Introduction to Online Advertising

Online advertising is an advertising method that allows webmasters to make their website financially profitable and cover the costs of hosting and domain names. It is also a special way of ensuring that the services and/or products that your website offers will be promoted. Online advertising is aimed of course at Internet users, i.e. the ideal audience for such an advertising campaign.

Online advertising generally takes the form of an advertising campaign through the posting of graphic advertising banners or sponsored links in text form.

Specialised companies called "advertising firms" are generally the recommended channel for advertising campaign management. These companies are an intermediary between the advertisers (who want to run an advertising campaign) and the publishers (the owners of the websites that agree to reserve part of their advertising space for the posting of advertising banners). The advertising firms receive a percentage of the revenue earned in advertising campaigns, or "firm costs". Firm costs are generally between 30% and 60% of revenue.

Method of Payment

There are different methods of payment:

• CPC (cost per click) means that payment for advertising is proportional to the number of unique clicks on advertising banners
• CPM (cost per milli or cost per impression) means that the method of payment is based on the number of views. This advertising model is generally reserved for websites with high traffic volume (more than one million pages viewed per month).
• CPS (cost per sale) means that payment for advertising is based on the number of visitor clicks that lead to a sale

Legal Steps

In order to be able to collect advertising revenues earned this way, both freelance workers and companies must be registered at the chamber of commerce (at least in France).

Banner Formats

There are many banner formats that have been standardized by the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau). The table below lists the main formats and their names:

Several other related technologies exist:

• A pop-up is an advertisement that opens in a new browsing window after a banner is clicked. This advertising method is increasingly being blocked by browsers because Internet users find it to be annoying.
• A pop-under is an advertisement that opens under the current browsing window after the mouse is moved over a banner. This advertising method can give disseminate information to users without being as intrusive as pop-ups.
• Rich media means the use of JavaScript, layers, Flash, sound and/or video in advertising banners.

The Concept of Capping

In order to keep Internet users from constantly seeing the same ad, advertising firms generally use a technique involving cookies that help to limit a campaign to a certain number of ads per visitor. This system is called "capping".

More information

• IAB Interactive Marketing Standards and Guidelines - Internet AdUnit Guideline