Online marketing consultant e-agency
Friday painted a rosy outlook for the Internet sector in 2003,
insisting the Internet-related phenomena will continue to have increasingly
critical impacts on business and society.
The Oakland, Calif.-based concern is predicting the coming year
will be good for the Internet economy — — both users and providers, buyers
and sellers — and warned that the collective wrath of consumers will force
the demise of intrusive advertising formats like pop-ups and pop-unders.
“Consumers will also begin using their power of outrage to force the
demise of the most intrusive forms of Internet marketing, including pop-up
and pop-under ads that annoy Web users, and hated spam — unwanted e-mail,”
e-agency said, noting that Web users in 2003 “will get more control over
their online lives.”
The feel-good report from e-agency said the words “dot com” will
disappear because it has “lost any effective meaning” and has become a
turn-off to society in general. As the sector grows, e-agency believes
online marketers will find new ways to market goods and services online and
Web site owners will find they have more control over content creation, a
reality that will help cut down on overheads.
The company praised the efforts of America Online ,
Google and EarthLink to banish pop-up advertising on
their popular networks.
Instead of intrusive advertising formats, e-agency believes 2003 will be
a year when pay-for-position and e-mail marketing will grow. “In the
advertising field, the move toward better-qualified targets may
take the form of keyword-based pay-for-position marketing on search engines.
It may be today’s best advertising buy,” the company said. Because start-up
costs in the pay-for-placement space can be as a $5 set-up fee and a
commitment of at least five cents per click-through to the advertiser’s Web
site, e-agency believes smaller Web players will latch on to the medium in
2003.
In the e-mail marketing sector, e-agency believes the trick to success in
2003 is to develop carefully targeted lists. “More and more Web sites will
ask users for their e-mail addresses so they can keep them informed about
opportunities that they want to know about…As a means of attracting
‘acquisition’ targets — those new to the advertiser and his message — and
cutting through the clutter, more-active forms of rich media in e-mail will
improve and be used with increasing sophistication as high-speed Internet
access becomes more common,” the firm added.