In the part I on the history of advertising We traveled to Egypt, Greece and Rome to show you which were the first advertising formats that have reached our time, passing also through the Modern Age and the advertising boom in the middle of the last century. If you are interested in these chapters of the history of advertising, do not hesitate to read it. Today, however, we will focus on the history of our profession since the Internet burst onto the advertising scene.
The Internet is born: The banner era
As many of you already know, the Internet was born as a tool for information exchange. However, many users began to use it for information and the pioneers of digital marketing saw the great potential it had: the first clickable ad on the Internet was generated by HotWired in 1994 (the Internet had 16 million users) and looked like this: But it was not until two years later, in 1996, when the term "CFP" was first used for the first time. (pay per click) on the Planet Oasis web directory site. That same year, Yahoo! launched its first search ad.
Shortly after, in 1998, GoTo.com (renamed Overture in 2001 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) created the first search engine keyword advertising auction, the system we know today was taking shape. That same year, the Christmas campaign in the US exceeded 2,000M dollars and Amazon was the main responsible with its video and DVD sales business. This is the first e-commerce record. At the height of the "dotcom" boom, the Internet goes public, the same year, and we can talk about 147 million Internet users, nothing to do with the 16 million users that existed only 4 years earlier.
The channel era
The Internet was growing by leaps and bounds and a series of events unfolded that would lay the foundations for online advertising:
- Napster and Google were born in 1999.
- The same year also saw the birth of EpinionsThe first opinion and review portal, later bought by eBay.
- Terra is also borna company dedicated to Internet content and Internet portals of the Telefónica Group of Spain.
- Traditional cameras are left out of the market. Image sharing portals emerge that monetize by developing images.
- By the year 2000, the company had already invested 8 billion dollars in advertising online.
- That same year, the pop-up revolution emerged.
- In the year 2000, the Internet already has 361 million users. worldwide.
- And then, the inevitable happened: arose Google Ads. The company had only 9 employees, but they started with about 350 customers and the investment in their payment platform accounted for 95% of the company's revenue, almost nothing.
The social era and sentiment association
In the early 2000s, advertisers realized the importance of the association of feelings over attributes and the first elements of emotional marketing appeared:
- Emotional connection with the brand's products to achieve a long-term connection.
- Draw attention to the product.
- Sensitizing the masses, a message that sensitizes the masses can have a positive impact on generating a long-term relationship.
- Choose the emotions to be conveyed by the companies and the effect to be achieved in the users.
- Taking care of the stories. Telling stories through storytelling to reach the consumer. Good content, to get the public to identify.
- Take care of the tuning, since sometimes the music can remain in the consumer's mind.
This will give way to social networks, which are gaining prominence: YouTube was founded in 2005, whose original idea was to create a dating website, where people could rate each other based on videos. In 2006 Google took over the platform and launched video advertising.
Twitter was created in the same year. But the giant of social media, Facebook, between 2007 and 2008 was adapting its platform to make advertising more segmented and to make it easier for brands to have a presence in this network.
The native era and the quest for virality
And without realizing it, we have reached the 2010, when Instagram and Twitter were born starts launching its first promoted tweets. At this moment, viral marketing surpasses more traditional advertising, thanks to an advertising campaign of "Old Spice Guy" that receives 30 million visits. Traditional advertising is no longer enough; brands must create more impactful, innovative content that generates the desire to share it.
Today: RRSS and prosumer
We will highlight four milestones that have brought us to where we are today:
- 2012: selfie madness. Ellen DeGeneres' Oscar gala selfie with a large cast of actors becomes viral hit. Samsung pays 20 million dollars for this tweet.
- 2015: Advertising in digital games becomes an excellent platform to strengthen the brand of companies. The era of creating social media ads.
- 2016: Instagram achieves more than $1.53 billion in advertising revenue.
- 2020: TikTok, widely used by teenagers, reaches 800 million users, surpassing Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat.
All these developments make the user the center of attention and the the prosumer is born: internet users abandon the passive facet to become content generators and creators of ideas and opinions that influence the community of buyers of a brand or product.
To achieve this, brands must properly manage the information generated by prosumers, because the consumer now has more decision-making power than ever before. The advertising format changes We have to satisfy the customer in a simple and creative way. We must know their tastes and what they are really looking to find. Here are some examples below from KFC:
- With KFC Snacks we're giving #MMuchTooMuchForVeryLittle
- Twitter goes wild for KFC's CM: he gained 80,000 followers in less than 3 hours.
At Geotelecom, as digital marketing agencywe are in continuous training and learning about advertising and different tools and formats that exist today to carry it out. Our Community Manager are experts in social media management for companies. Their task is to improve the brand reputation of our clients in the different social platforms, interacting with users and providing valuable information. Do you want to know more? Contact us!