A few years back, search engine optimisation was an unknown phrase. That was until Google proved its genius by utilising its search engine to generate revenue for businesses and entrepreneurs alike. The concept was simple, display an ad where it is relevant and there is a higher chance that people will click on it. It also resolved qualms and doubts on online shopping at that time. Everyone wanted to know how it worked and how best to do it. And so targeted advertising was born where in plain text ad insertion or video ad insertion became a highly popular and powerful tool for advertisers to capitalise on.

The response was so enormous and the impact so profound that almost every website or blog on the web signed up for Adsense or Amazon affiliates. Aside from earning from the products of your own you also get a percentage when someone clicks on a displayed ad and makes another purchase. Talk about hitting two birds with one stone. In fact, you did not have to have a product at all. Your website could be sort of a travelogue and display ads for hotels or plane fare promos to a specific location. It is as simple and as powerful as it gets, a consumer visits your website wanting to know your rating of a specific place. Once satisfied, he or she clicks on the ad and books his or her flight. Similarly watching videos which have ad inserts below the screen that are directly related to what you are watching.

Ad insertion or video ad insertion works nowadays by targeting criteria with regard to content, geography, demographic and user behavior. This has been in implementation for some time now but not a lot of people understand what targeted advertising truly is and how it can produce positive impact. It needs to be understood that marketing on the web cannot be the same as print and broadcast advertising since its user base is worldwide and there are factors where one cannot use the same medium.

For instance, a commercial for a popular detergent on the web will not be as effective as a commercial targeted for a local detergent on national television simply because that particular detergent is not distributed worldwide. If companies continue to produce advertising that isn't highly targeted then they are at the risk of not getting a return on investment and will have far greater expenditure in advertising budget. Similarly, an advertisement targeted for a worldwide audience will not be as effective as traditional advertising aired on national television because the audience already has local preferences of their own.

Utilising targeted advertising benefits in more accurate data for analysis because this data is coming from the exact audience you are trying to reach, there is a better understanding of consumer behavior as you are part of that very group yourself and are from the same culture. This will allow better planning on future ad insertion because you already have accurate data on what captures the attention of your audience. It can also provide better returns on video ad insertion based on the norm of culture or lifestyle.

Though print and broadcast advertising might not be as fruitful as it used to be, the demand to adapt to this change is just so great that they have no choice left but to explore this direction. We are already starting to see trends in integrating and utilizing web services on television sets that it should only be a matter of time when they both meet at full circle bringing the gap to a close and consumers the best of both worlds. When this happens, advertising trends might shift to a better direction but will be retaining a similar concept to targeted advertising.