The article discusses the effectiveness of advertising on the Internet. An overview of types of advertising is given, as well as several experiments. The problems of measuring efficiency on the Internet are identified.

Advertising on the Internet is a powerful tool that has absorbed the strengths of several communication channels at once, such as traditional media (print + radio + television) and direct marketing. Internet advertising is, first of all, positively distinguished by the relatively low cost of the still developing medium, the breadth of audience coverage, a large selection of target groups, and selectivity.

The advantages of advertising on the Internet include the fact that it is easy to target an audience according to a variety of parameters, such as, for example, the geographic location of the user (country, city), the socio-demographic characteristics of the user, the time spent using the computer, familiarity with advertising, etc. It is important to note that on the Internet you can not only target advertising in a certain way, but also collect and analyze detailed information that is very valuable for the advertiser information about users, carrying out so-called tracking and recording the number and quality of users who have made contact with advertising, the number of ad impressions, the number of clicks, the dynamics of contacts, etc. Analysis of such information allows companies to quickly adjust advertising activities and increase their effectiveness.

To all of the above, it is worth adding that online advertising is a very simple and accurate tool for measuring the effectiveness of advertising activities. Next, we will look at the most commonly used types of advertising on the Internet: website, banner and contextual advertising.

Site
A website, or simply a site, is a collection of documents of a private individual or organization united on a computer network under one address (domain name or IP address). Any website itself is already an advertisement for the company or product it is dedicated to. When posting information on a website, there are no such restrictions on volume as there are in the print space of newspapers and magazines, or on radio and television. You can place as many materials as large as you like.

What is very important is that posting information on a website is a fairly inexpensive way to distribute it. At the same time, information becomes available to audiences located anywhere in the world.

Statistics of site visits are obtained using registration programs. Usually hits and hosts are recorded. Hits (hit, visit) - the total number of visits to the site over a certain time, for example per week, month, etc. Hosts (host, site reach) - the number of unique visitors.

Using automatic statistics, you can also obtain information on the user's geographic location, time of visit to the site, interest in certain information, etc.

Thus, statistics allow you to track the effectiveness of the site in terms of the number of visitors - representatives of the target audience.

Such data allows you to work on the content, optimization and promotion of the site in order to increase its effectiveness. If the site sells goods or services, you can track its effectiveness in relation to sales using the CTR (Click-Through Rates) indicator. It represents the ratio of the number of “clicks” to the number of impressions. CTR is measured as a percentage. It can be represented as follows:

CTR = Number of clicks/number of impressions x 100%.

For example, as part of an advertising campaign, the site was visited by 2000 people and clicked to purchase 18 times.
Respectively:

CTR = 0.9% (18 / 2000 x 100%).

In the same way, you can calculate the site’s efficiency ratio, using the number of actual purchases instead of the number of clicks.

When assessing the effectiveness of a site, it is important to understand that it simultaneously performs the functions of two types of advertising - selling and image. The latter (which also affects sales) cannot be assessed using operational statistics. To obtain results of the site’s impact on attitude towards the product, on remembering the brand, etc., additional research is necessary.

Banner advertising
A banner is a graphic image similar to an advertising module in the press, but can contain animated elements, as well as a hyperlink to a website or any page of the advertiser.

Banner performance is also calculated using CTR.

For example, as part of an advertising campaign, a banner was shown 1000 times and was clicked on 114 times. Accordingly:

CTR = 1.14% (114 / 10,000 x 100%).

On average, effective banner advertising produces a response rate of 0.1-2%. Sometimes CTR can reach up to 10%. In this case, it will be highly effective. If the CTR is less than 0.1%, then this is considered a sign of low-performing advertising.

When calculating the effectiveness of banners, as in the case of a website, you should keep in mind that they simultaneously perform the functions of two types of advertising - selling and image. Interestingly, according to research from Millward Brown, ad awareness growth is "96% driven by exposure to the banner and just 4% by clicking on the banner to the advertiser's Web page. This exposure-to-click ratio holds true not only for awareness, but also for other brand reinforcement metrics.