With the growth in the use of Internet to search for information, there has been a significant increase in the time people are spending online. This has generated a new medium for advertising, which is called internet advertising. Internet advertising is also known by various names such as online advertising and web advertising. The impact of internet advertising is so strong that today the wealthiest companies have changed their marketing strategies to ensure that they get a share of the internet advertising pie, and for good reason. Everybody seems to have realized that internet advertising is the medium of the future.
Internet continues to grow as a channel for communication, information and commercial activities and this is why it is increasingly been seen as the advertising medium for the future. Internet advertising is highly interactive as compared to other traditional form of advertising. Secondly, online advertising invokes an immediate response to a call for action. Above all, internet advertising allows advertisers to target ads to the real-time desires of a user.
Internet advertising is also beneficial to the advertisers because they pay for the ads if the user actually clicks on them. The unique concept of internet advertising, which is advertisers pay only when there is a click on the ad, acts as a great cost leveller and allows small, medium, and large businesses alike to succeed using the power of internet advertising and keep a check on their budgets.
Internet advertising is highly user targeted: The success of internet advertising depends on the concept of the use of search engine to find information, product and services. Search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and their search-engine driven programs such as Google's AdWords and AdSense, try to match up advertisers with the content which their target customers search for regularly. For example, let us consider that that you are a company selling baseball bats. Now, the people who are interested in buying baseball bats will enter the product name in the search bar. The search engine will show up content containing reference to baseball bats as also paid ads of companies using this key phrase in their ad. These ads will appear as sponsored links on the right side of the search result page. This way, ads on the internet appear only to a very specific audience, an audience that is interested in purchasing the product. No other advertising media is as audience targeted as internet advertising.

Internet adverting ensures good conversion tracking: It is impossible to track the immediate response of an advertising campaign with traditional advertising channels. Internet advertising, however, provides tools for web analytics allowing ad publishers to measure the success (or failure) of your online advertising campaign. Internet advertising allows the advertiser to measure the number of clicks on the ads, which means the number of people who have viewed the ads, as also the clicks that have resulted in sales. Basically, these tools allow the advertisers to track impressions an ad gets and how much business results from it.
Internet advertising is ideal for small businesses: Internet advertising is ideal for small companies with limited budgets to make their presence felt in the market. A small yellow page ad can cost you several hundred pounds. On the other hand, you can bid for advertisements on the internet on performance basis, that is, you pay for your ad only when a visitor clicks on it. No matter what your budget, you can get your ads displayed on search engines and their network exactly on the moment when the customers are searching for your products and services. The added benefit is that as an advertiser, you only pay when people click your ads. This means that every pound of your advertising budget is specifically targeted at bringing new prospects to you.

You can also set your online ads to appear only to people searching in a particular city, region, or country. With internet advertising, you can easily target online customers within a few miles of your doorstep.
Internet advertising gives you greater control on your ad: With internet advertising, it is possible for you to edit your ads and adjust your budget till you get your desired results. Besides, you can also have numerous variations of the display ads with relevant key phrases, and target your online ads to specific geographic locations and languages.
Internet advertising enables global exposure: Internet allows you to target a global audience at extremely affordable rates. Your website or ad is visible to any person with computer and Internet access no matter which country he lives in. Targeting a global audience with other traditional advertising channels such as publications, television or radio can prove to be very expensive not to mention time consuming, for you would have to find the specific channels that cater to a particular geographic area or language group.

Internet advertising provokes instant response: What sets internet advertising apart from traditional advertising channels is that it is highly interactive. Take the case of banner advertising. Surf the net and your attention will be immediately arrested by banners advertising products and services. Now these banner advertisements appear on highly customer focussed sites and have a call for action, for example, click here, sign. People who click on the banners are immediately 'transported' to an online store or a landing page that contains more information about the product and services. Most of these stores also provide for online payments enabling you to make a purchase right there and then. Then again, the call for action can be to subscribe to newsletters, join a particular group etc, something which you can do immediately. This is not possible with any other form of media.
Internet advertising can be used for brand building: Advertisers not only use the internet advertising channel for ecommerce activities or distribution of information, but also for creating and strengthening brand awareness. People who surf the internet, do it on regular basis either for leisure or business. In most cases, they visit some specific sites, which are connected with their area of interest. Publishers of ads can grab the attention of readers by displaying their ads on the sites that are related to their business. If the content and graphics are attractive enough, the people will read the ad. Even if they do not make an immediate purchase, the message will register in their minds, thus creating brand awareness. For small and mid-sized online companies with limited advertising budgets, internet advertising is the best channel for creating and strengthening a brand.