What is Digital Advertising?

Digital Advertising is the practice of delivery promotional content to users through various online and digital channels.

Digital Advertising is the means by which companies and sponsors use the Internet to promote and sell their products and services.

Digital advertising can also take place on social media websites through text ads with hyperlinks, through affiliate, and third-party marketing initiatives.

Display advertising uses demographic and geographic targeting with capturing user’s cookie and browser history. It can determine demographics, location, and interests to target appropriate ads to those browsers.

The digitization of advertising also becomes a social domain of digitalization.

Digitalization refers to the way in which many domains of social life are restructured around digital communication and media infrastructures.

Now, digital advertising exceeds its physical ad properties that now enable advertisers to better approach their audience.

Digital advertising is a targeted, data-driven strategy for reaching customers in every stage of the buying funnel. Digital media advertising can move from awareness to purchase to drive revenue. 

Digital advertisements are purchased through one of the following common media:-

• Cost Per Mile/Thousand (CPM) – Advertisers pay when their messages are exposed to specific audiences.
• Cost Per Click (CPC) / Pay Per Click (PPC) – Advertisers pay every time a user clicks on their ads.
• Cost Per Action/Acquisition (CPA) – Advertisers only pay when a specific action or purchase is performed.

Traditional Advertising vs Digital Advertising –

Traditional advertising follows the spray and prays approach. It reached out to the masses but the ROI is largely undeterminable.

Digital advertising is data-driven and can give you minute details of your campaigns and outcomes.

Traditional advertising campaigns would include everything from local radio and TV spots to classified ads in weekly newspapers, and advertising on city streets.

Traditional advertising has its place and you’ll find hundreds of local ads out.

Digital advertising comes with a massive amount of data. You can track the performance of your campaigns in real-time.

You can also learn about the demographics, and interests of the people viewing and interacting with your ads. Digital advertising use advanced targeting methods to reach your target audience.

These targeting features go beyond the capabilities of traditional marketing which push your business to target people.

Digital advertising has the most common targeting options which include:-

• Keywords – This target option helps you to reach people who search for keywords and phrases related to your business.
• Interests – Interest targeting allows you to reach user-based on their past behavior on advertisement platform like Google Ads, and Facebook.
• Demographics – You can reach customers based on their demographic information like age, location, and even marital status.
• Remarketing – Your business can target users that visited your website. Your ad campaign may show ads to people who match the demographics of your target market.

Digital advertising requires research and planning before you launch your campaign. You need to determine your advertising goals, strategy, budget, and more which includes the following steps:-

• Create your goals
• Build your strategy
• Set your budget
• Choose your ad platforms
• Acquire your ad creatives
• Implement post-launch ad optimization

History of Digital Advertising –

The first banner ad appeared on HotWired.com in October 1994. It was the birth of digital advertising. This ad was for AT&T virtual tour of seven of the world’s art museums and it received a 44% CTR.

After that Google release AdWords in 2000, Google AdSense in 2003, and Facebook Ads in 2007. Tracking, optimizing and controlling ads become possible for small and medium-sized businesses.

Advantages of Digital Advertising –

Digital advertising has some great advantages as:-

# Cost Effective – Traditional classified ads can be expensive if you want the ad highlighted properly.

Print ads require the service of the graphic designer in addition to being in the magazine or newspaper. Radio and TV spots require production as well.

Digital advertising can be relatively cost-effective like posting on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. You can pay to promote posts and building your followers cost you nothing.

# Time Saving – Traditional advertising has to be planned in advance sometimes for several months. You can’t make a quick traditional advertising campaign and expect star performing results.

In digital advertising, you can advertise a sale immediately. Once you’ve built up a large enough email lists then it’ll take a few lines of ad copy and push of a button to advertise.

# Easily Trackable – Digital advertising main benefit is that you can easily track everything. You can track how many times your ads were viewed and clicked. You can track how many people opened up your email newsletter.

# Global Reach – Digital advertising has one of the best part i.e. global reach. You can easily advertise your business all over the globe. You can gain more customers than in your local store.

Formats of Digital Advertising Campaigns –

Today the miscellaneous digital advertising landscape consists of various ad formats and in many sizes. You can focus on a single area or a little bit in each area to spread your reach:-

# Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) – PPC campaigns are based around keywords and users are likely to type into search engines. PPC advertising campaigns can help drive traffic to your website.

Paid search marketing involves creating short advertisements and bidding on keywords. 

It’s done with the intent that users are searching for the chosen keywords with the possibility of clicks on the paid search advertisement.

Paid search engine ads normally appear at the top and right-hand column on search engine pages.

Google AdWords started a PPC model in which advertisers need to pay a fixed amount to the publisher for every click on the ad.

Advertisers will bid for their keywords, create Ad content, and accordingly choose the budget to run a digital advertisement.

# Display Advertising – It’s an important factor in brand advertising. Display ads will enable you to reach your customers on the web and in the mobile apps.

Display ads can run in many ways such as Text, Banner, Gmail, App, Flash, and Video. It appears on third-party websites which are usually affiliated with search engines or other ad networks.

The most common types of display ads are images, mobile, text, banners, pop-up and video ads. You can pair-up display advertising with video content to boost brand awareness and association.

Different types of AdWords ads, PPC ads, Search ads, Banner ads, etc. come into this category. Marketers can also buy space on some famous websites for display advertising.

These websites reserve space on the site and third-party advertising agency/partner can place the ads in accordance with the marketer’s specifications.

# Email Campaigns – You’ve been getting emails with a big picture and small promotional content. All these emails are utilizing email advertising for sending their promotional content.

It enables businesses and advertisers to promote new products, feature, the coupon discount or any other offer through emails. A powerful headline is an important part of the email advertisement.   

# Social Media – It’s an ideal channel to reach the audience who is actively engaging in digital content. Social media advertising is one of the most effective types of digital advertising.

You can use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, etc. to promote your brand and products.

Social media ads can help right from building a community, generating leads, and increasing event attendees. It helps to boost website conversions, app installations, and growing footfalls to your retail store.

Facebook Ads earn the highest ROI. But it could change as social media channels continue to grow. Advertisers use Facebook Ads to promote their brands and target the most relevant audiences.

Facebook’s Marketplace Ads are the best option to display on the sides of Facebook profiles. Facebook’s Promoted posts are another option to promote any post. 

LinkedIn is another social channel that serves as a powerful advertising platform. LinkedIn’s sponsored ads can raise your CTR to a massive range. These ads are considered highly useful for B2B businesses.

LinkedIn provides Text Ads, Display Ads, Sponsored Content, Sponsored InMail, and Dynamic Ads types of campaigns.

Twitter advertising is useful in enhancing the reach of Tweets, promoting Hashtags, and gaining more followers.

Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts, and Promoted Trends in Twitter ads are helpful to increase website clicks and optimizing Tweet engagement.

Tweeter ads are also helpful in increasing brand awareness, followers, app installs, video views, and lead generation. 

Social media ads are extremely effective and easy to create which makes it one of the most common types of digital advertising.

# Native Advertising – Native advertising is a hybrid ad format often considered to be the next generation of the standard display.

Native ads don’t look like typical ads and they appear on social media websites or other webpages. This format drives high engagement.

They will appear under Recommended Reading, Related Stories or Promoted Stories which visually match the content you’re reading. You’ll be redirected to the advertiser’s website once you click on them.

Native advertising is generally routed through content discovery websites like Columbia, Taboola, and Outbrain.   

# Retargeting Advertising – When you scroll through your social media feed an ad come across for a product which you had checked on Amazon.

It’s retargeting and also known as remarketing. These ads are used for targeting your website visitors to revisit and make the purchase.

You can run these ads as per the past search history of your potential customers. These ads enjoy higher CTR and conversions compared to regular banner ads.

Research reveals that only 3% of users complete the desired action on your website during their first visit. 

Retargeting gives users the other 97% of another chance to interact with your brand and to complete that desired action. Retargeting uses cookies to follow visitors of your website after they leave.

You can retarget your advertisements back to those users that left in hopes to return at some point. Every social media platform, as well as Google, currently offers the remarketing feature.

# Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – When you search for something on Google or Bing, a few search results with the tag Ad appear at the top of search engine results page (SERP).

These ads are the result of search engine marketing. SEM is one of the most common types of digital advertising with a potential of expansive reach.

In SEM you’ll bid on keywords along with your competitors to appear at the top of the page. Google Ads is the leading and most efficient platform for search engine marketing.

It’ll allow you to place advertisements in Google Search, Google Maps, Google Play Store, Google display network, and YouTube videos. Bing Ads and Yahoo Ad Manager are also other SEM options.

SEM ads can be either be PPC which pay every time when someone clicks on your ad or CPM which pay for every 1000 impressions on your ad.

# Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – SEO is the oldest form of digital advertising. The basic premise of SEO is to design and populate a website in such a way that the search engine spiders can easily find and index the website.

The goal of SEO is to improve a website’s visibility, making it easier for users to find and use the website. It’s different from SEM because SEO is organic reach and earned through keyword targeted content.

The Future of Digital Advertising –

There’s no doubt that digital advertising is constantly evolving. The ability to reach customers through established digital advertising channels is narrowing with the frequency of ad-free subscriptions services and ad-blocking technologies.

Now customers are relying more on Internet-connected devices from voice-assisted devices like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google’s Echo.

These smart devices can do your grocery shopping, and smartwatches can remind when your heart rate is pumping.

These technologies offer convenience, automation, and intelligence. It also provides new advertising channels to explore.

# Digital Video Ads – Video will remain the most powerful advertising medium and will continue to rise. Video content is most often being watched by users on mobile devices.

New trends such as live videos and 360-degree videos have led to new avenues for marketers to generate engagement.

# Internet of Things (IoT) – It refers to the billions of devices around the world that are now connected to the Internet. It’s collecting and sharing data.

Many IoT devices are made for end-user like smart home appliances, wearable technology, and remote-monitored home appliances.

# Connected TV – A connected TV is connected to the Internet. It can be directly with a smart TV, or via over-the-top (OTT) device. OTT device connects to a TV and enables Internet use like Amazon Fire Stick.

These video ads play at full resolution when an app loads across smart TVs, and gaming console equipped with Internet streaming capabilities.

Connected TV allows users to stream content like movies, music, and social media from Netflix, and YouTube. These services are only going to become more popular.

# Voice-assisted Devices – You can call them voice searches or digital assistant devices such as Alexa, Echo, and Siri.

Google has integrated its Google Search, Google Chrome, Android smartphones and Google Home smart speakers. It’s necessary to lay the foundations by optimizing your current SEM campaigns for voice search.

# AI-powered Digital Ad – Artificial Intelligence is on the rise in ad sales management. AI can leverage large quantities of data and patterns to make predictions.

AI can also assist sales executives in better decision making and provide better recommendations to publishers, and advertisers.

AI has capabilities which provide solutions with the ability to:

• Automated repetitive and time-consuming process
• Deliver more personalized customer experiences
• More predictive

# Augmented Reality (AR) – It’s new and innovative technology. AR will give users virtually experience of a brand before they buy it. It makes AR the perfect technology to create engaging and exciting digital advertising.  

AR allows users to get a virtual sample of different products and experiences. It can help marketers to close sales cycles more quickly by digitizing the try-on-experience.

The introduction of Google Lens and Apple ARKit promises huge opportunities for advertisers to use augmented reality in advertising.

# Programmatic Mobile Ad – Mobile programmatic advertising is transforming the way for advertising in mobile format for buyer and sellers.

It’s one of the fast-growing areas in the world for marketing. The automation of buying digital ad sales within ad exchanges and inventories is the main part of mobile advertising.

Mobile programmatic advertising help marketers understand consumers’ experience through behavioral patterns from:

• Geo-location data
• User data based on browsing habits
• User activity across social media platforms
• Use of mobile identifiers which allows for greater retargeting and to build long-term brand identification

Conclusion – Digital advertising has seen staggering growth in the last few years. This quick-paced evolution coupled with constant innovation is the sign of a bright future for digital advertising and marketers.