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Summary of Research Findings
Note: Since the Overview page includes most of the statistics from the research, this page will merely summarize my research findings. It will not provide statistics, but rather reiterate the arguments that scholars use in favor of my hypothesis.
Many scholars continue to argue that internet advertising can be effective for companies to improve their recognizability in consumers. Orbitz.com, for example, has consistently used sites such as ESPN.com to bombard surfers with advertisements for flight promotions [9]. Other companies such as Classmates.com have largely increased their popularity by utilizing banner ads at a large number of high traffic websites. Yahoo! and Google, the world's most popular search engines, utilize advertisements as a source of revenue for their websites. Scholars believe that their success clearly depends on the income from internet advertisements. Few scholars disagree with one fact: companies can get their name out to the public by harassing surfers with pop-up, banner, and e-mail advertisements.
Skeptics, however, argue that most surfers gloss over the advertisements on the internet. Unlike TV and Radio, where the individual is forced to watch or listen to the ads in order to continue with regular programming, internet does not provide such a captive audience. Instead, the internet is a place where individuals usually have specific goals in mind: surfers know what they are looking for from a website and rarely spend time idly glancing at banner ads or pop-ups [3]. Furthermore, the high volume of pop-up and banner advertisements creates a sense of frustration with companies that surfers continually see on their computer screens. Many scholars go so far as to say that sometimes, if improperly implemented, internet advertising can backfire on a company because it annoys potential consumers. In particular, click-through rates are extremely low; some researchers believe they are well below 1% [5].
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