As a medium, the Internet is unique — here’s how you can use it to your advantage The Internet is the world’s first interactive medium in the true sense of the word. It enables users to access information according to their preferences and at the pace at which they want the information. In addition to the above fundamental differentiator, there are a number of other ways in which the Web outscores conventional media. These are discussed below: It provides instant feedback: Unlike newspapers, magazines and television commercials, an Internet ad provides instant feedback on whether the ad was seen, whether it was clicked on or not, who clicked on it from which location and at what time — and a wealth of other information. On the Web, one can use the server statistics along with cookies to track the electronic footprints of visitors — where did they come from, which pages did they visit, which pages did they spend most of their time on, and where did they exit?

The Internet is the only medium where the advertiser pays only for banners that have actually been served. You pay only for those banners that actually appeared on the page seen by the target audience. If the web user clicked out of the page before the banner loaded, you don’t pay for it. Moreover, there are numerous sites and portals that offer banners on a click-through basis. This means that if the visitor does not click on the banner, the advertiser does not pay for it. It is non-intrusive: While conventional advertising is considered by most recipients to be intrusive, Internet advertising is looked upon as relatively non-intrusive since it calls for a click-through by the target audience. Hence, the recipient has the option of not clicking on the banner.