Advertising has been the tool for publicity of your products and services for promoting your business online and offline. Traditional advertising were carried out using banners, hoardings, leaflets, brochures, street shows and wall paintings. Ads were also displayed through audio instruments like radio and visuals like the movies.
Later with the advent of the electronic media the monopoly of print media went out and ads were given on the TV screens. Internet Marketing was a far away concept at the time since both Internet and World Wide Web were yet to mark their appearance on the scene. Thus traditional advertising were more of direct contact and carried out through reading materials.
One major disadvantage with the traditional advertising was that the effectiveness was extremely difficult to measure. Even when ads were floated in magazines and periodicals that had thousands of readers, only 4-5% would take notice of your message. Again out of this meager percentage of readers who actually noticed your message only 10% could be potential customers and only 5% could be real time customers. The impact thus was far inferior to the modern day Article Marketing where interested readers only view the article after arriving at your website on their own, through search engine or being redirected by the linked sites.
Above scenario has undergone a sea change with the advent of online marketing. Both search engine marketing or Directory link building aim at target audience and put much more impact since the viewers come to the site after searching for the relevant contents and are likely to view what you have to offer. And once viewing they may become your customer at real time.