, do they run their own blog? If you’re considering hiring them for social media, however, do they handle their own social media – is it successful? constant goes for SEO; however, do they rank in search terms for his or her industry? Did you discover them on the first page of Google? If they don’t “practice what they preach”, they will not be able to win what they're promising or be capable of the services they offer.�In addition, another great way to understand whether or not a digital marketing company is that the best, is through recommendations.

raise your friends and family if they need anyone in mind, or if any friends-of-friends are within the know.

as an alternative, have faith in asking your professional network on LinkedIn, as there is also an admirer of your business WHO includes a specific suggestion for you.Reboot’s tip: Be additional careful if you're considering hiring a digital marketing agency from overseas.

Agencies abroad usually charge low costs, therefore you may think you’re obtaining a great deal, however, you'll need to deal with poor service.

to not mention the time distinction which can be an associate issue…�STEP 4.�ASK RIGHT QUESTIONS You may be thinking, what to ask a digital marketing agency? You will probably have a hundred and one different questions, but it is important to ensure you are asking the right questions.THIS IS FIVE QUESTIONS YOU SHOULD CONSIDER ASKING YOUR AGENCY:Can I see some campaign examples?Who will be completing the work?How long do you keep clients on average?What results can you promise me?�Can I see some campaign examples?�STEP 5.�SEND A ‘REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP) Once you have whittled down a selection of digital marketing agencies that you are happy to proceed with, get in touch with the company to express your interest.The next step is to send out a ‘request for proposal’ (RFP) to your select few agencies in order to help your decision to choose the best digital marketing agency.

An RFP allows you to collect information from various companies and select the company that best meets your criteria, both in regard to skill and budget.

This should create it clear that agency works best for your business, and that digital marketing contract you ought to be signing.�

advice on choosing the right marketing agency for your business

A marketing agency can make a huge difference to your business but there are many out there and not all of them are as good as each other.

In this article we look at ways to find the right marketing agency to work with.

all you need to know about ecommerce seo services

Prime Seo Services is a full Service Digital Marketing Agency.

We provide white label Digital Marketing Agency Services.

Our organic Seo agency provides all Online Marketing Services required by businesses.

Our Local Seo Agency optimizes your online presence for Growth and Profits.PROFESSIONAL ECOMMERCE SEO SERVICES BENEFICIAL FOR YOUIf you dream of increasing the inflow of traffic on your webpages and increasing the visibility of your brand, ecommerce SEO services agency is a one-stop solution for you.

By availing the services of an organic SEO agency, you can turn your dreams of putting your name out there in the best way possible.

This is because they allow your brand to be easily discoverable by users as well as search engines, which gives you unparalleled internet exposure.

Investing in a professional ecommerce SEO Service could be a beneficial one for you to have the highest return on investment on your website.Campaigns run by an advanced SEO company could be one of the most profitable and efficient of all marketing techniques today.

� It is extremely important to know where your website stands according to website standards.

Any invalid codes or problem-links can be fixed by engaging these services.

This is a crucial exercise for every webpage owner because these factors severely impact your website’s ratings.

They also create multiple hurdles for user navigation.DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE:OUR SEO PROCESS:Our 5 step SEO process ensures that your business gets the most out of the best SEO Company.The easiest way to be more visible online is to write superior content.

This quote is something we have heard multiple times before.

SEO has more to it than just good content.

This can be done by tapping on your SEO opportunities and milking them for a boost in your online traffic and business.�It is important to ask the right questions before embarking on a brand new professional journey with a client.

Gathering information at an early stage prevents raising singular queries in the future and helps with the smooth execution of a project.

Only after�all the relevant data has been collected, can discovery for opportunities begin.

This information could include access to client databases, goals and key performance indicators.

It could also include the client’s present-day ROI and goal ROI.�Research is a pivotal part of providing services, as, without intel, a professional would be clueless about the opportunities it has.

Manual research is required to be conducted at times to filter out opportunities to base content on.

Top search results with a lower Domain Authority are ideal for this purpose as it is convenient to beat them to the first position.This is an indispensable step in�SEO service�as it helps filter out bugs in the project.

It helps in the assessment of the off-page and on-page activity and helps detect technical issues.

It also helps with duplicate content related problems and identifies a website’s potential.

It is essentially a doctor’s visit for your website, as it helps identify the strong and weak points in the websites that can be worked upon to maximize traffic.An audit or analysis of the activities and steps taken by your competitors for SEO helps the client’s project.

It helps determine the on-page and off-page factors that affect your website's rank.

Comparing the SEO strategies used by your competition can help you identify areas and ideas that can be used by you for higher traffic inflow.

It helps identify what could work effectively in the market to give the business a boost.COMPONENTS OF SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATIONKeywords play an awfully necessary role within the way your web site can appear in the search engine results.

We offer you the simplest potential keywords which can confirm the worth of your web site within the search engine results.

We tend to produce undetectable backlinks and anchor text which can divert the search engine results to your official web site page.

Opportunities can be discovered by researching on newsletters pertaining to the client’s industry and subscribing to it.

Not only must one subscribe to content that ranks higher on the quality scale but also the crude and subpar content as they are a pool of keyword opportunities.All these ways can mechanically increase the traffic drive on your web site.

We tend to keep a track of the overall number of views on your pages and also the quantity of time spent on them.

With the increment in all these factors, the bounce rates mechanically decrease as individuals take appropriate action on your web site and that they keep returning.When everything in your web site is correct and working you may notice your site rank increasing day by day and not only domestically but also globally and unconditionally.

We offer you a detailed comparison report on how your website ranks as compared to different rival sites.This refers to any changes that needed to be done on your web site.

And for this, we offer you with recommendations like minimizing the codes and reducing the dimensions of your pictures for best optimum results.

This can permit your web site to load in no time and your presence among the users will increase.CONCLUSION:Ecommerce Seo Services�are important for your online business to get more customer.

Your business deserves great profits and reputation.

The only way that can make it happen is by performing search optimization via reputed Seo Agency.

Get started with the Ecommerce Seo services today.�

tips for choosing a digital marketing agency

A digital marketing agency can help your business develop an effective Internet presence.

When you need your website to be found easily in the search engines, turn to a Boston SEO professional to get the results your business deserves.When you need to build an online presence for your business, turn to a Boston Internet Marketing agency.These companies make a living earning top quality search rankings for their clients.They work to help business owners like you get visitors from internet searches, social networking sites, and other online methods.A digital marketing agency can help you reach your target market quickly and effectively.Use these tips when deciding on an SEO agency: Willingness to Learn Choose a provider thats willing to learn about your industry and the business that you manage or the products that you produce.If a digital marketing agency is truly going to represent your business, its key that they understand what you do, as well as some of the basic jargon found in your industry.Otherwise, your content may seem stilted and ill-informed.White Hats Only, Please Be sure that the Boston SEO agency youve chosen specializes in white hat methods, and doesnt spam forums or set up low quality backlinks en masse.The last thing you want is to have your site lose ranking or be frowned upon in search engine listings because of a poor quality service provider.Instead, work to find an SEO specialist that will use reputable techniques to rank your site.It may take a little longer to achieve the results you want, but the time invested is well worth it.Your site will gradually move up in the search engine rankings, and the listing youll achieve will be easier to maintain than one earned by trickery.Search engines regularly analyze website rankings, and they prefer authority sites that have gradually built a name for themselves using white hat methods.Divide and Conquer When youre interviewing SEO service providers, ask them about the techniques that they use.For the best quality results, choose a provider that uses multiple methods, such as social networking, article marketing, backlink building, and more.This multi-faceted approach will help to ensure that you get the highest rank in the search engines in the least amount of time.Your goal is to be the industry leader in your local area, so choose a BostonInternet Marketing Company that will help you build an authority site thats easily found online.After all, it doesnt matter how attractive your website is if no ones visiting it.Online traffic is essential for online business success.Whether youre running a small business or a large corporation, having an online presence is essential.When youre tired of trying to build your internet reputation on your own, it may be time to hire a digital marketing agency.These professionals work hard so that you dont have to; most are willing to set up and manage social networking accounts, build backlinks to your site, write and post articles, assist you with marketing copy and developing your website, and more.When you trust this part of your advertising campaign to a Boston SEO firm, you can relaxArticle Search, knowing that your online reputation is in good hands.

with the help of advertising agency to manage your internet marketing

I have tried here to present some facts How to optimize digital marketing drive with an advertizing agency.

Qlook.bz is best user-friendly interface and local search engine that will provide short info about advertising agency in response to your search queries.

This local search engine has been designed in such a manner that you can search your categories through Pincode, locality, city or provinces.The online marketing agency�provides solutions for your internet marketing�business; especially�you are new in online marketing business.�These ad�agencies will manage your advertising campaign for brands/services according to your business requirements.�Online marketing�agency, have�SEO experts,�PPC experts,�SMO experts,�Email Marketing experts,�Facebook marketing experts and others that will help to fulfill your�marketing�strategy for your online business.

An ad advertising company must have years of experience will help your business at top-notch in search engine results pages.

The world of internet is broad and you must have vast knowledge to know about working activity of ad agency and also understand about their techniques used in promoting your business.Adverting agency provides offer you for promoting your business in online world as

how to find a good internet marketing agency

Are you frustrated by your lack of success? Do you want to employ a team of internet marketing specialists? This article may help you in your hunt for one.How do you select an Internet Marketing Agency though? After all, dont all of them claim to be your ultimate solution? How can you sift through the humongous list and actually select a firm that would suit you? Here are a few tips that you might find helpful.Firstly, just about every digital marketing agencyshould be able to provide SEO services, within its package.SEO is after all a rather critical aspect of internet marketing.How do you tell if a particular company is any good at SEO? Besides the usual glorifying testimonials and bottomless pits of samples in their portfolio, you may also want to check how well they themselves rank for competitive words in the make money niche.Experts tend to agree that if they cant rank well, they probably cant get you to rank well either.It isnt all about search engine optimization though.You may also want to take a look at the different packages they offer.Some companies offer fantastic deals.They handle literally everything, from traffic generation to customer service to marketing.They tend to have enough manpower to handle multiple clients.And they also tend to divide their manpower very efficiently.Heres a possible way you may use to identify an agency with a strong team.1)���� They are very well organized, and know exactly what they are doing.2)���� Within 1 team, there are subgroups that focus on specific tasks.i.e.1 subgroup for traffic generation, 1 for copywriting, 1 for marketing etc.3)���� They dont have dirt cheap rates.Of course, while not all firms that charge a bomb are necessarily good, most marketers do agree that if you buy cheap, you get cheap.HenceBusiness Management Articles, you may want to stay away from companies that grossly undercut their competitors.So there you have it.These are a couple of practical ways you could choose to employ in your hunt for a good Boston based digital marketing agency.�

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