23 July 2019

Welcome to our 3rd installment of our blog series on the evolution of paid online advertising

In this blog, we will continue covering the early history of online paid marketing and advertising between 2006 up to 2010. In these formative years of online paid advertising, we’ve seen the growth and evolution of this type of marketing which started out as simply online branding for most small and large companies to where we’ve seen companies spending upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars monthly in order to reach their target audience. As social media has grown so has the users searching online for what influencers are pedalling thus this created a wonderful opportunity for the growth of paid online advertising where companies could target a specific audience for a specific product or service.

2006: Digital ads become hyper-targeted
As social media platforms picked up steam in the mid 2000s, advertisers sought a way to integrate ad content in a way that was both effective and non-intrusive. Marketers wanted a plan of action to reach younger internet users who were increasingly unswayed by banner ads and spending most of their internet time on social networks.

After previously resisting ads on its site, Facebook started working with advertisers in 2006 as a way to increase the young company’s profitability. They started with small display ads and sponsored links, and eventually moved onto ads targeted to a user’s demographics and interests. Despite some controversies along the way, Facebook has proven itself to be a targeted ad pioneer, changing the way that companies reach their desired audiences online.

“Our strategy is much less about increasing the volume of ads and much more about increasing the quality of the content and the quality of the targeting to get the right content to the right people,” Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said in 2014.

Targeting consumers with relevant ads — rather than bombarding them with a large volume of ad content — has become a standard practice for online advertisers, particularly on social media. Beyond Facebook’s targeting efforts, other social networks such as Twitter, YouTube, and Google+ focus on providing an advertising experience for users that doesn’t feel aggressive or impersonal.

In real estate, the saying is Location, location, location but on the internet, the saying goes Content, content, content. The simple rule with online marketing is that your content has to be captivating and compelling. Researchers 3 years ago did what they do and researched and found that it takes about 22 seconds for an internet user to decide whether or not to click through to your website or ad or not. Today, that time for a user takes to decide whether or not to click on your ad is probably closer to a nanosecond. This is why it’s so important to develop attention grabbing quality content.

I often have this discussion with clients who come into our office and want to build a website that appeals to them and I will say to them if you cannot create spectacular food for a dinner party that you intend to hold, then you should hire caterers especially if you want your guest raving about your party and come to your next event.

From <https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/history-of-online-advertising>

Nexonta Technologies Inc
On to the Next Level