What is digital advertising? A Beginner’s Guide To Starting
It helps expand a business by analyzing target customers and diversifying revenue. 87% of total ad spending in digital advertising will be generated by mobile within 2028.
Over the past decade, it has dominated the marketing industry, expanding and becoming more powerful. To examine your options for promoting services and products, you must consider digital advertising!
To get more leads, traffic, and brand awareness, this blog will guide you on how to get started with it. In what ways is digital marketing different from transitional advertising? The types and tools will also be discussed here.
Table of Contents
What is digital advertising?
Digital advertising is the process of promoting services and products using online ads via digital channels. The different types of digital advertising include social media ads, video ads, audio ads, display ads, voice search ads, and so on.
The primary goal of digital advertising is to increase the reach and engagement rate of the target audience through various digital platforms so that they can take particular action.
Digital advertising is a lot different than traditional advertising, which has been revealed now. Let’s explore the differences between digital advertising and traditional advertising!
A Comparison: Traditional Advertising Vs. Digital Traditional Advertising
Traditional advertising has a long history of gaining the trust and reliability of people for products and services. Traditional advertising is the old-time marketing technique of reaching the target audience through offline media platforms such as newspapers, radio, TV, pamphlets, billboards, and banners.
These traditional forms of advertising have been proven to be effective in reaching target audiences for a few decades. Now that digital platforms are everywhere, traditional forms of advertising are still dependable options for most people.
On the contrary, digital advertising is the modern way of marketing to reach people and keep them engaged in products and services through various online channels. Digital advertising is the prime choice for the majority of businesses over traditional forms of advertising in terms of effective ad campaigns.
The reach is varied in both terms of advertising. Businesses can only get local reach through traditional advertising, whereas digital advertising targets global reach. In terms of conversion rates, digital marketing is the top choice for providing higher rates of conversion, while the other produces less.
Let’s check out the reasons for choosing digital advertising!
What Are the Benefits of Digital Advertising?
There are a few primary factors that make digital advertising more beneficial than traditional advertising. Let’s take a look at the benefits of digital advertising.
Cost-effective: Digital advertising is less expensive than traditional forms of advertising, which enables businesses to make more effective budget allocations. Small businesses that have lower ad budgets can get this advantage by choosing digital advertising rather than traditional advertising.
Higher and Global Reach: Digital advertising allows businesses to reach global audiences, which is way higher than the reach of traditional advertising. This global reach helps businesses boost their sales rate and increase their conversion rate.
Flexibility: Flexibility is one of the prime benefits one can get through digital advertising. The ads are published quickly and can also be modified as per audience reaction. Traditional advertising is incapable of doing so because of its inflexibility.
Higher Interactivity: Digital advertising offers features like higher interactivity by making the ad campaigns more engaging. Through clickable likes, social media incorporation, and attractive videos, digital advertising increased the rate of audience engagement.
Precision: Precision is another major aspect that comes with digital advertising. In digital advertising, businesses use different targeting methods to reach global audiences very precisely.
Enhanced ROI: With advanced targeting, ad optimization, and personalization, businesses can enhance their return on investment (ROI) to get maximum results. Small businesses can get the benefits of enhanced ROI using social media ads, which are a form of effective digital advertising.
Personalization: Personalization can also be done with the help of digital advertising. This makes the brand’s impression last longer with consumers. Through tracking consumer behavior and sharing data on digital platforms, personalized advertising has become one of the major forms of digital advertising. Another benefit one can get from applying personalized digital advertising is increased conversion rates.
Advanced Targeting: Digital advertising allows advanced targeting, in which audiences are targeted based on their preferences to shop from a specific brand. The advanced targeting feature of digital advertising prioritizes specific interests, traits, and preferences of customers, which traditional advertising fails to fulfill.
9 Types Of Digital Advertising
There are many different forms of digital advertising. We have listed nine different types of digital advertising with ad examples below.
#1 Search Advertising
Search advertising, commonly known as paid search ads, is a form of digital advertising that displays ads in SERPs when someone searches for the product or services offered by a business advertiser. These text ads usually appear alongside or above the organic search results on SERPs.
Search ads are extremely effective, as they enhance the chances of increased conversions and clicks. Google plays the leading role in providing search ads globally.
Google Adwords allows businesses to offer their services and products to audiences based on their search queries. Search ads are very popular for attracting the attention of targeted consumers when they show their preferences for specific services or products.
#2 Video Advertising
Video advertising is another major form of digital advertising that is becoming increasingly popular day by day. Video ads use video content to promote and sell services and products.
Video ads are often seen on digital platforms, including Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok. Video ads are usually popped up before or while the video is streaming.
There are different types of video ads, such as out-stream ads, skippable in-stream ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, and in-feed video ads. Viewers can skip the ads after 5 seconds; therefore, those 5 seconds are considered crucial to grab viewers’ attention.
#3 Audio Advertising
Audio ads are exciting forms of digital advertising that please the target audience’s ears! Audio advertising helps businesses promote their products or services using music streaming, smart speakers, and podcasts.
Audio ads are played before, after, and during online audio, like streaming podcasts and music. In addition to this, audio ads help reach large audiences by tickling their hidden wishes so that they end up taking the desired action, like subscribing or purchasing.
#4 Social Media Advertising
Social media ads are specific forms of digital advertising that run through different social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. These social media platforms allow one to utilize diverse ad formats such as video ads, story ads, lead form ads, image ads, carousel ads, collection ads, and message ads.
Social media ads help you reach your target audience based on their demographics, behavioral patterns, location, interests, and preferences. This type of ad is often considered the most cost-effective ad format for engaging audiences and enhancing brand awareness.
Apart from these, social media ads help drive traffic to your website.
#5 Display Advertising
Display advertising is considered the most basic form of digital advertising, which especially focuses on text and images. One major feature of display ads is that they do not appear on SERPs.
Display ads usually appear on landing pages, popups, and banners, especially on blogs. Another major feature of display ads is their affordability and ease of application. Display ads do not usually target specific audiences, and due to this, display ads are seen as the most irrelevant ad forms for many audiences.
Most marketers use the Google Display Network to run their display ads over a broad network of third-party applications or websites.
#6 Native Advertising
Native advertising is a specific form of digital advertising that matches the content and offerings of the online platforms it shows up on. Display ads are also included in native advertising, which involves images, reviews, and texts that appear on the large content.
There are different types of native ads, and they include feed ads, custom ads, paid search ads, and display ads.
Native ads help in gaining a positive user experience. This digital advertising is associated with higher rates of audience engagement and clicks as compared to other forms of digital advertising.
#7 Mobile Advertising
Mobile ads are those display ads that are specially optimized to appear on mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones. Mobile advertising involves promotional texts delivered through messages.
Mobile advertising has gained popularity because consumers spend most of their time on mobile devices browsing the internet. The different kinds of mobile ads are banner ads,call-only ads, video ads, app promotion ads, and many more.
Mobile ads help businesses target their audiences by showing specific ads on their mobile devices. Mobile ads play a vital role in influencing the purchase decisions of consumers, as the majority of consumers make their purchasing decisions from their remote devices.
#8 Programmatic Advertising
This type of digital advertising is data-driven as well as automated, which helps in selling and buying through media. These ads are used in buying ad spaces in media.
Programmatic advertising is way different than other forms of digital advertising due to its automation feature. Through analyzing the user signal, programmatic ads are displayed to the right person at the right moment and in the right place.
#9 Remarketing And Retargeting Advertising
This type of ad is for users who have already visited the website previously, and the business wants to retarget those customers again with a new offering. Online retailers take advantage of remarketing ads, as customers who have purchased items or services from them previously will tend to buy from them in the future.
With the use of remarketing ads, one can always be on the minds of customers, followed by increasing sales rates.
The Best Digital Advertising Tools To Improve Campaigns
Google Ads: One major tool that helps businesses show their ads on Google is Google Ads. It allows you to choose keywords, produce different ad formats, and engage with users via online searches. You can track the effectiveness of your ads using Google Ads and make necessary alterations to widen your audience base.
Facebook Ads Manager: Developing and managing ads on Facebook and Instagram is made simpler with Facebook Ads Manager. You may choose your target market, set a spending budget, and make visually appealing digital ads. You can track the number of individuals who view your ads and even find out if they click on your website or initiate a purchase.
LinkedIn Ads: LinkedIn ads are another major ad option available on the professional network LinkedIn. With their industry, job position, or skill set as eligibility criteria, you can customize ads for specific professionals.
MailChimp: MailChimp is a great tool for mass emailing recipients. It helps you create appealing emails, monitor who reads them, and even automate email marketing campaigns. Mailchimp makes it easier to communicate with customers, share information, and promote products or services.
Hubspot: HubSpot is a single digital platform for marketing, customer support, and sales. It assists in network building, customer engagement, and lead management. HubSpot is an extremely beneficial resource for business expansion, including features like analytics and email marketing.
Hootsuite: Using Hootsuite to handle social media is easier. It allows you to plan content, track brand mentions, and engage with your target audience across various digital channels. You can stay active and organized on social media with the help of this digital advertising tool.
Digital ads are considered a major tool in digital marketing for reaching target and broad audiences and enhancing conversion rates. We hope that this blog has provided you with the necessary information related to the basics of digital advertising.
It is time to publish your first digital advertising campaign and showcase what you have learned in the process. Let’s make our first digital advertisement today.