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.

The thesis defines and describes tools of Internet marketing. Within the frame of these tools it describes search engine marketing and website search engine optimization in detail. This information is presented in context of real e-shop and it focuses on SEO and SEM tools in real use.

The thesis is analyzing potential of the Internet as the marketing instrument. This thesis is trying to show segments of active users of the Internet and the rising tendency of their number. Further in thesis actual instruments of the Internet marketing are analyzed and on the base of research of well-known marketing specialist L. Chase trends are deduced. These trends should be relevant in the Internet marketing very soon. At the end of the thesis is acquired knowledge applied on the Internet activities of the EUROLINES Česká republika, spol. s r.o.

Internet marketing is nowadays a full-value part of each company's marketing. For a lot of companies it is even much the strongest marketing activity. It is mainly because the internet marketing comprises in principle everything a company is on the internet presented with. As from web sites, banners, PR articles, sites optimalization, key words selection and choice of domain up to pay per click links. This diploma thesis is concerned with an analysis of the particular internet marketing tools and the demonstration of its usage in practice, for today it is not enough to have an average web or an isolated, from the rest of internet detached e-shop. Every company has to make a considerable effort to be successfull on the internet. And just the internet marketing shapes the combination of techniques and technologies that aim to fulfill the internet business intentions.

The aim of this thesis is to create and effectively manage Facebook web pages for individual divisions of Import Volkswagen Group s.r.o. The thesis is divided into two parts - theoretical and practical. The theoretical part contains basic information about online and offline medias, trends in the area of Internet marketing and measuring of online advertising efficiency, which, unlike the efficiency of "offline" advertising, is easily measurable. In the past two years, social networks, especially Facebook and Twitter became trendy. The last chapter of the theoretical part is deals with the topic of advertising on Facebook, that prevails in the Czech Republic. and promotion on the social network called Facebook. In the practical part, some of the findings derived from the theoretical part are implemented and verified. The main outcome of this thesis is a development of well-functioning Facebook web pages, administration of which could be taken over by Import Volkswagen Group s.r.o. in the future.

Master's thesis deals with the evaluation of the effectiveness of internet campaigns. Theoretical and methodological part of the thesis presents online marketing channels and business models widely used in Internet marketing, setting right goals before the campaign launch and the most used web analytics tools, including technological difficulties and the correct procedure for evaluating campaigns. The practical part of the thesis describes a significant difference in the evaluation of the effectiveness of internet campaigns by using the multitouch attribution. A secondary aim is to show that internet marketing is not well measured as marketers think.

This thesis deals with affiliate marketing as one of the internet marketing tools. The work highlights the differences between affiliate marketing in the Czech Republic and the U.S. and also describes how to start your own affiliate program for entrepreneurs in the Czech Republic. The main objective of the thesis is to analyze and evaluate the success of the selected affiliate programs in the company AdFinance Ltd., which are promoted through its own affiliate network AdBenefit. Suggestions are part of the work, which could lead to an improvement in the operation of the affiliate network. The work is prepared based on literature, internet resources and own experience of the author's job position as affiliate manager.

This research makes a case for treating an electronic commerce web site as a social actor and argues that LT-enabled support for personalization systems and virtual communities has a significant impact on the perceived communication characteristics of a web site. This research studied the impact of two communication characteristics - adaptiveness and connectivity of a web site. Adaptiveness indicates the extent to which a web site adapts itself to support the needs of its customers whereas connectivity refers to the ability of a web site to link potential customers with other visitors. Further, synthesizing research from communication, media choice and technology adoption literatures, this thesis proposes social presence as the experiential construct and perceived usefulness as the utilitarian construct that will mediate the relationship between communication characteristics of a medium and customer loyalty. A survey and a laboratory experiment were conducted to test the linkages proposed above. The survey showed that while adaptiveness impacted on both social presence and perceived usefulness, connectivity had an impact only on social presence and an insignificant impact on perceived usefulness. Social presence did not influence perceived usefulness while both social presence and perceived usefulness had a significant impact on customer loyalty. By filtering Amazon.com real-time, the lab experiment was conducted to specifically study the causal impact of a web site's support for personalization and virtual communities. Support for personalization had a strong impact on adaptiveness, whereas support for consumer reviews had strong effect on connectivity. Interestingly, support for personalization had a weaker, but significant effect on connectivity and support for consumer reviews had a similar effect on adaptiveness. Data from the experiment was also analyzed using mediation analyses as well as partial least square analysis to show that the general pattern of results observed were consistent across methods thus improving the confidence in the research model proposed. This research by proposing social presence as a crucial experiential predictor of customer loyalty has addressed an important gap that exists in our current understanding of web users' behavior. It also makes a key contribution by empirically showing that a web site's support for IT-enabled personalization and virtual communities do have a significant impact not only on the perceived communication characteristics, but also on customer loyalty through social presence and perceived usefulness. / Business, Sauder School of / Graduate

The statement that the stable and developed world known to us no longer exists seems to be particularly relevant to the way in which organisations conduct their business and reposition themselves in the communication age. Organisations, as the context within which public relations functions, are threatened by increased competition and changes in key elements of market relationships as a result of global information technology developments and the mobility of organisations and people. The emergence of new information technology has lead to fundamental shifts in the relationships between corporations, individuals and society. An historical overview of the developing stages of public relations in terms of the dominant business approach and dominant public relations approach points to a definite relation to and subsequent influence of changing business paradigms in the practice of public relations. How business perceives communication is believed to impact significantly on the public relations philosophy, the public relations model and the definition of public relations. The fact that public relations has been a part of organisational life which, in turn, forms part of a larger environmental system explains this interdependency/relationship between dominant business approaches and dominant public relations approaches. The emergence of a new model of business is typical of the changes in the business environment and the impact on the context of public relations. Although public relations has evolved from one-way imbalanced communication to two-way balanced communication and professional recognition, it is evident that the paradigm shift in the business environment demands yet another paradigm shift in public relations. Increased interactivity and the need for customised communication form the heart of this paradigm shift and a new approach to public relations, namely an integrated communication approach, has been proposed as a solution to these demands posed by the changing face of business. Such an integrated approach has as its main focus the integration of all the activities of the organisation. It is maintained that this trend towards integration calls for consistency of communication activities of the organisation and co-ordination of its communication strategies. It is evident that the technology already in use by marketing for relationship management can be applied successfully in public relations. New technology impacts firstly on the practice and profession of public relations at a strategic level in aspects such as disintermediation, democratisation of communication access, levelling of organisational structures and the need for customised communication (personalised communication), and secondly on the application opportunities at technical level. Although various business applications of available technologies are applied in various disciplines and at different levels in the organisation, the value for public relations lies in the application of these technologies for the facilitation of communication with key constituents. The ultimate objective is building and maintaining beneficial relationships, and support given to business processes. The organisation will, among other things, require the public relations practitioner to be aware of new communication media and technology and to use it. This points to a new role for public relations in terms of the adaptability of this profession to changes in the new media environment and shifts in economic, social and business paradigms and it is maintained that the future of public relations depends on the acceptance of this role. This study followed a qualitative approach. The first step was a detailed literature study resulting in a number of postulates which were tested by means of an empirical investigation. The focus of this study falls on the investigation into factors driving the new paradigm shift in business, as context within which public relations functions, and the subsequent impact on the practice of public relations. It has provided new insights into technology usage in South Africa and the changes technology has brought about in this profession. / Prof. Sonja Verwey

The travel and tourism industries are today facing unprecedented challenges in coping with emerging technology paradigms. Consequently, reengineering traditional travel business models is necessary. Internet technologies coupled with increasingly complex software applications and information structures are distracting travel companies from the strategic elements of providing values to travelers.