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The Advantages of Online Advertising vs. Traditional Methods

The internet has changed everything, shifting pretty much every aspect of our lives on to the digital realm. While it’s hard to say whether or not this change has been a universally positive thing, there are certain aspects of our lives that just plain work better online. For example, if you own a business or free websites it’s easier than ever to get lots of people checking out what you have to offer. This is both because you can now easily have a website, a virtual home for people anywhere in the world to check out at any time, but also because advertising has been greatly improved by the jump online.

Why is advertising online superior to traditional advertising for your web page? Here are some of the top ways:

Know Exactly What Works

There is an old saying in the advertising world that only half of all advertising works, but no one knows which half it is. While this was absolutely true when it came to traditional advertising methods, it no longer holds any water as you can track the performance of each of your online advertisements. You no longer have to create advertisements, put them out into the world and guess what’s bringing in qualified leads to your Flash website- with online advertising you can see how many people each specific ad brings in and at what conversion rate.

In essence, online advertising helps to remove ambiguity from what was previously an almost esoteric practice and promote your free websites with full accountability.

Micro-Target Your Audience

When it comes to traditional advertising, there is only so much demographics targeting you can employ. You can place your ads on TV shows, radio programs and in magazines that are popular with your niche in general, but this is a pretty crude form of targeting compared to online advertising.

With digital ads, there is almost no limit to how finely you can specific the audience for your prospective visitors to your Flash sites. With most standard Pay Per Click advertising programs you can specify the exact keywords and keyword phrases that you want to target, and with ad programs like Facebook you can laser target using a massive amount of criteria- including age, gender, location, education, place of employment, favorite music and marital status, to name a few. It’s possible these days to create advertisements that target a single individual. And we all know that the more targeted your advertisements, the easier it is to speak effectively to your audience.

It’s Inexpensive

Online advertising for your free websites is dirt cheap, especially compared to traditional advertisements that work with big media. Advertising on a popular TV show or well-circulated magazine is going to cost you an arm and a leg… without any guarantee of results.

For starters, with most online advertising platforms you’re only going to pay whenever your ad converts. With traditional ad program you’ll be paying by impression (each time someone sees your ad, regardless of whether they take action). With online Pay Per Click advertising you’ll only pay money when someone clicks on your ad and follows through to your domain name. Add on the fact that you’ll often only pay pennies for each visitor and online advertising is extremely cost effective.

Send them Right to Your Site

The final huge benefit of online advertising over traditional advertising is the fact that when someone clicks on your ad, they go right to your website where you can convert them to a reader or to a buyer. In traditional advertising someone needs to see your ad, remember it and then take action on it later. Online advertising eliminates the time in between clients viewing your ads and visiting your sit, making the whole sales process far more streamlined and efficient.

While there are people who still receive good results from traditional advertising, for most people the old ways don’t provide half the benefits and incentives of online advertising. If you want to promote your free websites, look towards this new form of advertising.


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