Getting
Started
Broadening
your understanding of online advertising
by
Anna Kimbrell
Online advertising is a relatively new realm of the
advertising world, so I have compiled a list of sites to help the online advertising
novice learn about the basics of this new technology.
The first site to check out is www.officelinks.com/advt1_terms.htm,
this site simply explains the terminology of online advertising. It explains
what click-throughs and banner advertisements are, the difference between
repeat and unique visitors, and the misnomer of the word "hits."
The next site to check out is www.admedia.org
. This site calls itself an Internet Advertising Resource Guide and provides
links to just about any advertising site, periodical, or research site you
want. It's a good site to keep up while you search.
The next step is to go to a couple of sites with
good, easy to read, statistics. My favorite is www.nua.ie/surveys/
. It is full of reports, graphs and charts. One table on the site breaks down
the amount of the world's online population by countries, and another by date.
They have weekly, bi-monthly, and year end reports. Also, there is a keyword
search for articles and reports.
Now you'll be ready to jump into a huge site. The
absolute best site to look at is www.theadstop.com.
The site is primarily for people looking to advertise online but it is full
of information, statistics and links. It neatly divides it's categories for
easy navigation. For example, it has categories such as sex & gender, demographics,
age, etc. The best part about the site, especially if you're just looking
for information, is the resources and information page. It's full of links
for statistics, instructions, and news. Two good sites from their list of
links are, www.glreach.com/globstats/index.php3,
and www.forrester.com.
The first contains statistics that are very clearly laid out with graphs and
pie charts. The second is an online research company that is full of statistical
analysis for online advertising. They also offer a link to a Georgia Tech
site that has a lot of online survey analyses. (The home address is www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu
.)
Another good site for information is http://adsonline.about.com/mlibrary.htm
. This site has lots of articles and information on specific targeting techniques.
(For example, how to target the business-to-business community on the web.)
This site is good for news and informative reading but is a bit dense if you
don't understand the different aspects of online advertising, so don't start
here if you don't have a strong grasp of the basics.
And you can always turn to search engines, especially
if you have a specific area of online advertising you would like to explore.
Some to try are: www.google.com, www.altavista.com
and www.lexisnexis.com. Happy surfing!
