Interactive Advertising and Presence

New communication technologies are creating new challenges for the advertising industry. While digital and high definition television, e-mail, the World Wide Web, and other new technologies represent new possibilities for advertisers, there is little information available regarding how to take advantage of them. There are indications that applying traditional models, designed for media that provide users with a passive, impersonal experience, will be unsuccessful for the new interactive digital media. A growing body of research and theory on the concept of presence may provide a valuable framework for advertisers as they try to adapt to the changing media environment. This paper considers some of the ways advertising is evolving to incorporate interactive media and how work on presence can guide that evolution.