Even though there are many successful sites busily carving out their special niches on the internet, our panelists tend to dislike the notion of touting particular websites as "absolutely" better than other sites for advertisers. They repeatedly made the point that every time you buy media, you do so in accordance with a strategy, and that in every case the strategy is probably to some degree unique (or, to put this another way: you probably wouldn't run the same campaign the same way twice). Based on the strategy, creative will be judged good or bad, messaging will be judged good or bad and the effectiveness and appropriateness of buying avails on a particular site will also look like a good or bad idea.

What's more, there is no substitute for knowing the relevant sites really well and aligning your choices as closely as you can with your strategy.

As they would do with any medium, buyers of online advertising consider reach, prominence and effectiveness. But unlike other media, online buyers have the opportunity to benefit from continual testing of their strategies and their creative, as well as the sites and the specific availabilities they contract for, and to continually make changes in an effort to upgrade the effectiveness of their spend. A site that promises a better concentration of a certain demographic or behavioral profile can be tested, and in short order the results can be compared with the results of other dollar allocations.

One bit of wisdom that kept emerging from our panel is that virality, or WOM, is very often the best way for an advertiser to spread a message. Despite the vast sums spent annually for online, TV, print, direct mail and other advertising media, WOM always ranks near the top of the pile when it comes to driving conversions. For this reason, WOM considerations should form an integral part of every online and offline campaign. 

Robert Moskowitz is a consultant and author.