Unlike traditional methods of advertising, online tools can not only measure the behavior of your target audience, but can also provide an advertiser with detailed statistics about the number of people viewing the ad and how many click it. This technology has led to a huge amount of Internet growth, particularly for companies such as Google and Yahoo, and has left electronic media outlets, such as television and radio, looking for more ways to measure advertising responses like the Internet.

Newer and more accurate ways of tracking are always being studied so that advertisers get the most for their money. One method currently being tested involves an attempt to understand the kinds of advertisements consumer minds tend to register to easily. Researchers are showing different online advertisements to volunteers and scanning their brains as they watch them.

The reason so much work is being put in to determining just what kinds of online advertisements are effective is because it's so much easier and less expensive to advertise online and advertising on the web promises much faster results than advertising with traditional medias. When businesses and advertising companies know more about online customer behavior, they'll be able strategize ways to appeal more to potential customers and have a more successful business.

There are several different formats of online advertising currently being utilized by businesses and websites and being studied by researchers to develop more strategic advertising plans. One format, seen on almost every website on the Internet, is banner advertising. Banners ads are placed on websites based on certain key words and website demographics. Most do not realize that companies don't just go on the Internet and search for websites to put each, individual banner ad on. Intelligence is used to automatically put an advertisement on a site specifically geared towards certain customers or what kinds of information they entered into a search engine.

Though banner ads are the most favored kind of online advertisements, other formats, like videos, emails and podcasts, are growing more popular each day. These forms are incorporating more information to captivate Internet users and potential customers by making them genuinely interested in a business and it's products or services. Unlike banner ads, these techniques make a customer familiar with how a business can help them, not just the name of the company. These ads can also be placed throughout the Internet and help to raise a websites search engine rank, driving more traffic towards their site and, therefore, making more sales.

Another way advertisers have gotten web users interested in an otherwise ordinary ad, is to make advertisements more interactive and fun. Many online ads feature different games, riddles or questions to answer that make customers want to click on the ad and complete the task. After completing the task, the user is brought back to the product web page.

With new technology emerging each day, researchers are coming up with more ways to target a certain kind of consumer and entice their minds with dazzling advertisements, making online advertising a clear choice over traditional methods in other forms of media.