Matt Gower, managing director, The Digital Partnership
Advertising on the Internet
Robbin Lee Zeff and Bradley Aronson
1999
When the second edition of this book was published in 1999, online advertising was still in its relative infancy, which makes it all the more remarkable that its authors, Robbin Lee Zeff and Bradley Aronson, could write so presciently about how businesses should advertise online.
Both Zeff and Aronson had worked in the industry for a number of years, but back then internet advertising wasn’t anywhere near as mainstream as it is now. In these days of always-on broadband and mobile devices it is easy to forget that 11 years ago many of us were still struggling with dial-up and for most businesses, online advertising was just a tiny niche in their overall campaigns.
But this guide remains an excellent introduction to the discipline. It might be simplistic in its language and approach (that’s no bad thing given the propensity of many business books to lapse into unnecessary jargon) but when it talks about targeting and online ad models it is as relevant now as it was then.
Traditional advertising seems almost scatter-gun in its approach compared to online, and Zeff and Aronson lay out just how straightforward it can be for any brand to target and personalise their advertising to reach their target audience, ideas that still resonate today.