Online Marketing to Women

I just read Keith's Blog and his latest post was in response to an article from ClickZ about online marketing to women. As a female myself, I have to say that I completely agree with the article. The majority of online adverstising that I come in contact with is geared towards men. Even the spam e-mails that I get hardly ever apply to me. Marketers have to realize that 50% of the world is women. And we use the internet too! It baffles me to think that some people don't even realize that... not only the fact that women actually use the internet just as much as men do, but women shop more.. so why not gear advertising to us? Not to mention that women can multi-task soooooooo much better than men, so online shopping while checking e-mail while chatting with friends while checking myspace while updating a blog is really no biggie. I actually do get e-mails from Victoria's Secret and I actually read them and check out their sales, unlike most of the other pointless junk mail I get.
I think its even crazier that there is such little online marketing geared toward mothers of young children. This market is sure to be a gold mine. Think about it... a working mother with a bunch of kids. She's online during the day, probably all day, at work. Comes in contact with hundreds of advertisements. Why not an ad for online grocery shopping? Won't that make life easier for her? Now think about a stay at home mom with young kids. What a hassle to take them out of the house to the mall or to go grocery shopping. But these things still need to be done. Mom probably spends a good amount of time online while the kids are taking naps or after they go to bed at night. Why not send some ads her way to entice some online shopping action?
I liked Keith's idea for having companies work together in advertising.. banner swapping would be a great idea for them if they have the same target market. The only problem with that, as mentioned in class, is that it may deter the consumer from looking at the original site they intended on viewing because they got distracted by the banner. But if the link opened up a new browser window (or tab), I think that might eliminate the problem since the first window will still be open so the consumer won't forget the reason why they were at the site in the first place.
As the internet continues to grow, I hope to see more marketing efforts made to women. And I think mastercard will be happy when that happens.