Online advertising includes advertising through the internet. There are different advertising options in online advertisement which include; searching engine advertising where keywords are used to search for product and the advertisers pay per click campaigns through the three main search engines – Google, Yahoo and MSN; and display ads which involve renting space on a website that is frequently visited where one pays the site.
There is also classified advertising which involves display on various sites and occurs at different spaces where one pays the site. Finally there are lead generation, rich site Summary (RSS) advertising, the rich media and the email advertising where emails are sent to individuals or columns are set to open as people open the web pages. The types of online ads present include; banner ads, which may involve banner exchange, pay publishers, and pay a banner network; Pop-up ads; floating ads (which appear for sometime when one opens a web page); interstitial ads (appear on the web page as user requests); unicast ads (runs on the browser window and is animated); takeover ads (appear with first click of website then it move to other parts of the page); chat rooms, spyware/adware; web portal site; web blogs; and contextual ads.
One major advantage of online adverts is that online ads are designed to capture the attention of the reader as he opens the web. In addition, online ads have a wider mass outreach as numerous people visit the web all the time. Use of emails may create instant interest to the reader thus leading to increased product awareness. Since online ads are measurable by clicks, payment is prompt while the space is bought from the regularly visited sites, creating a quick knowledge of the product or service. Disadvantages of online ads include; the pop in ads may irritate the visitor, the net may be slow to open reading to skipping of ads that take time to load, and those who can access internet will not get access to the advert. Online ads are very effective since one never searches a web page unless there is interest in it, and in so doing, he/she will come across the ad.