Nisachon Sriobchoey
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With increasing power in consumers' hands, consumers now have a say in everything from fundamental functions like product design and development to something that has always been kept from them up until now: advertising.
Nowadays, companies are doing what might be considered unthinkable several years before: letting the consumers make an ad for them. These ads are called consumer-generated advertising (CGA). CGA is a part of a new trend toward an increase in consumer-generated content on the Internet , which is facilitated by the growth of Web 2.0 applications and access to broadband connections.
Many companies have implemented CGA in one form or another to their advertising campaigns in the past 2 years. Some were successful like Converse's Gallery, Mastercard's Priceless, and Burger King's Mask. However, some also failed miserably like Chevrolet's Tahoe, Walmart's The Hub and many other CGA campaigns that nobody has even heard about at all.
With this widespread use of CGA, one might wonder the impact that it might have to advertising. Many experts believe that CGA is just a fad that will fade away soon while others believe that CGA is just a part of a bigger trend that is evolving in the advertising world today.
In order to examine CGA and its possible impact to the advertising better, this Web site will cover various topics related to CGA from factors involving in the rise of CGA to the reasons why CGA is and is not successful to the future of CGA.
Click each element on the image to learn more about it
nternet, "an extensive computer network made up of thousands of other smaller business, academic, and governmental networks,"(1) has more than billion users in the world. For the U.S., 70% of people or about 200 million people use Internet and this number has grown 120% since 2000 (2).
1958 - As a response to Sputnik, the first satellite launched by the Soviet Union, the U.S. government formed the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) in order to regain technical superiority for the U.S.
1969 - ARPANET, the first packet-switching network, was created. It connected computers from 4 universities: Stanford, UCLA, UC Santa-Barbara, and University of Utah.
1972 - E-mail was created by a Cambridge, Massachusetts, computer scientist.
1977 - "Internetting" was used for the first time to describe connections between various networks
1981 - The first desktop personal computers are introduced
1983 - The computer is names Time magazine's "Man of the Year"
1984 - The domain name system. ".com," ".org," ".edu" was established. Writer William Gibson coins the term "cyberspace"
1989 - Tim Berners-Lee developed a new technique to distribute information on the Internet called the World Wide Web
1994 - Initial commerce sites are established and mass marketing campaigns are launched via email introducing the term "spamming"
1995 - CompuServe, America Online, and Prodigy start providing dial-up Internet access
1998 - Google opens its first office
2000 - The "dot-com bubble" which has been growing since 1997 reaches it peak
2003 - The number of U.S. broadband subscribers reaches 14 million. Apple launches iTunes
2005 - Seventeen million new sites go online
2006 - more than 100 million Web site online
Online Advertising Spending in Million (5)
Online advertising starts in 1994, at the same time as the establishment of commercial sites. The first online ad appeared in a form of banner ad sold by HotWired in 1996. The ad was paid for by AT&T to lead people to its Web site. Online advertising grew dramatically from 1996 to 2000 with online advertising spending in U.S. reaching $8.2 billion for the first time in 2000. However, after 2000, online advertising spending came to a standstill point because of the skepticism that companies feel toward the effectiveness of online advertising and the decrease in click-through rate. Companies also feel that online advertising lack brand-building quality that other media have. Without seeing any concrete result from online advertising, companies start to shift their money back to traditional media causing a decrease in online advertising in 2002. In 2003, online advertising was revived back to life by several factors from better economy and increasing skepticism toward the efficacy of television to increase in broadband subscribers and the increase in a more interactive form of online advertising which allow for more creative forms of online advertising that might counteract the long skepticism toward online advertising's inability to build brand (4).
2005 Online Advertising Revenue by Format (5)
Banner Ad
Banner ad is one of the first forms of online advertising. The ad appears as a banner on the screen with as many as 14 different sizes based on the Interactive Advertising Bureau's standard. The graphic can be either animated or static. The ad's objective is to attract traffic to a Web site; therefore, the ads's effectiveness are usually measured though click-through rate.
Interstitials
Interstitials are known more widely as pop-ups or pop-unders. It serves the same function as banner ad, to attract traffic to a Web site. Pop-ups, as its name suggests, are new windows that pop up when a user enter a Web site to lead the user to another Web site. Pop-up ads are not as quite popular today as they were before because of the irritation they create to the users.
Sponsorships
Online sponsorship works in the same way as traditional sponsorship. Companies will sponsore Web sites that contain information that is related to the companies. Companies usually use sponsorship to generate goodwill and brand awareness more than to generate click-through like in banner and pop-up ads.
Rich Media
Rich media is a generic term used to describe online ad that includes animation and other interactive features to visually and audibly appeal to the viewers. Most of the banner and pop-up ads now use rich media in order to attract user's attention more than just static graphic.
Keyword Search
As another effective way to lead traffic to the Web site, advertisers might bid for search terms from a search engine like Google, Yahoo!, and MSN so that when users search about some specific topics, their Web site would appear before others. Keyword search has surpassed other online advertising format in recent years because of its ability to deliver the message to the consumers at the specific time when they need it most.
Referrals
Online referrals work in almost the same way as offline method. They are used to generate traffic to a site by providing incentives such as gift or rewards to users who refer the site to others.
E-mail is used in the same as traditional direct mail except that with E-mail, promotional messages can be sent to thousands of consumer within seconds with very low cost compared to traditional direct mail. However, this method is less and less effective since consumers are paying less and less attention to commercial E-mails and see them as annoyances. to the top