A good article explaining the purpose and place for brand and direct approaches online. It’s not one or the other. It’s both.
Line56.com: Online Marketing and ROI
There lies the true beauty of Web marketing. The reason we are able to tie brand advertising and direct marketing so closely together is that we are able to collect data so much more effectively online than in the offline world. We know where people are going on our site, how long they’re spending on each page, what they buy, what they don’t buy, when and where they enter our site, and so on. We are also able to glean information such age, gender, zip code, job title, income level, marital status and more. This type of information is exactly what we need to craft messages specifically targeted to each consumer. The more we know about our customers, the more accurate we can be in our use of brand and direct messages.
