What’s so cool about Online Advertising?

A lot of veteran brand managers who earlier built big brands using mediums like television, magazines, newspaper, radio, outdoor advertising etc., would have definitely asked this question to themselves that what is so cool about this Online Advertising and why there is so much buzz about it. Is it just a fad or is this new medium really going to turn things around?

The brand managers still rely on traditional marketing channels when they think about a product launch, brand awareness or getting a lot of eye balls in quick time.

Well there are few things which I want to talk about regarding the benefits of online advertising.

1. User Behavioral Pattern is changing - There has been a big change in the behavioral & consumption pattern of people over the last few years when we talk about information, entertainment, news, communication and socializing. Today people are spending a lot more time on Internet in doing things which earlier they use to do on television, print media or outside their homes. Like lot of people now stream videos, watch TV series and movies online, read online newspaper, communicate more via emails and online messenger, spent lot of time on social networking websites, play online games, manage all their finances and do banking online, shop online, search online to locate any person, product, place, hotel etc. and so on. In a nutshell, people are using Internet for almost all their needs and other activities. Hence Internet has become a great place to catch hold of users and market any product or service.
2. Targeted Advertising - Internet is a more powerful channel than any of the traditional marketing channels like Television, radio, newspaper, magazines, outdoor billboards etc. in the sense that it gives marketer control on choosing its targeting audience. Other marketing channels like television, radio, print media etc. work like a broadcast channel where everyone accessing those channels is exposed to a brand campaign even if they are not the right target audience for that particular brand. In traditional marketing channel, a marketer cannot choose his audience at a user level and so end up spending his marketing dollars on users who are not even his target audience, in an attempt to reach out to the real customers. But this is not the case in online advertising which allows a marketer to choose his target audience based on various factors like demographics, age, income, geography, interests etc. 
3.  Costs are lower and controllable – For a marketer to advertise his product or service on traditional medium has to shell out lot more money than in case of online advertising. In traditional marketing channels, marketer ends up paying for eyeballs which are not his real target audience and which are not gonna give him any real business. Whereas in case of online marketing a marketer pays only for those users that are his target audience and who have really shown any interest in his product by viewing the Ad or clicking on the Ad or finally getting converted.
4. Better tracking and measurable results - Traditional marketing channels comes with a big loop-hole that it lacks reliable, accurate and measurable success metrics. So it’s really difficult to measure the effectiveness of traditional channels. Whereas in online advertising a marketer can successfully track the success of the campaign in a very objective manner through metrics like impressions viewed, click through rates, conversion rates, ROI etc.
5. Speed of execution – Speed of execution is much more in online advertising than traditional advertising and marketer can start online advertising to a wide audience the moment the marketer makes his/her campaign available to the online ad network.hereas in traditional medium a marketer has to go through the lengthy process of signing a contract each time, pre-booking a slot on the channel, giving detailed specifics and then wait till the time the campaign actually gets served.
6. More adaptable and customizable solution – Online advertising is more adaptable and customizable. A marketer can create multiple creatives for the same brand and can rotate the campaigns shown so that user gets to see a new campaign each time. Also the marketer can take quick actions on the results like the creative which gets better response is shown more while poor performing creative is discarded. Also at any time the marketer can change his budget, target audiences and many other variables like frequency, day part timings etc.
7. More Informative medium and actionable – Online advertising is much more informative than any traditional marketing. In online advertising, the advertiser is able to convey far more details about the advertisement to the audience and that too at relatively low cost. Most of the online advertising campaigns are composed of a clickable link to a specific landing page, where users get more information about the product mentioned in the ad. Whereas in traditional marketing channel marketer has to condense all information in the available space or time slot.
8. Variety of formats – Another benefit of online advertising is the variety of formats supported there like image banners, video ads, flash ads, rich media formats etc.