Investigating the Worth of Internet Advertising

Abstract

This research investigates the advertising potential of the Internet services offered by television stations. It develops a conceptual framework for assessing the benefit of such on-line services. The framework at the core of the research, the ‘On-line-Success-per-Programme-Typology’, integrates programmes, success factors, and on-line services to provide a basis for detailed investigation. To develop this framework, the paper analyses the interdependencies between audience share and programme-specific advertising income, hits on Web pages and Internet-specific advertising income, and hits and programme-specific advertising income. Four critical success factors are identified: programme-specific factors ’contemporaneity‘, ’emotional tie’ and ’individuality and interactiveness’ and a non-programme-specific factor ’image’. Then the importance of these for different types of TV programmes is assessed. A new classification of TV on-line services is proposed which focuses on the unit of interest, be it station, channel, or programme. A model of the impact of on-line services on TV success factors is developed. From this seven impact propositions are put forward. To demonstrate its management worth, the framework is applied to the on-line services of two German TV stations. The paper concludes with a critical assessment of the framework and raises questions for further research.