2. Buy advertising space on discussion board web sites. They are usually arranged by subject; that makes them highly targeted. For example, if you are selling gardening tools, you would want to advertise on gardening, farm, tool and lawn-related discussion boards.

3. Create your own web ring. You will gain highly targeted traffic to your web site and others will link to your site because they'll want to join ring. For example, if you were selling products to net marketers, you would want to start an online marketing web ring. You would then draw your target audience.

Often, people who are irritated by certain campaigns don't fall within intended target market. In 2000 Budweiser ran its ''Whassup?!'' campaign. Ad Track reported these commercials scored best with 18- to 24-year-olds; 52% of survey participants said they liked them ''a lot'', while participants 65 years old and over didn't understand them, or didn't want to; 61% disliked commercials. Yet, it's highly unlikely that Budweiser was trying to reach 65+ market.

When Toys R Us launched their campaign featuring Geoffrey giraffe to promote revamping of all Toys R Us stores, 38% of women rated advertisements highly compared to 16% of men. Since advertiser's goal was to get moms back into stores, that low rating from men was meaningless to Toys R Us.

Pier 1 started running its commercials featuring Kirstie Alley this year. Twenty-seven percent of people familiar with commercials didn’t like them, and only 6% thought that they were effective. That comes as a surprise to Pier 1 because same-store sales rose 17% in February and foot traffic is up 12% since October! The goal of most advertising is to increase sales. So, if people buy, advertising is effective—no matter what critics may say.