Lecture 1: Strategies and Channels for Digital Marketing

In the beginning of the lecture, I was excited to hear that there is a large growing market for online marketing. I was particularly impressed by the substantial growth forecasts for interactive marketing spend in the U.S.; Forrester predicts a 17% CAGR from now to 2014. US online advertising spending is also expected to grow significantly; eMarketer projects 9-12% annual increase until 2014. In addition to discussing growth trends of online marketing, Prof. Kagan introduced acronyms related to digital marketing: CMC (cost per thousand impressions), CPC (cost per click), CPA (cost per action). CMC defines the cost per thousands of ad images (also termed impressions). CPC is the cost per user's mouse click on the ad and CPA is the cost per user's action (when revenue is generated from the ad, for example). When discussing search engines, we learned the difference between SEMs (sponsored links that appear at the top of search results) and SEO (natural links that appear in search results but are not sponsored). The topic of display ads, or space on a website, was also intriguing. Examples of display ads include contextual ads, static images, rich media, and online video. Digital marketing is an entirely new field to me, so I was thrilled to learn about many new topics and the relevant jargon. I look forward to discovering a whole new area of marketing that is becoming increasingly important day by day.