Online Advertising - Advertising Networks

Online Advertising - Advertising Networks

An online advertising network is a network representing many web-sites by selling advertising on their web-pages (Marketing terms.com, 2005).
Advertsing networks advertise on different types of online medium, such as; banner ads, pop-up ads, rich media advertising, e-mail adverrtising and search engine advertising. Advertising networks allow the buyer to reach a broad range of audience relatively easily trough run-of-category and run-of-network buys. (Marketing terms.com, 2005).
This means that one marketer can go to one company and get its advertising published in several of different web-sites. This gives an advantage because it centralizes the management, making it more efficient, and in this way it can offer many different services. For the advertiser it often means cheaper rates and more targeted advertising. (Lindstöm and Andersen, 2001, p 245)
The reason for development of all the different advertising networks is that many sites alone are too small to pull in lucrative advertising contract on their own. By being in a advertising network like BURST! media many small websites could stick together and BURST! media could negotiate advertising deals with big companies like Nike. This is a advantage for the advertiser in such way that they do not have to negotiate deals with every webpage they want to advertise. It would also be an advantage for the advertiser in the way that the advertising network could offer them to advertise on a large number of sites that fit the companies brand image and positioning. For the small website it is an advantage so they can take profit from the big corporations.
Advertising networks can be divided into two broad categories; blind networks and targeted networks.
Blind networks
In a blind advertising network there are the advertisers get limited information about what webpage the as is shown where on the page it is shown. Some blind networks give you no information about where the ad is. (E-consultancy, 2005, p.5) The main advantage of a blind network is that it is operating on a much cheaper cost than if you are being site specific advertising. The disadvantage is however that the advertiser have no control over what type of audience the ad are reaching, and it is therby very difficult to measure its effectiveness.

Targeted advertising networks
Targeted networks however enable the advertiser with a big advantage of being able to chose who the ad is going to target. This can be done by running the ad on a specific category such as sport sites. Or it can target specific target segment such as; males 20-25 years, interested in cars and with a annual wage of over 60 000$. One example of such a targeted network is DoubleClick.

Examples of advertising networks
Google AdSense
doubleclick.com
BURST! Media
advertising.com
ValueClick