The typical Internet user is an appealing target for many marketers. Angus Kidman looks at how advertisers are devising ways to reach them and overcome the reluctance of many Internet users to be reached.

Published in the Australian Financial Review, August 6 1996

Where publications go, advertisements quickly follow. And for the Internet, acclaimed the world's latest, and greatest, publishing medium, the same holds true.

Advertisers are clambering to get on board.

Even if the Net isn't yet available on the near universal basis of television and radio, the profile of the typical Internet user makes it an appealing target for many companies.

One recent survey by research firm www.consult concluded that the average Internet user was aged between 20 and 44, was male and had an income greater than the national median.

This makes Internet users a highly desirable target for marketers.

While virtually every service carried on the Internet has the potential to include advertising content, attention has tended to be focused on the graphically appealing World Wide Web, which attracts the biggest audience and offers the greatest potential for advertisers to market products.

Attempts to include advertising in other services have not met with widespread acceptance.

The most famous example occurred on Usenet, the Internet "bulletin board" service which offers open forums for discussion of specific topics.

An Arizona law firm, Canter and Siegel, used a software "robot" to repeatedly send a message promoting its immigration services to 5,500 Usenet groups (a process known to opponents as "spamming").

While the firm claimed it garnered significant new business as a result of the campaign, it was heavily criticised for placing irrelevant messages in the forums, had to suffer numerous return spamming attacks from disgruntled users, and eventually had its e-mail account cancelled.

A year ago, advertising on the Web was viewed with similar suspicion, and many advertising experts advised caution.

"Sponsorship ... seems to be the easiest way to get your company logo seen globally because direct advertising on the Internet is banned," Jo-Anne Pitman of Robertson Leo Burnett South Australia wrote in a report in May 1995.

Ms Pitman concluded that other forms of advertising, like the Canter and Siegel approach, would still be possible but would require a cleverer approach by ad agencies.

Research suggests, though, that as the Internet has moved out from its original research-centred market, tolerance of advertising has also grown.

In June this year, American firm I/Pro Corporation completed a survey of Internet browsing habits, covering more than a trillion individual visits across 75 sites, all of which included advertising.

It found that visitors accessed an average of 5.7 pages on each visit to one of these sites, suggesting that the advertisements on these pages were not a significant turn-off for those visitors.

"We aren't getting negative feedback from having advertising on our sites," said Anthony Middonte, account services manager for Next Online, which provides the online presence for a number of leading print magazines, including Rolling Stone and the games magazine Hyper.

Mr Middonte also points out that in the increasingly populated world of the Web, advertising on other sites may be necessary simply to get people to visit your site in the first place.

Next has to some extent worked around this dilemma by linking its sites to existing print titles.

"If we can actually relate it to something in traditional media, it's a lot easier," he said.

The relative newness of advertising online remains apparent. Lycos has a message reading "Please visit our sponsor" next to its major advertisements.

Wall Street Journal columnist Bart Ziegler recently criticised this aspect of Web development, pointing out that "on the Web it's tougher to tell the editorial independence of a site".

Internet users opposed to widespread advertising can filter out the advertisements using special software programs.

Earlier this year, for example, a company formed by four North Carolina university students released a product called Internet Fast Forward (IFF).

When used in conjunction with Netscape Navigator, IFF allows normal access to Web sites but blocks out virtually all advertisements.

The package relies on a special database of sites and advertisement types, which can be updated regularly.

Some critics have attacked IFF as a threat to the potential of Internet commerce. However, by enabling users to skip advertisements entirely or selectively, it also leaves advertisers able to argue that anyone who chooses not to use IFF must not object to seeing ads.

One advantage to producing online advertising is that it can be customised to a much greater degree than is possible in traditional media.

Mr Middonte said: "There is a passive value to advertising in magazines, but the Web offers more interactivity."

By far the most popular sites on which to place advertisements are search engines, the indexing tools which allow Web surfers to locate specific information on the Web.

One survey by research firm PC-Meter found that the Yahoo search engine was the second most popular site on the Web, while the Lycos search engine was the fastest growing.

Even a lesser known search engine, such as Digital's Alta Vista (which won't accept advertising), claims 12 million accesses a day.

The cost of advertising on these sites can vary widely, but tends to be far cheaper than comparable print mediums, especially on local search engines which focus on Australian Web sites.

One such service, Aussie.com, charges $100 per week for a banner advertisement which appears whenever a user carries out a search.

It charges $50 a day to appear on its own home page, search page or "what's new" page.

Sites that aren't search engines can be even cheaper.

Sydney ISP Gignet offers banner advertisements on its non-search site for around $10 a month.

Advertising in this medium isn't necessarily cheap to produce, though.

To attract attention among the wealth of available information will necessitate a heavy investment in design, and may also require specialised programming skills to use Web extensions like Java or Shockwave to produce multimedia effects like animation and sound.

As well, companies need to have a Web site of their own (the banner advertisement, when clicked, normally provides a link back to the advertiser's site).

Web site design consultants typically charge $30 to $50 an hour simply to set up a site.