Gone are the days of long commercial breaks on the television. The businessmen today have become more aware of the advertising options that will not torture the targeted consumers and also will be cheaper for themselves.

This is made possible with the help of the advancement of the internet and its accessibility. With the use of internet, so many businesses are being promoted through it that internet advertising has become a big business in itself.

So many options are available with the internet to choose from while advertising that it will be difficult for you to zero in on one particular campaign. You can use the search engine advertising, banner ad, , rich media advertising, airing a toll free phone number, give coupons to print through the net.

With the Search engine marketing, you can not only increase the traffic on your site but also reduce the cost of acquisition per consumer, i.e. the cost of catching attention of a prospective consumer. In this advertising campaign you can make your site visible on the major search engines like google, yahoo etc. Search engine optimization and pay per click campaign are the best options available in this option. This campaign is earning strong reputation as a marketing tool on the internet.

The right key word is the key to success in this campaign. The key word is the word that you can incorporate on your site and every time that key word is searched for by a prospective consumer, you have the chance of getting noticed. The selection of the right key word is so important in this campaign that some sites are bidding for them.

Another type of internet advertising is viral advertising. It is so named because once it gets out of the advertisers hands it spreads like a virus. It is basically a video clip that promotes the product and is so much fun watching that only one video clip will be shared by millions of people through the email and will surely leave an impression on the customer. There is something called sprites, a technological component which will track exactly how many times the video is being viewed and the charges are made accordingly.

There are also opt-in-e mails which are sent to you because you have agreed previously to receive such mails through some other mail that might have asked you of your interest in particular products. A mailing list is prepared and sold to the advertisers who then send you their promotional mails. That means, the advertiser will be given a mailing list of people having interest in their products. This way only those people will be contacted who are actually interested in your product. Therefore the expenditure on the advertisement is not wasted.

Other forms of advertisings like the television advertising or advertising on the newspaper might go to nonusers and might not even reach to prospective customers at all. The TV room might be empty when your advertisement is being aired. The advertisement might be of a baby product and a young girl of 7 might be viewing it. Its of no use. Nobody watches the commercial breaks now days and anyone hardly notices the newspaper commercial advertisements. Wastage is almost negligible in case of internet advertising.

When the customer takes an action like clicking, printing a coupon or calling on a toll free number, then it is sure that he is paying full attention to the advertisement and has seen the product and is interested in it. This way the advertiser can be sure that the impression has been made on the customer.

A very typical form of internet advertising is the banner ad. A banner appears on the web page providing information about the product that is being advertised.

A rather new type of advertising campaign that can be opted on the internet is rich media. Its an extension to the usual banner ad, in which a link to the advertisers site is given in the banner to connect the consumer directly with the advertiser. The rich media ad is more complex than the banner and is more difficult to prepare and is slightly costlier than the latter too. But the results are surely better. It is an advanced version of the banner ad. It can be made more attractive by incorporating animations and adding on interesting video clips.

Television advertising is boring and irritating sometimes but on the internet you have the wish to either continue doing your work or take a break watching the funny advertisement.

In the other conventional forms of advertising the producer will be providing only information to the customer but in net advertising the producer can also provide a chance to buy the item along with advertising it. You can actually buy the product right there and then if you liked its ad. There is no delay in the process of impression making and buying the product.

Different buying arrangements are also available like pay per view, pay per click, pay per call, and pay per sale. Pay per view is not usually opted for by the advertisers now days. Pay per click is rather popular and is very effective but is not the best indicator of interest shown by the people. Just clicking on the advertisement is not an indicator that people will buy the product. If a number of other actions like, filling a form or calling a number given on the site, is performed by the consumer then that will show his real interest in the product. Pay per sale is also not very popular but is now being used by many bidding sites.

Although sites do give an advertisement performance report which shows how many people actually viewed the ad, still for his own satisfaction, the advertiser can also check the websites airing his advertisements just to make sure that an honest deal has been made.

But, to be able to utilize these tools effectively you will have to get acquainted with the basics of the internet. It is advisable to be familiar with the internet terminology so that you can do the job more effectively and efficiently.