Report: Web Marketing Will Shine in 2003

Online marketing consultant e-agency Friday painted a rosy outlook for the Internet sector in 2003, insisting the Internet-related phenomena will continue to have increasingly critical impacts on business and society.

The Oakland, Calif.-based concern is predicting the coming year will be good for the Internet economy — — both users and providers, buyers and sellers — and warned that the collective wrath of consumers will force the demise of intrusive advertising formats like pop-ups and pop-unders.

“Consumers will also begin using their power of outrage to force the demise of the most intrusive forms of Internet marketing, including pop-up and pop-under ads that annoy Web users, and hated spam — unwanted email,” e-agency said, noting that Web users in 2003 “will get more control over their online lives.”

The feel-good report from e-agency said the words “dot com” will disappear because it has “lost any effective meaning” and has become a turn-off to society in general. As the sector grows, e-agency believes online marketers will find new ways to market goods and services online and Web site owners will find they have more control over content creation, a reality that will help cut down on overheads.

The company praised the efforts of America Online , Google and EarthLink to banish pop-up advertising on their popular networks.

Instead of intrusive advertising formats, e-agency believes 2003 will be a year when pay-for-position and email marketing will grow. “In the advertising field, the move toward better-qualified targets may take the form of keyword-based pay-for-position marketing on search engines. It may be today’s best advertising buy,” the company said. Because start-up costs in the pay-for-placement space can be as a $5 set-up fee and a commitment of at least five cents per click-through to the advertiser’s Web site, e-agency believes smaller Web players will latch on to the medium in 2003.

In the email marketing sector, e-agency believes the trick to success in 2003 is to develop carefully targeted lists. “More and more Web sites will ask users for their email addresses so they can keep them informed about opportunities that they want to know about…As a means of attracting ‘acquisition’ targets — those new to the advertiser and his message — and cutting through the clutter, more-active forms of rich media in email will improve and be used with increasing sophistication as high-speed Internet access becomes more common,” the firm added.