The Birth of Internet Marketing Communications

Internet marketing is leading the massive wave of electronic commerce, but contrary to what people think, the internet has been a hard sell right from the start. What were the first critical decisions for marketers and advertisers that locked internet marketing on its current path? Steinbock interviewed dozens of the early key players and finds that the internet had to sell the idea of itself as not just a new media but an entirely new marketspace--that is, a space in the consumer and business-to-business markets both. Covering the entire field, Steinbock's unique study proves that regardless of what may come next, it is crucial to understand what came first. His book will be essential for today's marketing, advertising, and internet decision makers, and a fascinating read for business and media watchers everywhere.

Steinbock shows the obstacle and barriers that faced the initial entrepreneurs and user companies, reconstructing the progression of internet marketing from the campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s, and in fact as far back as the 1940s and mid-1950s. He shows that internet marketing really began in business-to-business marketing, and only after AT&T and the Telcos argued that the internet was theoretically impossible and that it would crush American telecommunications if it ever did arrive. Ad agency execs? They hardly noticed the internet until the mid-1990s. Steinbock digs into the proliferation of marketing channels and the details of browsers, home pages, and web sites. He examines technology marketing, relationship marketing, and the connection between the internet, intranets, and marketing channels. In Chapter 4 he lays out the promise of internet marketing, the story of Zima and banner advertising, moving from there to the problems of online branding, online and offline advertising, broadcast hybrids, and online access to community providers. Steinbock ends with a look toward global markets and the war for eyeballs--the similarities and differences between television and the internet. His book is meticulously researched, authoritative, and well illustrated and will have special value for students and teachers in college courses in advertising, marketing, and media studies.

DAN STEINBOCK is Affiliate Researcher for Columbia Institute for Tele-Information (CITI) at Columbia Business School. He also serves as a visiting professor at the Helsinki School of Economics and Truku School of Economics, both in Finland. He is the author of Triumph and Erosian in the American Media and Entertainment Industries (Quorum, 1995).