Much more often are used paid banner ads. A banner is rectangular box filled with advertising (and often fancy graphics) that can be seen all around the web pages. The about banner ads is that people can quickly click on the banner ad and have their questions answered immediately. The reality is that click-through rate from banner ads is abysmally low. In 2003 the click-through rate for 1000 banner impressions was only 6 clicks. Therefore advertisers are looking for other, more effective internet marketing tools.

More statistics from year 2003 say that not only were there more online ads, they got larger. Leader board ads, sized at 728x90, registered a more than 900 percent increase throughout 2003, while button-sized ads (88x31) experienced a 58 percent decline. Other ad sizes that saw significant increases were various large rectangles and skyscrapers (also known as rich media), with growth that ranged from 42 percent to 262.3 percent. The once-popular standard banner size - 468x60 – measured a 12.6 percent decline from Q1 to Q4, and square pop-ups (250x250) fell 25 percent. E-mail marketing can be viewed as a form of direct marketing but without the need to pay for postage, usually the largest cost of any bricks-and-mortar direct marketer. An advertiser can create its own list of e-mail addresses which can take a long period of time or rent a list of e-mail addresses from a specialist company. E-mail marketing is getting more and more popular because the open rate in 2003 of an e-mail was 36.8% and the click-through rate 8.4% which is substantially higher than in case banner ads.

Newsletters are another interesting tool that can be very well used to hit the target audience. Most of the credible specialist web sites have their own regular newsletter and only readers really interested in the topic (and potential customers) subscribes to it. Properly chosen newsletter for the offered product or service can be a powerful way of advertising with strong response rate.

There are more ways of advertisement that are of minor importance like autoresponders or text links.

Word of Mouse Marketing
In short, the concept behind word of mouse marketing is to mobilize the customers to help the spread the message. In real world it is called a word of mouth and is a strong marketing tool. Online, word of mouse is the most highly recognized kind of marketing because people can communicate with each other so fast.

A positive buzz can launch a good idea overnight, but also kill it instantly in case of negative buzz. The two concepts using word of mouse marketing are viral marketing and affiliate programs.