Online AdvertisingHow to use new digital tools and connect more effectively with your customers

The internet has reformed the marketing landscape within a staggeringly short period of time, creating myriad new tools for connecting with consumers and businesses, unlocking a new era for relationship and database marketing, accelerating the globalisation of retail and service provision, refocusing customer acquisition through search engines and reshaping brand... read moremarketing with the rich and unfolding experiences offered by brand websites. And all this before the massive impact of the extension of social networks to the web, the explosive growth of consumer created media, and the emergence of streaming television. The internet has unlocked new economic and publishing models for content creation and message dissemination with such a profound effect that even in 2008 we are still in only the early stages of transition for the media and marketing industries. It’s hard to overstate the scale of what this means for the organisations, brands and individuals caught up in the maelstrom of change.

Internet marketing is a laboratory for how these changes play out. The sector is still in its early stages of development, but the online ad industry in the UK already takes more than 15% of total adspend and will top television in 2009. Because the internet has the largest share of adspend going into online of any market in the world, it proves an excellent indicator for what later plays out in most other markets.

Firms that understand the scale of this have re-orientated their communications to place digital at the heart of their marketing, weaving classic media and communications into a new mix that enables each medium to play to its strengths and online tools to provide decision-making metrics for the effectiveness of marketing across all channels.

However, most firms find it tough to get online marketing right. Typically there are process failures in how to engage as well as practical challenges about which topics and disciplines should be explored.

For large firms there are silos that sit in the way and for smaller teams there is typically a lack of experience or flexible budgets to experiment with. The pace of change means most marketers cannot keep up to date, so they rely on their traditional agencies that may not have the insights needed either.