ABSTRACTAs of 31 December 2011, there were 2.2 billion people or 32.7% of total world
population using the internet. Growth since year 2000 reached 528.1% or five
folds the users twelve years earlier. Major factors that draw people to turn online
are the interactivity and connected environment enabled by the Web 2.0
technology and the control over information access on the internet thanks to
internet search tools, such as directories and search engines. With more people
shift from physical place to internet space, ready or not, marketers also need to
evolve in the way they communicate with customers.
Online advertising differs from traditional advertising in terms of interactivity,
capability of one-to-one marketing, targeted marketing, and push and pull nature
that are enabled by sophisticated software advances and extensive database. A
major break-out in online advertising was introduced by Google with its keywordtargeted
advertising programs called AdWords?Google's text-based system for
advertising on search engine result pages, and AdSense?appears on Google's
content network of millions of web sites. By this means, two categories for textbased
web advertising are enabled: Search Engine Advertising?ads that are
triggered by user?s search keyword and displayed on the result page of the search
engine, and Contextual Advertising?ads that are placed on third-party Web
pages based on its relevancies with the content of the currently viewed page.
The blog internationalsnack.com is a website about snack and snack-related piece
from around the globe. It seeks opportunity to monetize the site by adopting
contextual advertising business model. A number of objectives are set, including
to reach critical mass and to break even within 2 years after the blog launch in
July 2012. This marketing plan will mainly focus on the strategy to promote and
build traffic to the site through Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Web Public
Relation (Web PR) and Viral marketing tactics.