An analysis of the technologies, competitors and perceptions in malware protection for online ads; Microsoft India Development Center (IDC) Bangalore

Abstract

Internet is an information source that is accessed by 2.45 billion people worldwide. This amounts to 35% of the world population of 7 billion (2011). It is a platform to search for information, connect with people, carry out business activities or just to express oneself. The million dollar homepage started a revolution in display ads and showed the immense monetization capabilities in the online medium. Advertising on this platform provides an immense opportunity to advertisers to target their offerings to people. They can showcase their products that match the information the users are looking for in the internet. This increases the chances to getting business and also increases the popularity of their brands. Website owners may use their online real estate to host these ads and earn revenue. With several billions of unique URLs detected by search engines daily, the information source is definitely vast. If the site witness traffic and users are exposed to relevant ads, the probability of the users to be influenced by it increases. The financial dynamics of online advertising are hence greatly influenced by the site reputation, traffic witnessed, relevancy etc. Cumulative Annual Growth Rate of online ads is about 24%. US reported an online ad spending of about $31.3 billion in 2011 up from $26 billion in 2010. Advertisers invested about 7.5% in 2008 of their budget in online ads, which is poised to increase to 15-18% in 2012 (Yankee Group Research Report).