As today’s leading medium for marketing you owe it to your online business to be online. While mass marketing like radio spots and printed media can make a difference to your business’ success, it won’t enable you to create a personal relationship with your potential consumers from around the world like online advertising can.
Not only will you be able to reach out to your target audience on a global scale and enable millions of consumers to reach your business, online advertising is also incredibly convenient and accessible. You can easily track sales items online, send notifications, develop a targeted audience engagement strategy and plan ad campaigns accordingly with just a few clicks. Plus, you’ll have access to a wide array of analytics tools so you know exactly which campaigns, strategies and keywords are working for your business and which are not.
And if that wasn’t enough of an incentive for you to delve as deep as you can into internet advertising, one of online advertising’s top advantages is its cost-effectiveness and low operating cost. Unlike old-school methods where you have to spend a fortune to promote your products and services, online ads are inexpensive with certain sites enabling you to promote your website for free. Not to mention, you’ll be helping the environment by reducing paper, printing, and postage usage.
Types of online advertising
Whether you’re a seasoned paid specialist or are new to the online advertising game and have only heard of Image Ads, Video Ads and Carousel Ads, there are so many types of online ads available, it’s easy to get lost. In order to choose the best ad format for your campaign’s purposes and goals, ensure your ad is engaging a improve your return on Investment (ROI), you’ll need to familiarize yourself with these four main types of online advertising:
Social media ads
With more than half of the people on earth using social platforms, you simply can’t ignore social media advertising. In fact, social media ad spend has already surpassed printed ads and ranks as the third-largest advertising channel, behind TV and paid search. Promoting your business via social media you’ll be able to reach and target specific audiences across the different channels, drive leads and sales, and leverage a variety of ad formats so that they best serve your marketing goals.
When choosing the best social media ad format, ask yourself who your target audience is and which platforms they use, as well as the characteristics of the action you’re trying to promote. Knowing the different features and advantages each social ad strategy can offer you will help you figure out where to invest your money for better results.
Paid search ads
Paid search ads help businesses reach people searching online for specific queries on search engines. This type of ad works on a pay-per-click advertising model, meaning until someone clicks on your advertisement, you don’t pay. While organic results on search engines and other free ways to promote your website could in fact help your business grow, they don’t have the same effect paid search ads have. In fact, businesses generally make an average of $2 in revenue for every $1 they spend on Google Ads. Furthermore, advertising on search engines protects your brand from competitors setting out to buy your branded terms. The most popular platforms for paid search ads are Google, Bing and Yahoo. Google is obviously the most used search engine with a whopping 3.5 billion daily search queries, and with stats showing that over 70% of the total searches worldwide are performed on Google. You can’t, however, afford to ignore its competitors.
In order to know where you should invest your money, check your brand’s keywords on Yahoo and Bing in order to verify whether they are actually making a substantial amount of traffic to your site or not. Once you’ve mastered one of the three search engine platforms advertising techniques, advertising with the other two will be straightforward and a lot easier. Check out our guide on how to advertise on Google so you can start building your online advertising strategy on search engines.
Native advertising
Native advertising matches and functions naturally in the media format in which they appear. The key to native ads is that they are non-disruptive and could in fact go unnoticed by readers. With that being said, studies have shown that even though readers may not even realize they are consuming a paid advertisement, 31% are still more likely to buy from a brand after viewing their native ad. There are different types of native ads: “In Feed” ads that appear in the social network feed, search and promoted listings that appear at the top of your Google search results or in the sidebar, and content recommendations that appear after you’ve finished reading an article online.
This type of internet ads expose your products and services to huge amounts of potential consumers and create a close relationship between publishers and brands. Consumers look at native ads 53% more than display ads, which means that even though your ad may not look promotional, it’s getting the job done.
Display advertising
Display ads are usually text, image or video-based and are meant to encourage a click-through from the user in order for him or her to take a specific action, such as get to the following page, make a purchase, etc. Most of them are promoted on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis, meaning that every time the user on a search engine clicks the ad, the advertiser gets charged an amount based on their overall bidding strategy. There is no wonder then that display ads are notorious in the advertising world, having tricked users into clicking misleading ads. However, in the right platforms they can be used to leverage data in order to display your ads to the targeted audience you’re looking to reach.
Google display ads
Using the Google Display Network (GDN), advertisers can design visually appealing ads and place them on millions of websites and apps (including YouTube and Gmail) straight from their Google Ads account. The platform enables you to target your specific audience through demographic and geo-targeting as well as your targeted audience’s specific interests. If you prefer, Google Ads will take care of the bidding process and will even figure out who your ideal audience is by using its automated targeting and bidding features. Clicks, impressions, conversions and Google Analytics can all be tracked from Google Ads, so you can see just how effective your ads really are.
Facebook’s audience network
Facebook’s Audience Network uses the same targeting data from the Facebook platform in order to help you place native ads, banner ads, full-screen ads, in-stream ads, and rewarded video ads on the network’s websites and apps. This helps you monetize with high-value, boost your revenue and give every ad impression the opportunity for maximum earning potential with real-time bidding.
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