When promotional messages are delivered on Internet, they are called online advertising or online marketing or Internet advertising or web advertising. Such promotion could be through emails, through search engines or mobile phones. In online advertising too, there is a publisher and an advertiser. A publisher integrates ads to the content. Advertiser provides the ads to be displayed on the content. Ad agencies generate the ad copy and ensure its placement. Ad servers deliver the ads and tracks the data. Advertising affiliates do the independent promotional work for the advertiver. To begin with, in the initial days of Internet, online ads were banned. Email ads were first used in 1978, and its use spread rapidly. It was in early 1990s, that non-commercial spam messages originated. Online banner ads appreared in the early 1990s. The first clickable ad appreared in 1993. Banner ads became mainstream in 1994. In 2003, search engine ad was started by Yahoo! AdWords was launched by Google in 2000. The trend now is to let the content and ad message merge. Coke’s online ad magazines, Red Bull’s streaming of space jump, Nike’s free apps for performance tracking are illustrations. Advertisers have taken to social media too. Mobile ads have grown.

The element of display ads are text, logos, videos, animations, photographs and other graphics. Targeting is related to user traits. That makes these ads effective. Tracking could be done by using cookies . Data is collected from a number of sources. This is behavioural targeting. There is contextual or semantic advertising too depending upon the content of the web page where the ads appear . Targeting is thus retargetting, behavioural targeting and contextual targeting. This makes advertising effective, and improves advertiser’s ROI. Apart from this, there is geotargeting based on a user’s suspected geography.

Web banner ads are graphical display ads within a webpage. They are delivered by a central server. These can be enriched by incorporating video, audio, animations, buttons, forms or other interactive elements. The software used could be Java applets, HTML5, Adobe Flash and such other programmes.

Traditional banners were frame ads. Here some space is set aside by publishers to have the frame ads.

Pop-ups and pop-unders. A pop-up ad is displayed in a new web browser window above a website visiter’s initial browser window. Conversely, pop-under ad opens in a new browser window under a website visitor’s initial browsing window.

Floating ads is also called overlay ads which is superimposed on the requested websiter’s content.

Expanding ads change dimensions as per the activities of the users over the ad. They allow advertisers to carry more information in restricted space.

Trick banners are banner ads. They imitate some commonly found screen elements, e.g.app message, OS message . Initially, the advertisers’ name is not mentioned. They are baits.

News feed ads are on the social media. They are intertwined with non-promoted news. Sponsored stories is an example. Twitter uses of promoted tweets and LinkedIn Sponsored updates. Newsfeed ads blend into other updates, and thus can be distiguished from the display ads.

Interestitial ad shows before a user can access the desired content. It could be embedded.