Now-a-days, consumers are being exposed to more and more media. Due to the combination of this media explosion with an increasing level of ad avoidance, the future for some more “traditional” media seems bleak. New media for example, the internet which is relatively new, are competing with old “traditional” media.

The life for marketers and media planners has been made difficult by the accelerating fragmentation of the media market, due to consumers having more control over how they view, filter and interact within multi-channels and multi-mediums.

Because of this, media fragmentation makes it much more difficult to target consumers as with the vast amount of media consumption choices no two consumers are exactly alike. Consumers have a greater choice of what media they can interact with, technology has made it possible for consumers to ad-skip and ad-block and so agencies have to create a long term strategy for consumer engagement that will encourage consumers to interact and not annoy them, or make them feel like their privacy has been invaded. This means that advertising has to spread further, covering multitude of channels to gain the same exposure, which is dividing the audiences up further.

In this time that we live in most things that used to involve a trip out of the house, such as shopping and going to the cinema. In this “digital age” these things are just mere clicks away. Almost every household has a computer and access to the internet. With the average person spending approximately 13 hours online, the way things are viewed and accessed have evolved greatly.

Companies that do not advertise online are missing out on a huge opportunity as information sharing online can reach a wider audience. During 2009 the internet overtook TV in spending and the trend has continued into 2011 because it is cost effective and can provide a huge reach. The current state of the economic climate has seen a decline in certain media use, more companies want digital and social media campaigns, those not adopting these types of campaigns are at a competitive disadvantage.

Social media sites such as facebook and twitter are a good place to start with online advertising. There is no other low-cost promotional method out there yet that will easily give you large numbers of visitors, some of whom may come back to visit websites again and again. If a company is selling products/services or just publishing content for ad revenue, social media marketing is a potent method that will make your site profitable over time. Advertising using social media offers low cost, high reach and low wastage as ads can be targeted to the consumers from the data they share on the social media sites.

Two benenfits of online advertising

Online advertising has two primary benefits, traffic and lead generation being one and secondly promotion and branding. Even if people are not visiting websites, the fact that the site ads exist, is marketing and advertising the company’s website and its products.

We live in a fast paced world. People want information instantaneously at all hours of the day. Online advertising offers this. A potential customer can log onto the internet at any given second of the day and access almost any information they wish to have, and they also unintentionally view masses of information that they merely just happened to stubble across. Or did they? The internet is a spectacular place and online advertising can set up links all over the internet and easily track and target potential customers using the information that is shared by them, even if they do not know that they are sharing it.

Digital and social media is an integral part of modern advertising because with this medium it is easy to track consumer behaviour and know for certain whether an individual is viewing their site at a certain time. As online media can show the almost instant results of reach and effectiveness, those who are diversifying and embracing this current change in media consumption are more likely to gain and keep their clients based on the clients current requirement.