When Will We Finally Get it?

EMarketer:Why Advertise Online?

Industry analysts have been trying to justify advertising online to the masses of media buyers and marketers for some time. eMarkerter has released yet another study that the average household with over $75K in income is likely to be swayed by reasearch done on the internet. Considering that over 50% of the US population were using the Internet in early 2002, at a growth rate of 26% per year, that means that a heck of a lot of people are referencing the Net for information. Considering the Net's importance in the average person's purchase process in industries such as travel, online search, and food, is it any wonder that Internet advertising makes sense for reaching the demographic that is most apt to purchase your product?

I was briefed on the comments from an executive in our company who said of e-mail marketing to customers "I don't know why we would ever want to communicate with these people in that way". Having spent significant time on the proposal stating that our organization should be one rich with customer email and demographic data, I was rather offended. It floors me that, in this day and age, someone could hastily dismiss such a potentially effective (cost and impact) marketing avenue. These are also the people who find print-to-web ad effectiveness tracking to be nothing of their concern. Perhaps a patter emerges.

Come to think of it, maybe I'm happy that not everyone in our industry is doing Internet marketing and advertising. Hey, if they were, it would be a lot more crowded out there!