BY NATASHA WANCHEK
Special to Mercury Center
After a recent study that reported an 80 percent increase in Web advertising revenues this year, online marketing strategies captured gigabytes of attention at Seybold San Francisco Wednesday.
Although few online companies are admittedly making money from their ventures, a Jupiter Communications study released last week reported that Web revenues increased 80 percent in the first half of 1996 to an estimated $71.7 million. The study projected that the number would reach $312 million by the end of the year.
Such high figures may be misleading, said Bill Rollinson, vice president of marketing for the Internet Shopping Network. Online banners can range from no-cost up to $15,000, and bartering is gaining in popularity. Similar to an exchange of links, companies are exchanging advertising banners.
"There is money changing hands, but the Internet makes bartering easy," said Rollinson, a panelist on the "Models for Online Advertising" workshop at Seybold. "Companies are still determining how much to charge for ads. The more they can prove that they are delivering, the more advertisers will flock online."
Advertisers and marketers in the publishing industry emphasized the importance of promotions and regional ads. Despite efforts of online advertising agencies to standardize the market, new ad features often depend on the nature of the site, said Anil Singh, director of sales for Yahoo!
"The dilemma is not that companies do not want to work together to standardize ads," Singh said. "But on the Web it's consumer choice, and it's hard to decide to place the same types of ads on every site."
Online ads are not too different from billboards, Singh said. A call to action, sense of urgency and simplicity are the key features of successful Web ads -- those that grab attention and take Internet surfers to desired sites for more information.
David Yoder, media director for Anderson and Lembke, said that Internet companies are not bragging about making money yet and few will before the year 2000. In the meantime, advertising models are evolving.
Building awareness on the Internet is not enough, he said, because the same goal can be achieved -- for less -- through other mediums. Instead, advertisers should focus on what they want to achieve, then work on maximizing reach and minimizing frequency -- the novelty of an ad does not increase with time.
"The traditional way of buying and selling on the Internet is fundamentally different," Yoder said. "Clearly, we have to re-engineer how we do this."