The purpose of the study was to assess the effectiveness of banner advertising on the World Wide Web, as well as to explore and analyse the attitudes and behaviours of internet users towards banner advertising. The research objective was to determine, why people do not click on banners and to find ways in which advertisers can make banner advertisements appeal to consumers more effectively. Outcomes of the research suggested which features advertisers should avoid when developing clickable banners. An extensive literature review was carried out in order to highlight important aspects of historic research. The analysis conducted on this topic indicated that a gap exists in the area of public attitudes towards clickable banner advertising and the reasons why people avoid clicking on banners. To address the above questions, peoples’ attitudes towards banner and other Internet advertising were investigated through focus group interviews and surveys. The findings suggest that the main reason for the ignorance surrounding clickable banners was the low involvement between the product or service being advertised and the viewer’s interests. Other reasons included the high annoyance level of banner advertising and the threat of viruses that some banners may pose. Conclusions of the research recommend narrow targeting and personalisation of banner advertisements, constant rotations and replacements of banners to avoid burnouts as well as trustful and original appeal and content. Other important findings included: • The majority of people are indifferent towards banners, • People with less than three years of Internet experience tend to click more than people with more than three years of Internet experience, • Females showed more “clickable behaviour” than males, • People are more likely to click on banners which present interesting information, are bright and animated or promote catchy phrases for the surfer, • People prefer to see banners located on the top of the page or on the right side of the page, • Pop-ups are the most noticeable and are possibly the route cause of what triggers people to become annoyed or dislike banner ads, Findings of this research have high social value. If advertisers would take into account the results of the current study, they would be able to create more effective banners, which could effectively be redirected to the appropriate target market. This will enable them to cut their costs. Furthermore, online users would enjoy a more polite and friendly online environment, where their interests will be taken into account, which would diminish the current gap between customers and advertisers.

History of internet advertising, types of internet advertising. Banner advertising, methods of payment for banner advertising, formats and technologies. Internet media market in Czech Republic, portals, servers, media agents, media agencies, SPIR association. Banner campaign, its planning, execution and evaluation. Videobanner campaign Nivea For Men, searching for the most effective format for videoadvertising on the internet.

This diploma work is concerned with Internet Advertising and Google AdWords used by companies in marketing. The work analyzes possibilities of advertising campaign management and evaluation of its efficiency. The main part of this work deals with the analysis of the chosen advertising campaign.

This thesis deals with the risks attaching to the marketing activities of the selected company. The theoretical part defines terms associated with marketing and risks. The practical part is dedicated to the analysis of the risks of marketing activities and subsequent recommendations that lead to the reduction or elimination of risks

According to eMarketer, the total advertising spend in US alone was estimated to be over $238 billion. Firms invest large amounts of money in advertising to promote and inform consumers about their products and services, as well as to persuade them to purchase. The broad theme of advertising has been examined from many different angles in the marketing literature, ranging from empirically measuring effects of TV ads on sales to analytically characterizing the key economic forces stemming from enhanced targetability in online advertising. The purpose of my dissertation is to study some of the key questions which remain unaddressed in the advertising literature. In the first essay, I examine firms' choices of advertising content in a competitive setting. I demonstrate that competitive forces sometimes induces firms to choose advertising content that shifts consumers' perception of product quality. While this strategy hurts firms in a monopoly setting, it increases their profits under competition because it may increase the utility of their offering in comparison with the competing offering. In the second essay, I investigate the optimal mechanism for selling online ads in a learning environment. Specifically, I show that when ad sellers, such as Google, design their ad auctions, it is optimal for them to favor new advertisers in the auction in order to expedite learning their ad performance. In the third essay, I study the impact of tracking consumers' Internet activities on the online advertising ecosystem in the presence of regulations that, motivated by privacy concerns, endow consumers with the choice to have their online activity be tracked or not. I find that when ad effectiveness is intermediate, fewer ads are shown to opt-in consumers, who can be tracked and have their funnel stages inferred by advertisers, than to opt-out consumers, who cannot be tracked. In this case, consumers trade-off the benefit of seeing fewer ads by opting-in to tracking (positive instrumental value of privacy) with the disutility they feel from giving up their privacy (intrinsic cost of privacy). Overall, these findings shed light on novel strategic forces that provide guidance for marketers' advertising decisions in three distinct contexts.

Over the last two decades, digitization has been drastically shifting the way businesses operate and has provided access to high volume, variety, velocity, and veracity data. Naturally, access to such granular data has opened a wider range of possibilities than previously available. We leverage such data to develop application-driven models in order to evaluate current systems and make better decisions. We explore three application areas. In Chapter 1, we develop models and algorithms to optimize portfolios in daily fantasy sports (DFS). We use opponent-level data to predict behavior of fantasy players via a Dirichlet-multinomial process, and our predictions feed into a novel portfolio construction model. The model is solved via a sequence of binary quadratic programs, motivated by its connection to outperforming stochastic benchmarks, the submodularity of the objective function, and the theory of order statistics. In addition to providing theoretical guarantees, we demonstrate the value of our framework by participating in DFS contests. In Chapter 2, we develop an axiomatic framework for attribution in online advertising, i.e., assessing the contribution of individual ads to product purchase. Leveraging a user-level dataset, we propose a Markovian model to explain user behavior as a function of the ads she is exposed to. We use our model to illustrate limitations of existing heuristics and propose an original framework for attribution, which is motivated by causality and game theory. Furthermore, we establish that our framework coincides with an adjusted ``unique-uniform'' attribution scheme. This scheme is efficiently implementable and can be interpreted as a correction to the commonly used uniform attribution scheme. We supplement our theory with numerics using a real-world large-scale dataset. In Chapter 3, we propose a decision-making algorithm for personalized sequential marketing. As in attribution, using a user-level dataset, we propose a state-based model to capture user behavior as a function of the ad interventions. In contrast with existing approaches that model only the myopic value of an intervention, we also model the long-run value. The objective of the firm is to maximize the probability of purchase and a key challenge it faces is the lack of understanding of the state-specific effects of interventions. We propose a model-free learning algorithm for decision-making in such a setting. Our algorithm inherits the simplicity of Thompson sampling for a multi-armed bandit setting and we prove its asymptotic optimality. We supplement our theory with numerics on an email marketing dataset.

This study examines the types of and frequency with which computer-mediated communications (CMC) services are used by international public relations (PR) specialists for advertising and information gathering and the judged effectiveness of these services. International PR specialists were surveyed to identify the types of and frequency with which CMC services were used for advertising and information gathering. Services focused on World Wide Web (V./WW) pages, electronic mail (e-mail), Internet search engines, and large commercial on-line services. This study also focused on: the use of the Internet for advertising, the judged effectiveness of using CMC for information gathering, the possible differences in the use of CMC between PR specialists from small large firms and a comparison of judged effectiveness based on firm size. A summary of CMC services was included to provide background information. The results indicated fairly high usage for information gathering and a lack of agreement regarding the effectiveness of CMC for advertising. No significant differences of type or frequency of usage were found when comparing small firms and large firms.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the price of advertising space affects the demand for help-wanted advertising. To do so, this thesis develops and estimates an econometric model to explain and predict the demand for help-wanted advertising placed in a newspaper. For the most part, economic theory and the literature suggest that basic economic and demographic factors explain the demand for help-wanted advertising. The literature and empirical studies confirm an inverse relationship exists between unemployment rates and help-wanted advertising. This thesis confirms these findings using firm specific data for a major metropolitan newspaper. Surprisingly few other studies explore whether the price for advertising is also an important determinant of demand. My model includes both unemployment data and average price of help-wanted ads and finds that price is an important determinant for the demand for help-wanted advertising. Closer scrutiny of these relationships should remove some of the uncertainty associated with what now appears to be a volatile demand. / Master of Arts

Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 47-53).

Thesis (MBA)--Stellenbosch University, 2001. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: With the emergence of the Internet in the early 1990's, traditional principles of building brand equity, as they were applied in physical markets, were challenged. This happened because brands were traditionally built using passive media such as radio, television and print magazines and newspapers. The Internet introduced interactive media where the consumer is not only highly informed because of the exponential expansion of technology especially on the Internet, but also because the consumer could now choose to be a participant, or not, in marketing and brand building initiatives. Theoretically, it is possible to establish certain principles to build brands in virtual markets. The best solution is however to look at past studies of different companies that present various challenges that relate directly to the Internet and its brand building initiatives, and then combine this practical knowledge with a theoretical background. In the case studies, eight success drivers were identified as being crucial to build a brand firstly in a virtual market, but also secondly in physical markets. The success drivers that were implemented by companies that managed to build strong brands on the Internet include: using a multimedia mixture to differentiate and build the brand; focusing on supreme customer commitment: entering into distribution and content alliances; moving first, fast and keeping up the pace; developing intimate customer and market knowledge; building a reputation for excellence; delivering outstanding value and in respect of cross-over marketers, respecting core brand attributes, improving on the offline brand experience online and leveraging key offline assets in favour of the online brand. Brand building on the Internet, should be clear, consistent and reflecting leadership not only in the implementation of the above success drivers, but also in respect of the overall construction of the brand. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Met die bekendstelling van die Internet in die vroeë negentiger jare, is die tradisionele beginsels van "brand building" soos toegepas in tradisionele markte bevraagteken. Dit het gebeur omrede "brands" tradisioneel gebou was deur passiewe media soos radio, televisie, tydskrifte en koerante te gebruik. Die Internet het nie net interaktiewe media bekend gestel waar die kliënt oor baie inligting beskik as gevolg van die eksponensiële uitbreiding van tegnologie op die Internet nie, maar ook het die kliënt nou die keuse om deel te neem of nie aan bemarkings en "brand building" insentiewe. Dit is moontlik om deur middel van 'n teoretiese studie sekere beginsels vas te stel ten opsigte van hoe "brands" gebou moet word op die Internet. Die beste oplossing is egter om na gevallestudies te kyk wat betrekking het op 'n paar maatskappye wat 'n verskeidenheid van uitdagings daarstel wat direk van toepassing is op "branding" insentiewe op die Internet. Die kennis verkry van die gevallestudies kan dan gekombineer word met die teoretiese kennis om 'n raamwerk daar te stel vir "branding" op die Internet. Die gevallestudies het agt sukses drywers geïdentifiseer wat krities is vir die ontwikkeling van "brand building" insentiewe in fisiese markte sowel as markte op die Internet. Die sukses drywers deur die maatskapye geïmplimenteer wat sterk "brands" of die Internet gebou het, sluit in: die gebruik van 'n multimedia mengsel om die "brand" te differensïeer en te bou; konsentrasie op uitstekende ktïente diens; sluit van verspreidings en inhouds vennootskappe, om eerste in die mark te wees en aan te hou beweeg; ontwikkel intieme klïente en mark kennis; bou 'n uitstekende reputasie; lewer uitstaande waarde en ten opsige van oorbruggings bemarkers, respekteer die basis van die "brand", verbeter die Internet "brand" se ervaring in vergelyking met die fisiese "brand" en gebruik die bates van die fisiese "brand" ten gunste van die Internet "brand". Die bou van 'n "brand" moet eenvouding, deursigtig en konstant wees sowel as leierseienskappe toon wat nie net betrekking het op die bogemelde sukses drywers nie, maar ook op die algehele "brand" projeksie en implimentasie.