Chapter 3:
Marketers on the Net—Analysis

Your Assignment

1. This first question pertains to Advertising Agencies online. With a few notable exceptions, the above list is dominated by small start up companies. Are all or most of the "Big Boys" online? Using any resources at your disposal, find the web sites (if they exist) for the 10 biggest ad agencies in your country. Discus the ways they try to position and promote themselves with their home page.

2. Evan Schwartz in his 1997 book Webonomics points out that only 26% of the consumer brand web sites have been produced by ad agencies. Are ad agencies obsolete?

3. What role would an advertising agency play on behalf of a client wishing to use the Internet for "banner" advertising? How is this role different than if the client wanted to place a magazine or TV ad? An interesting service called the Internet Link Exchange was created to allow companies to advertise on each other's sites. This service is now part of Microsoft and is called bCentral. One of the site's pages explains the banner exchange program. Is this type of exchange a threat to ad agencies' business?. Does the ILE represent a threat to the ad agencies' business?

4. Make a list of the kinds of services being offered by firms in the above collection. Can you think of any other services that are not being currently offered by the above firms?