You could have the best product or service of all time, but if no one knows about it, you are not going to have any sales. That is where advertising comes in, and where you advertise can be just as important as the advertisement itself. If you are thinking about advertising online, you will want to look up both the advantages and disadvantages of advertising with examples of how internet ads actually work.

Advantages to Advertising Online

Online advertising is cheap and can be highly targeted, which are its two biggest advantages. Internet ads are cheaper than any other form of major advertising media, including print, television, radio and billboards. You can pay based on either how many people see your ad or how many people click on it, meaning you will only be paying when your ad actually works. You can also restrict your ads to the people you want to see it so you do not have to spend money reaching people outside your target audience.

In fact, online advertising's targeting benefits are pretty amazing. You can reach people all across the globe or only those in a particular neighborhood. You can even choose to reach people not only of a certain gender or age group but even people who have specific interests, such as Harry Potter or major league baseball. The analytics available through online advertising companies can even let you see who is responding to your ad so you can better tweak your future ads or learn more about the type of people interested in your product or service.

These analytics are particularly useful in letting you know about your ad's effectiveness. While it is hard to really gauge the effectiveness of a billboard or television ad, online tracking lets you know how many people visit your website from a certain site and even how long they stay on your page. You can also quickly and easily tell which of your ads is most effective at attracting the right customers. You can upload new ads almost instantaneously with some companies, so if you do not like your insights, you can make changes quickly.

Disadvantages of Internet Advertising

Unfortunately, there may be a reason online ads are so inexpensive, and that is because they are so easily ignored. Think about it — it is a lot easier to ignore a banner ad at the top of a website or to scroll past sponsored listings than it is to ignore the ad on the back of the bus in front of you in traffic or a commercial that pops up between your favorite TV shows. This is one of the biggest disadvantages of internet advertising, and it is especially true because the prevalence of online ads has made people totally used to ignoring them.

To make matters worse, people often do not trust online advertisements due to so many ads that involve scams and viruses. In fact, many people install ad blockers so they do not have to see ads online, although you at least do not need to pay for views when people use this kind of software.

Even some of the benefits can also be drawbacks. For example, it is easy to overly target your ad and completely miss the chance to advertise to people who very well could be customers if they just knew you existed.

Should You Advertise Online?

Many experts have tackled the topic of online advertising in advantages and disadvantages of advertisement essays and few of them will agree on whether or not the average advertiser will benefit from advertising online. That is because there is no one answer for every business. While some companies will have better luck with TV commercials, others will thrive with online ads.

Ultimately, the low cost can mean that it is worth testing out internet advertising for yourself to see how it works for your product or service.