Online advertising is, as its name suggests, a system by which marketing messages are conveyed on the Internet in order to attract customers and increase sales of a product or service. Email marketing, even e-mail spam, banner ads and search engine results pages are examples of online advertising.

Let’s look at how online advertising scores over traditional methods of advertising. For starters, online advertising has great sales potential in that the advertisements can reach almost any place on the globe almost immediately they are published. It allows for targeted individuals to be sent personalized messages. These personalized messages can be tailored to suit individual cases. All types of advertising formats: text, sound, images and animation can be employed. One only has to think of the banners and interactive broadband commercials to realize this. And, very importantly, because the internet facilitates two way communication, it is a form of direct response advertising and interactivity.

Online ads are economical in that one can also follow the payment method by which the payment depends upon the response of the audience.  The most common of this type of advertising are CPM (Cost per Mille), CPV (Cost per Visitor) and CPC (Cost per Click) or PPC (Pay per Click).

Some types of online advertisements that require a one time payment are floating and expanding ads, pop ups and pop unders, video, map and mobile ads.

Email advertising, also known as opt-in e-mail allows advertisers buy ad space in the letter or sponsor it.

With so many good things going for online advertising the drawbacks seem almost unimportant in comparison. But websnarl, measurement difficulties, cost, confusion and the possibility of trickery are some of those that need to be addressed.