There are two common ways of selling software: either online or in a store. Both have some kind of advantage, both for the costumers and for the merchants. It is in the merchant's interest that his/her clients know about the product, and the way to achieve this point is through advertisement.

There are advantages and disadvantages to advertising software in a retail store. The main advantage is the presence of a salesperson, who can field questions from the prospective buyer. The buyer may also be attracted by the medium that the software comes on, such as a CD or DVD. The main disadvantage of the retail environment is that there will be other similar products competing for the same customers.

A product which is being sold online requires differrent distribution and advertisement techniques than the products sold in stores. advertising software on the web can be quite user-specific: an inexpensive way is the use of marketing software, which for example sends e-mails out to customers which did buy similar products in the past. This is just one example of the use of ecommerce software in a product promotion.

Using pop-up windows is another way of advertising software online. This is a quite less customized approach. However the mass of people which you can reach through the use of this method compensates for a minor customization. It's also quite less expensive than to use costly e-commerce software: the advertiser only pays for the actual number of views that the ad is getting.

One down side to advertising online is that people who spend a fair amount of time on the Internet become inured to online ads, because they see so many of them. Because many sites use advertising extensively, even intrusively, viewers may simply block out the ads they are shown.

Many people are also afraid to click on advertisements that they see online, particularly if they are advertising software. Internet users have become more afraid of losing their money by unknowingly downloading a virus that is bundled with the software they download from the Internet.

As for myself, I'm a person who would rather do my research online and make my purchase in a store. So when I am buying software, two kinds of advertisements influence me: those I have seen online, and those I see in the store.

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