Perreault−McCarthy: Basic
Marketing: A
Global−Managerial
Approach, 14/e- Advertising and Sales
Promotion
Text © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2002464 Chapter 16
accounts for a large percent of the potential audience. For example, many people
see the Netscape, Microsoft, or Yahoo website every time they use the Internet.
Often that’s because the software (“browser”) they use to view Internet information
starts at these websites. Some people refer to such websites as portalsbecause they
act like doorways to the Internet.
A few portal websites are becoming for the Internet what the networks once were
for television: theplace where an advertiser is willing to pay high rates because they
are uniquely able to reach a very large, broad market. For example, Dell might want
its computer ads on the AOL or Yahoo home page so they will be viewed by the
large number of computer user visitors. But what makes sense for Dell in that situ-
ation might not make sense for a different firm with a different target market and
marketing mix. As with traditional media, getting lots of exposure for an Internet
ad doesn’t help if viewers are not in the firm’s target market. At most websites, rates
are set based on number of exposures, and you pay for an exposure regardless of who
it is. Some advertisers don’t see this and have just transferred their old, untargeted
shotgun approach to this new medium. That’s especially wasteful on the Internet!Bristol-Myers Squibb’s experiment with Web advertising is typical of what many
other firms are trying to do—place ads on websites that attract the desired target
market. In the middle of income tax season, Bristol-Myers Squibb ran ads on finan-
cial websites extolling Excedrin as “the tax headache medicine.” The ads offered a
free sample of Excedrin. Within a month, more than 30,000 people clicked on the
ad and typed their names into the firm’s customer database. The cost of obtaining
those names was half that of traditional methods. Now the firm can follow up the
Excedrin samples with other database-directed promotions, either by e-mail or other
methods.The Excedrin ads were quite targeted, but targeting on the Internet can be even
more precise. For example, ads for Fragrance Counter (a cosmetics retailer) pop up
when an Internet user does a search on a term such as perfume orEstée Lauder.This
approach is called context advertising—monitoring the content a net surfer is view-
ing and then serving up related ads. For example, if a consumer visits a website withAdvertising managers are always looking for cost-effective new media that will help them reach their specific target markets.
Some websites are
better for reaching
target customers
Context advertising
links ad to content
being viewed