The Internet's Impact on Advertising (continued, 2)

Advertisers on the Internet are able to gather information about their audience, something that wasn't possible in other mediums.

"In order to meet their customers with relevant, valuable marketing messages, marketers are starting with customer research," says VanBoskirk. "Things such as market research, analysis of customer data, and understanding response history to previous messages. They use that to determine which channels to use."

"It may be that the right answer based on the research is traditional media, or it could be interactive media," she continues.

"The difference is not that marketers are blindly switching from TV to Internet. Rather, they are studying their customers and determining what media is right to accomplish their marketing goals based on their customers' demographics and behavior."

New Skills Required for Advertising Careers
Because of this shift of thought in advertising, VanBoskirk says that the skills needed to enter the advertising field are changing as well. Data mining and analytical skills are more important than ever.

"Workers who have the ability to pull business insights out of customer data are in high demand. Marketing organizations are willing to pay a lot for them.

 "Left-brain marketers need people who can make sense out of customer data. They need people who can recommend marketing and business strategy based on what they learn from the data," VanBoskirk adds.

Gignac advises that in the advertising field, and in online advertising in particular, it's important to be able to deal with the frantic nature of the business and have the type of creativity described by VanBoskirk.

"The pace is tremendous, but the ability to be creative and actually take a lead role in the problem-solving process with both agency and advertising partners is also huge," says Gignac.

What Does the Future Hold?
Johnson says that while Internet advertising will continue to grow, the growth may occur in new areas. In marketing today, people need to be constantly innovating and ready to explore new mediums and new aspects of existing mediums.

"Obviously companies like Google and Yahoo! are seeing huge revenues in sponsored search and this is very effective for many advertisers," he explains.

"Will we see this type of advertising reach a saturation point? Yes, I have no doubt. But then the question becomes, where is the next area of growth? What new ideas or new technologies will come into play?"

Whatever the future holds, both Internet and television advertising are here to stay. The merging of the two technologies and a shift towards more data-oriented and analytical marketing are noteworthy trends.

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