Netvertising: content-based subgeneric variations in a digital genre

We have endeavored to define a new emerging digital genre in the world of the Internet: netvertising. We present an analysis divided into two stages. An initial survey of 20 randomly selected Internet advertisements (netads) reveals that texts in this genre are formed by very brief sentences and noun phrases, the systematic use of imperative and simple present tenses, second-person personal pronouns, a higher use of punctuation marks, a combination of different types of images with various texts, and the use of diverse hypertext linkers. A second survey, however, unfolds a significant series of subgeneric variations depending on the contents of the netad. These content-based variations seem to be directly related to the product advertised. We have carried out a linguistic study of a complementary corpus of 50 first-page target ads, linked to those banner ads appearing while browsing through a good number of Internet servers (Infoseck, Webcrawler, AOL, and so on).