History of advertising (II): Internet and Social Networks

In the part I on the history of advertising We traveled to Egypt, Greece and Rome to show you which were the first formats of advertising 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 would not be until two years later, in 1996, when we would speak for the first time of PPC (PPC).pay per click) on the Planet Oasis web directory site. That same year, Yahoo! launched its first want ad. Shortly thereafter, in 1998,GoTo.com (renamed Overture in 2001 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2003) creates 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. We are facing the first record of the e-commerce. At the height of the "dotcom" boom, the Internet goes public, also the same year, and we can talk about 147 million Internet users, nothing to do with the 16 million users that there were only 4 years ago.

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:

• In 1999 Napster and Google.
• The same year also saw the birth of Epinions: The pThe first portal for opinions and reviews, later Ebay would buy it.
• Also born Terra, cnternet content and Internet portals company of the Telefónica de España Group.
• Traditional cameras are left out of the market. Image sharing portals emerge that monetize by developing images.
• By the year 2000, $8 billion had already been invested in online advertising.
• In the same year, the revolution of the pop ups.
• In the year 2000, the Internet already had 361 million users worldwide.

And then, the inevitable happened: the 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 became aware of the importance of the association of feelings above the attributes, and the first elements of the emotional marketing:

• Emotional connection with the brand's products to achieve a long-term connection.
• Draw attention to the product.
• Sensitizing the masses, un awareness-raising message can have a positive impact on building a long-term relationship.
• Choosing emotionsthat the companies want to transmit and the effect they want to achieve in the users.
• Taking care of the stories. Storytelling stories through the storytelling to reach the consumer. Good content, to get the public to identify themselves.
• Careful tuning, already that sometimes music can stay in the consumer's mind.

Here is an example of BMW ad 2000, which begins to integrate these elements: This will give way to the RRSSThe YouTube was founded in 2005, the original idea of which 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. In the same year, Twitter was created. But the giant of social media, Facebook, between 2007 and 2008 was adapting its platform to make a more segmented advertising and to make it easier for brands to have a presence in this network.

The native era and the quest for virality

Today: RRSS and prosumer

We will highlight four milestones that have brought us to where we are today:

• 2012: Madness selfie. The selfieof Ellen DeGeneres' Oscar gala with a large cast of actors becomes a viral hit. Samsung pays $20 million for this tweet.
• 2015: The advertising in digital games becomes an excellent platform to strengthen the brand of companies. The era of creating social media ads. 
• 2016: Instagram achieved more than US$1.53 billion in advertising revenues.
• 2020: TikTokwidely used by teenagers, has reached 800 million users, surpassing Twitter, LinkedIn and Snapchat.

All these developments make the user the center of attention and the is born prosumer: the Internet users They 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 this end, thebrands have to properly manage the information generated by their customers. prosumersbecause the consumer now has more decision-making power than ever before. The advertising format is constantly changing and we must satisfy the customer in a simple and creative way. We must know their tastes and what they really want to find. Here are some examples below from KFC:

1. With KFC Snacks we are giving #MMuchTo VeryLittle
2. 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 the different tools and formats that exist today to carry it out. Our Community Manager are experts in social media management for companies. His job 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!