Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing, Internet advertising, or eMarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. When applied to the subset of website-based advertisement placements, Internet marketing is commonly referred to as Web advertising (also Webvertising) and Web marketing.[citation needed] The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing, one of which being lower costs for the distribution of information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of providing instant response and eliciting response, is a unique quality of the medium. E-marketing is sometimes considered to have a broader scope since it refers to digital media such as web, e-mail and wireless media, but also includes management of digital customer data and electronic customer relationship management systems (E-CRM systems).
Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the Internet, including design, development, advertising, and sales. Internet marketing methods and strategies encompass a wide range of services:
affiliate marketing
behavioral marketing
cause marketing
contextual advertising
customer relationship management (CRM) marketing
digital marketing
display advertising
e-mail marketing
geographically targeted online advertising
in-text advertising
interactive advertising
Internet news releases
lead scoring
newsletter marketing
online market research
online reputation management (ORM)
online lead generation
search engine marketing (SEM)
pay per click (PPC)
search engine optimization (SEO)
social media marketing
blog marketing
multivariate testing or optimization
viral marketing
software-based advertising
Internet marketing does not simply entail building or promoting a website, nor does it mean placing a banner ad on another website. Effective Internet marketing requires a comprehensive strategy that synergizes a given company's business model and sales goals with its website function and appearance, focusing on its target market through proper choice of advertising type, media, and design.
Internet marketing also refers to the placement of media along different stages of the customer engagement cycle through search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), banner ads on specific websites, email marketing and Web 2.0 strategies. In 2008 The New York Times working with comScore published an initial estimate to quantify the user data collected by large Internet-based companies. Counting four types of interactions with company websites in addition to the hits from ads served from advertising networks, the authors found the potential for collecting upward of 2,500 pieces of data on average per user per month.[
