Chapter 6
Display Advertising and Other Customer Acquisition Techniques
Learning Objectives:
By the time students complete this chapter they should be able to:
• Explain the meaning and importance of customer acquisition as a marketing strategy.
• List the major customer acquisition techniques, both online and offline.
• Identify the major online advertising formats.
This chapter has changed a great deal from the second edition, due to broadband connectivity
that permits new, more interactive formats and to better marketer understanding of how to use
Internet Customer Acquisition Tools
This is essentially the graphic used in both earlier editions with the addition of social media
marketing. Two points are important:
1. Internet marketing has become so complex, so detailed, that email, search and social
Online Advertising
Online advertising has become a part of the promotional mix of most companies, and both its
absolute amount (6.2 a) and its percentage of the total continue to grow (6.2 b). Figure 6.2 (c)
shows the number of tools that can be included under the heading on online advertising. Figure
Figure 6.3 returns to an issue from Chapter 5; different tools—in this case online advertising—
work better at different stages of the branding process. That can’t be overemphasized and
students should be beginning to understand just how complex the planning and execution of
online advertising can be.
Display advertising, both offline and online, tends to be the standard to which all other
Figure 6.5 gives the basic formats. At this point students should recognize the Internet
Advertising Bureau as the trade association responsible for standards that make it possible to
create and place ads across the Internet. Without standardization of formats, all would be chaos.
The IAB Guidelines page has consolidated all the formats and links:
It will be harder to find the New Rich Media Branding Units, so you may want to assign
Interactive Exercise 6.2 or use it in an exploration of the IAB guidelines.
If you have time, it is fun to go to a major portal page or content site and look to see what
formats are used. A newspaper site is a good example; online advertising is becoming the lifeline
Best practices for rich media (all) online ads include:
• Do your research.
• Keep it simple.
• Tell a compelling story.
• Have an effective call to action.
• Conduct tests of your ads on a continuous basis.
When you look at that list, is it really different from best practices for developing offline display
ads?
Online Ad Serving and Targeting
It is also worth taking some time to get students to try to verbalize their understanding of ad
serving, which is usually pretty vague. I keep looking for a good definition and switched to this
one from PC Magazine for in the new edition:
Internet advertising organizations [that] act as a middleman between the advertiser and the
Internet venues that display the ads. They sell the online campaign to the advertisers and then
deliver the ads to the sites that display them. The site owners receive a royalty based typically on
the number of times users click the ads.
Targeting
Figure 6.9 lists the kinds of targeting. Demographic and Geographic are traditional segmentation/
targeting criteria. Contextual will be covered in the context of search. Channel sounds unique to
the Internet—people who watch YouTube is one example—but if you stop to think about it,
The three kinds of targeting are:
1. Targeting identified users
This is worth spending time on. You can start by asking students to identify the ways in which
sites can identify their users. The fact that sites can then contact or direct ads to profile
information is understandable and it helps to set the stage.
Understanding how sites can track and target anonymous users takes more effort. Figure 6.10
should be helpful, but it may not answer all student issues. They have to understand cookies.
There are other types of targeting of anonymous users listed. To the best of my knowledge, none
are in widespread use, but who knows what the figure holds.
Targeting with predictive models takes us back to Chapter 4 and that link should be made.
Again, it’s not something that’s easy for a lot of students to understand, so it doesn’t hurt to
spend some more time on it. Akamai is used as an example, but they are not particularly good at
This would make a good case study if you can afford to spend that much time.
And as you end your discussion, it’s worth asking students if they are now more aware—more
concerned?—about the amount of data companies hold about them.
Targeting on vertical networks seems to generally make sense to students. Looking at the Glam
Media page in Figure 6.11 pretty much identifies the target audience. We couldn’t show the CBS
There are many opportunities for advertising on social networks. Many blogs accept advertising
and the Bargain Briana blog shown in Figure 6.12 is a hoot, but the attraction for advertisers is
obvious. Note that Google is advertising on the home page in this shot.
Once again, Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla in the space. You might want to search for recent
class or to assign students to do one outside of class so they can report on it. It’s of course a bit
tricky to do it in front of an audience, so be sure you have a jpeg image handy and have practiced
Miscellaneous Acquisition Techniques
These miscellaneous techniques are given relatively brief treatment. You can add examples, case
histories that emphasize tools you consider particularly important.
Marketing Events and Event-Triggered Marketing
Events such as trade shows have always been important in some marketing sectors. Are they
making a comeback across the board as a result of the ability to better reach, better target
customers? Perhaps.
The consumer event portrayed in Figure 6.14 is one example. I am particularly fond of one my
Public relations activities find a great deal of support on the web. Figure 6.15 shows a template
for a social media press release. I can’t see why any business would do anything else, although
Affiliate Programs
Affiliate programs were a huge deal in the early days of the Internet when everyone thought they
were going to make a lot of money doing everything. In a more sober world affiliate programs
Portal Relationships
The same early popularity accrued to portal deals. They are a minor element of Internet programs
at present. AOL is said to still offer portal sponsorships, but the trouble is that it’s hard to
identify them. Should they just be considered sponsorships and drop the portal tie? Probably.
Or is it the amount charged on home pages like Yahoo! and YouTube? Facebook began to offer
a display ad opportunity in early 2012. They are “log–out ads;” visitors only see them if they log
Viral marketing doesn’t get much treatment in this text because it’s difficult (impossible?) to
create something and “make it go viral.” It does or it doesn’t and marketers have little control. I
tell my students never to promise their boss that they will create a viral item; it’s career–
Discussion Questions
1. True or False: All businesses need to create a steady flow of new customers as part of
their marketing strategy. Explain your answer.
True. In spite of the greater ROI of CRM, customers do leave for a variety of reasons, some of
2. Identify the main customer acquisition tools.
The tools listed are:
• Advertising, both online and offline
• Events, PR
3. What is online display advertising, and how does it relate to offline display advertising?
Display advertising is often referred to as banner advertising but I use display because that
4. What is an online ad format? Why must marketers be familiar with the formats and
understand what creating an online ad requires?
The online ad formats describe elements like size in pixels, maximum file size, interactive
elements allowed and more. Why? Because it isn’t easy. There’s a certain amount of tech
5. What is a rich media ad? What benefits does it offer the marketer? Does it have any
potential downsides?
Rich media is anything that is not static—animation, audio, and video, primarily. Early IAB
6. Why were additional new ad formats developed? What benefits do they offer the
marketer? Do any of the formats have any potential downsides?
That question was answered in the branding section of Chapter 5 and it is good to tie it back.
Marketers want more engaging ad formats, otherwise they can just keep putting static ads in
7. How does a marketer go about placing an ad on Facebook or LinkedIn?
Basically, you sign in and follow the directions/fill out the forms provided and your ad is created.
8. Why is ad serving an improvement over just placing an ad on a web page and just
leaving it there?
On local sites you sometimes do see ads that have been purchased for a long period of time and
9. Behavioral ad targeting is especially important on the Internet. Explain why and give a
hypothetical example, perhaps based on your own experience.
Can marketers do specific behavioral targeting—I just looked at shoes on a site—in mass media?
10. Is demographic or behavioral or contextual advertising a better way to precisely target
website visitors?
Behavioral is almost invariably better.
11. True or False. Marketing events are necessarily held in the physical world, but they
can be promoted on the Internet. Explain your answer.
As stated, it’s False. Marketing events can be held on the Internet. In either event, the Internet is
12. Discuss whether or not generating publicity is one of the few marketing
communications activities that has not changed much as a result of the Internet.
It actually has changed a great deal. It used to be much more a matter of personal contact and
13. Do affiliate programs tend to attract many websites or blogs that can generate a large
volume of traffic that results in sales? Why or why not?
Some sites do well from their affiliate programs, but the 80/20 rule invariably applies. T-shirt
14. What is the importance of portal deals to Internet sites today?
As explained in the text above, the importance of traditional portal deals has declined since the
Internet Exercises
1. Internet Career Builder Exercise.
2. Visit a website you go to often, paying attention to the advertising this time. What kinds
of ads do you see and why do you think they were placed on this particular site? Close
out of the site and come back several times in quick succession. What do you see going
on with the ads? How does it illustrate concepts discussed in the chapter?
If you do this in class or assign students to do the exercise outside of class, specific spaces
3. If you have not already done so, make a contact with one of the three websites you are
tracking. You could register, ask for information, or even purchase a product if you
wish. Think about the experience you have as you interact with the website. Then keep
a log of contacts that are made because of your initiative. How does the site appear to be
using the data from your contact(s)?
The first part of the question is intended to get students to think about customer experience in
4. Visit the website of your local newspaper. Carefully examine the online media kit to
understand what they offer that is the same as or different from the ad formats
described in this chapter. Try your hand at developing an ad for one of the available
formats.
Especially f you don’t go live to a media kit in class, I’d recommend assigning this exercise.
Assuming it’s a reasonable size market, the paper probably has a good media kit, although it may
Key Terms
80/20 rule rule of thumb that states that 20 percent of a phenomenon (customers) tends to
produce 80 percent of the results (profits); also known as the Pareto curve.
ad serving process of supplying advertising elements while a page is loading on a user’s
browser; ads are served by an advertising network and are placed on the basis of user
profiles.
cookie a few lines of code that a website places on a user’s computer to return data about
the user’s activities to the site
display advertising advertising that includes both text and visuals.