Too good to be true?

In today’s world, we have all been taught that online advertising is the current trend and the future. Whether or not traditional advertising will remain powerful can be debated, but no one denies the clout of the internet. A legitimate concern, however, is that everyone is currently looking at the pros to online advertising, and ignoring the cons. An article on the Web Design Library caught my attention this week specifically because it bothered to analyze both sides of the issue.

On the plus side, the article credits online advertising for having extremely fast response rates. Whereas traditional media take time to distribute and collect, online ads take minutes to put up and the results are available immediately. Furthermore, internet ad campaigns are less expensive, available around the world, quickly altered and can be used to target specific audiences. All of these attributes make online advertising extremely appealing to most brands, but failing to recognize the potential problems with online ads can be a mistake as well. For example, so much of online advertising is new and unknown. There are more than a thousand ways to track what people do on websites and Facebook pages, but rules to be consistently successful with these media are still developing. In addition, the internet has further complicated the issue of “advertising overload,” and many experts question the effectiveness of ad exposure when consumers are becoming savvy about advertising. Finally, despite the fact that we are still exploring the potential of online ads, mobile marketing is already starting to overshadow basic desktop internet advertising.

In any case, my question is, should new brands invest heavily into online advertising since it is relatively unproven and already becoming obsolete? Or should they stick with what is either tried and true or cutting edge? In the end, online advertising still seems to be a monster pie that brands cannot afford to miss out on. It will be interesting in the coming years to see how online compares to traditional and mobile marketing in terms of effectiveness.