Today, majority of the people spend their work and leisure time in front of their computers on the Internet. As social networking sites replace meeting up with friends, and searching for information online rather than going through books becomes the norm, advertisers are seeing a huge potential for marketing and advertising various products and services on the Internet. The following article gives you some of the advantages of Internet advertising. Types When we use the term Internet advertising, it includes a lot of things. Email, web banners, advertisements on social networking sites, advertisements on manufacturer's own site, pop-up advertisements, advertisements through Internet affiliates - these are all a part of online advertising. Benefits Wide Reach When it comes to reaching a wide range of customers, no other medium can beat Internet. By marketing one's products online, a small manufacturer in one part of the world can find customers in the other. This method has broken all geographical restrictions that existed with other mediums. Global companies, small local businesses, anybody and everybody can increase their product sales and profits by online advertising. This is definitely one of the exclusive benefits. Target Oriented On the Internet, you will find websites which cater to a particular group of people who have some specific interests or who belong to a particular age group. There are sports websites, medical websites, technology websites, social networking sites, which are mostly frequented by youngsters, religions websites, travel websites, etc. Thus, Internet marketing gives businesses an opportunity to reach people who would be specifically interested in buying their product. For instance, a new cell phone in the market can find it's potential customers if advertised on a technology or a social networking site. Quick Conversion One of the foremost benefits is that the conversion time of the advertisement into a sale is very less. Most of the advertisements have links, which allow the customers to purchase the product then and there. This, in a way, hikes the sales and profits of any given business. Highly Informative From the consumer point of view, one of the plus points is that they can know in detail about the product, its features, durability, method of use, etc. With some advertisements, there are consumer reviews available which help a customer to make an informed decision with regards to buying a product. Cost-Effective It is very cost-effective. With other mediums, like television or print, you cannot say for sure whether the customer who is watching or reading the advertisement is actually going to buy the product. But, through pay per click, a marketer is actually paying only when the potential customer visits his website or looks through the product that is being sold. So, comparing from this point of view, the costs are quite less. Easy to Use All type of businesses, even the ones which have just started out, will find advertising on the Internet much easier. With other mediums, businesses need to hire the services of an agency to create appropriate advertisements for them and also to buy advertisement space in newspapers or televisions. With the help of the web, all these headaches do not exist. Even a business which is just a day old can advertise its products and services online, by starting its own website. Although this technique is very beneficial, it has its own share of flaws. On the Internet, there is a very high potential of a customer being fooled into buying a product, which is not even remotely similar to what the product details given in the advertisement make it out to be. Moreover, there are very high chances that the potential customers might miss the advertisement while surfing. Nevertheless, in spite of these drawbacks, in this age, marketing online is one of the growing mediums to watch out for!