Case: Advertising - a Trade Engine

Advertising has long ago become an integral part of our lives. What once was a very rare thing nowadays is something we see everywhere and something that has become an outstanding "trade engine". To make this engine work contemporary businessmen try different kinds of advertising. The main trick is to have the advertisement in the place of a "mass concourse" of people. We all have observed how hard they try in getting our attention to the products, offering us almost impossible discounts and telling how much they care about us. This is a part of our lives and though there have been protests against it nothing seems to change. Therefore people accept it. Advertising is not about bugging us. It is in the first place about "healthy" competition, where you are offered products, evaluate the, find what is most suitable for you and buy it. So many people work nowadays that if it had not been for the advertisements they would not even now that Christmas is coming up soon. In comparison to the old ways today's most visited place or as we called it "mass concourse" of people can be found not only in movie theatres, subways or simply on the streets. The place where companies have the best chances to attract their customer and provide full detailed information about their product is the Web. "For marketers, the Web has swiftly emerged as a key new-media platform" [Thorson 10]. Being so popular among diverse classes, people of different group ages and tastes the Web became one of the most attractive places to have advertisements in. As people start spending less time outside and more time on the jobs, most of the time they are on the web, because any office has Internet-access. There is also a computer in the majority of the families. So either people are on-line in their offices or they are on-line when they return back home. This makes the Web-market very important n the development of business in the country. There are advertisements on the Web; almost every single site has commercials or references to some products. And as they are stationary there is nothing people can do than watch them all the time. These kinds of advertisements greatly increase the profit of the company. They take a great advantage from letting people shop for anything sitting in their houses and spending a minimum amount of time on it. ere is no way to any company to give it away because giving it away would mean "the beginning of the end". The Chairman-CEO of Procter& Gamble, Mr.Artzt said: "We can't be sure that ad-supported TV programming will have a future"[Thorson 9]. So as the ordinary media cannot cope with these demands the Web is there to solve any financial difficulties. It is the fastest and the most qualitative way to make your brand known all over the world. We, ourselves, do not even notice how we start liking some of them and except to see them again. A big problem that has aroused is the pop-u ads problem. There have been heard so many complaints about them, that it might seem that they are even worse that all the other advertisements we watch. It is believed that any web page or ad that appears without the person's asking for it is officious and is an obtruding thing. Look around us! Our streets are full of numerous kinds of ads. Do they appear there with your permission? Does anybody ask you if you want it? At least the pop-up advertisements are not in front of your eyes all of the time like the others that you already are used to and do not consider harmful anymore. It is also important to mention that pop-up advertisements have a lot of more respect towards the customer than the others. Dealing with the pop-up advertisements you can choose whether you need it or not. So it gives us the opportunity to choose unlike stationary advertisements. You can close it anytime you want unless you do not get interested in what is being offered. But before getting very deep in the analysis of the pop-up ads and web advertising we want to make sure we understand them as the same things. Pop-up windows can be any size, but most often they are small and you can close or maximize them by clicking on the button-commands on top of these windows; it is usually a scaled-down browser window [Adams 65].

Pop-up ads alongside with standard web advertising have taken a lot of pressure lately and this is because people believe that they are intrusive. Pop-up ads turned out to be the "scapegoat" for all the people that hate advertising. Nevertheless, we need to be objective and understand whether they really hurt us! As far, as we are concerned, pop-up ads are not being such a bad thing after all and the following facts speak for themselves. Internet surfers claim that these ads irritate them; they say they keep popping up at the most inadequate to the end moments.

But the main thing is that the more it works for the companies that are advertised the more it works for the surfers, too. To lead the reader to the main advantages of web advertising for the surfer we want to stop on the advantages for the companies first. Advantages for the companies equals advantages for the web-surfers. And if some people so not understand it is necessary to explain it. Well, in the first place pop-up ads are way more effective than any other banner ad. It is possible to trace that the "click-through rate" is 12 percent higher than with the banner advertisements. As it is often said that this percentage may be half-false we reduced the percentage but we still get 6,5% for pop-up ads [New Architect, Feb. 2003]. The company definitely increases its profit and becomes well known. Owing to its effectiveness it has a high cost to the advertisers. As they pay a lot of money to be on them this also influences the surfer, too.

The reason the surfer needs to revise his opinion on these ads because it is owing to them Internet costs decreases and becomes more accessible and affordable for people. It is like sponsoring or commercials on TV. Of course they may be disturbing sometimes but do you keep complaining when a series of commercials you see a high-quality video? The reduction of the Internet cost also makes an impact to the development of our education. More people get the opportunity to raise the level of knowledge and widen up their outlook. Some people would take it for a boon to have the opportunity to surf even with the pop-up ads.

Why not to objectively evaluate what advantages it brings to the society and economy and estimate if these advantages are more important than just being irritated by an ad you did not allow to appear. We learn everything from a comparison, so when comparing pop-ads remember that they not only give you opportunity to choose but also decrease you Internet-bill every month. Someone is paying for you simply choosing or not choosing his product. We just need to place