Advertising agencies and advertisers' perceptions of internet advertising

Abstract

This paper investigates advertising agencies' and advertisers' perceptions of internet advertising in Singapore. More specifically, we compare its effectiveness in achieving five communication objectives—category need, brand awareness, brand attitude, brand purchase intention and purchase facilitation (Rossiter & Percy 1997)—with other marketing communications tools. Findings indicate that advertisers tend to give higher effectiveness ratings to communication tools than advertising agencies, while perceptions of internet advertising's effectiveness are not significantly different. Both groups consider internet advertising to be least effective among and most distinct from all marketing communications tools. In other words, internet advertising is a unique communication tool. The research contributes as one of the few comparison studies to examine the use of internet advertising in a traditional marketing communication mix, thus revealing interesting insights.