216. Online Advertising › the good and the bad › advantages of online advertising 8.6 the future of online advertisingWhile we have become used to the Internet as a free medium where we canread and interact with any content we want, it is the fact that it is an advertiser’smedium that keeps it free. And that means that as technologies evolve and theway we interact with content changes, so advertising follows.Previously the level of interaction a web user had with a website could bemeasured by the number of pages of that website the user viewed. Now,technology such as AJAX and rich media such as video mean that the timespent on a web page can be more meaningful than the number of pagesviewed. The key word here is “engagement”, and technology and data analysisis working towards being able to determine how websites can quantify the levelof engagement with a viewer.A little online research will reveal plenty of commentary declaring the declineof display advertising. Increasingly, consumers are becoming both wearyand wary of advertising. Clickthrough rates on banners are dropping, so theeffectiveness of display advertising is being questioned by some. With the focusin digital marketing on tracking and measuring response and engagement,should a company spend money on less measurable activities such as “brandbuilding”, where they are paying on a CPM basis?Consider this: anecdotal evidence shows that banner advertising can increaseclickthrough rates on contextual adverts by 249% (Godin, 2006).Using third-party ad servers and post impression tracking, the effect ofdifferent advertising and marketing channels on each other can be observed.Banner advertising can see an increase in search volume, for example.What does this tell us? Measurement should take place across all channels,and no channel should be utilised in isolation. The best results will be gainedthrough an integrated and holistic approach to digital marketing. 8.7 the good and the bad8.7.1 Advantages of Online AdvertisingBanner Ads and their Similarity with Traditional MediaDigital marketers regularly bemoan the fact that it’s often difficult to educatethe market about the value of Internet marketing techniques. Traditionalbuyers of advertising have been conditioned in a certain fashion and have cometo understand advertising in a certain way. 213