Some factors that generally affect online advertising sales include the website's demographics, the richness and reach of the advertisements, and even complicated psychological and physiological issues. Other factors, such as the type of advertisement used and the placement of the advertisement on the page, are often in the control of the advertiser. Many factors are beyond the advertisers' control, such as the viewing mode that the client uses, the duration of the page view, and the various server download speeds. Even the success of other sites, especially discount sites and auction sites, will affect a business's online advertising sales.
The demographics are the characteristics of the page viewer. This includes the person's age, gender, income range, and other information that is important to the advertiser. Businesses try to target the advertisement message to particular groups, such as camping gear to outdoor enthusiasts. Online advertisers use surveys, product registrations, contests and giveaways, and similar methods to gain information about the website viewers. Frequently, they buy the information from other companies or get the information from their "bricks and mortar" facilities.
Generally, the type of advertisement and its placement can affect online sales. Banner ads, which are rectangular boxes at the top, sides, or bottom of a webpage, are one of the most common types of advertising. It can use animated images, as well as be a static advertisement that is the same each time a page is viewed, or be a rotating advertisement that is different each time a page is loaded or refreshed. Usually these styles of advertisements are more successful than pop-up or pop-under styles because many web browser programs block these advertisements in their default settings.
The richness of an advertisement is the degree to which an advertisement can be designed for a specific market. The reach is how many people view the advertisement. These two factors are very important for a successful online advertising sales campaign. Web designers try to have the highest percentage of richness to reach as many as possible.
Sometimes factors, such as a viewer's embodied knowledge and proprioceptive knowledge, affect online advertising sales. The embodied knowledge is the information element that is generated and maintained outside the brain cavity. It is knowledge that a person gains through his or her actions, such as the act of swinging a golf club. Although a person can test a golf club in a store, online advertising does not allow this so a person needs to use his or her embodied knowledge base to imagine it. The proprioceptive knowledge is similar in that it is the perception of where one's body is in space.
Online advertising sales campaigns often use interactive advertisements. One reason for this is that people are becoming desensitized to online advertising. Advertisements that were an interesting novelty when the Internet was first introduced are sometimes perceived as annoying by people who use the Internet extensively. Advertisers often animate their ads or use contest enrollments to entice people to click hyperlinks to their websites. Advertisers rate their success by the clicks per thousand page views (CPM) that an advertisement gets; and, generally, the CPMs are declining because of desensitization.
