Online Advertising and Push-Pull Advertising

When we think about advertising, we mostly think about stupid - or great - televised commercials. Or we ponder billboards. Or we think about magazines, which get the bulk of their funding from advertisers and not our $4.

All these forms of advertising are push advertising. Push advertising comes out to find us. This is the sort of advertising we feel bombarded with on a daily basis, the advertising that makes us cover our heads and look for shelter. But it's also the sort of advertising that builds brand identity. Where would Coca-Cola be without its frequent commercials, its promotions, its Santa Claus images?

Because push advertising is so prevalent, we forget that there is a different sort of advertising as well - pull advertising.While push advertising hits the mass market, pull advertising targets specific consumers who have been identified as likely customers. Using carefully-targeted advertising that often uses valuable quality information to spread its message, push advertising has always been expensive to develop and more expensive to deliver (think the "good" junk mail you used to get, like baby magazines for pregnant women). But until the last decade, pull advertising has been far less popular than push advertising because it's just so hard to develop for most consumer groups.Pull Advertising

Only with the advent of the Internet has pull advertising become a common tool. Pull advertising in its online incarnation is related to those magazine supplements that you see - you know, sponsored by Sunoco but filled with truly useful information that makes you want to read them.

The Internet uses the exact same concept. In many ways, the web is nothing but a vast repository of free information and pull advertising sites. Writers who want to make a living in the new world create content that synchronizes well with advertiser demands. They may run Google ads in the margins next to their articles to blend push and pull advertising, or they may discuss products in their blogs or columns, or they may work as affiliate sales sites.