A Beginner's Guide to Paid Online Advertising
The realm of paid online advertising can be an intimidating one to enter if you don’t know what you’re getting into.
When it comes to paid advertising, there’s always more to learn. New technology and changing trends mean that if you don’t make an effort to regularly do research, you’ll be at constant risk of falling behind.
Below we walk through a list of the top 5 digital advertising platforms that will be useful for you in 2019.
Display Ads:
Also known as banner ads, display ads are the visual ads you see on websites all over the internet. They come in different shapes and sizes, but common ones are the square box or the thinner vertical or horizontal rectangle.
Display ads are best used for building brand awareness and promoting products for ecommerce. They populate in designated ad spaces that the website host has set up, and are filled by ad networks through a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression (CPM) bidding process.
Search Ads:
Search ads are the results that show up on the top of the page when you search for something on Google. They appear with a green “Ad” next to them. Google uses its famed algorithm to show your ads to users searching within a defined geographic scope for your target keywords. They are formatted just like a normal search result, but advertisers have paid for the opportunity to appear at the top.
Google Ads:
Google Ads is Google’s paid online advertising platform. Through Google Ads, you can create, customize, and manage digital ad campaigns, using keywords and the Google Ads targeting tools to show your ads to the right potential customers. One of the best features of Google Ads is that there are no spending minimums or traffic requirements in order to participate. Anyone can advertise through Google Ads.
Social Media Ads:
Google Ads is the primary ad network for display and search ads, but the realm of paid advertising is expanding ever more into social media. In 2018, Facebook made $14.89 billion dollars in ad revenue in the U.S. and Instagram is growing rapidly with $6.84 billion ad revenue.
Social media networks tend to specialize in cost per click (CPC) or cost per thousand (CPM) display ads, with video performing especially well. There are a variety of social media platforms you can advertise on but a great place to start would be Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.
Remarketing:
When you see a display ad for a product you were recently looking at on another site, you’ve just been retargeted. Retargeting happens when a site uses cookies to follow a visitor's activity during and even after they leave the site.
According to the rule of 7, prospects need to be exposed to your product at least seven times before they seriously consider taking action. With remarketing, you’ll hit that lucky number 7 a lot more quickly as it keeps your brand fresh in their mind.
Websites are living objects and need steady upkeep to stay in peak performance, especially to boost your paid advertising efforts. Having a good website to drive your consumers to from your ads is one of the many keys to success.