With the development of digital technologies, an increasing number of everyday phenomena acquire a continuation on the Internet or move there altogether. Internet advertising has already overtaken other types of advertising in terms of coverage and effectiveness many years ago.
The main advantage of online advertising is its focus on a potential client. Information about a product or service is not just thrown into the space, but takes into account the preferences and behavior of each individual user. Impressions are carried out only to those of them who are most likely to take advantage of the offer.
Advertising on the Internet does not require complex and expensive technical equipment, it is available to anyone who has at least a small budget and knowledge about setting up such advertising.
Features of advertising on the Internet
Internet marketing is characterized by the main feature – the consumer is not a passive observer. They become a part of the process and actively participate in everything. To understand this, first you should consider the features of online advertising.
Interactivity
Marketing campaigns on the Internet always encourage a specific action. They may call for visiting the page, registering in the service, taking a survey, or buying. If the usual promotion follows only along the chain: the display of advertising is the purchase of goods, then banners in the Internet sphere may have different purposes. Sometimes their goal is not to acquire, but to build up a loyal audience, to be able to tell more about the product.
Large audience
The Internet is the biggest platform for promotion. Of course, not all social and age groups are suitable for a particular product. Marketers filter out the non-target audience in order not to waste advertising budgets.
Companies that clearly understand the goals of their promotion are trying to attract customers from all possible platforms (and this is not only the Internet).
The possibility of screening out non-target audience
By setting up advertising systems, it is possible to identify among users exactly those groups that are potentially interested in the product. It’s about targeting.
You can use direct targeting (when banners are shown only to those customers who are looking for a similar product) and indirect targeting (aimed at those who may be potentially interested in the product).
Targeting services provide a marketer with several filters to choose from:
- geography;
- age;
- interests;
- solvency, etc.
The system cuts off everyone who is not included in the advertiser’s potential audience. This increases conversion and saves the budget.
The possibility of studying the results
Analytics services study the activity, time spent on the site, and even the movement of the mouse cursor of a particular user. For the advertiser’s convenience, whole systems have been developed that automatically analyze ads and provide results.
One of the main advantages of continuous monitoring is responsiveness. The company gets the opportunity to instantly adjust the process, abandoning ineffective techniques that do not bring results. The money saved is directed to conversion techniques.
Pros and cons of online advertising
Advantages:
- low cost and the ability to pay only for the result;
- targeting works around the clock, annually;
- internet users easily adapt to new products;
- huge analytical capabilities;
- adaptability and the ability to react quickly.
The main disadvantage is high competition. As the number of sites grows, so does the number of ads. Some users start using ad blockers or don’t notice banners.
Types of advertising on the Internet
There are many types of online advertising with their own characteristics.
Contextual
One of the most common and popular types of online advertising. If you are starting your way in online advertising, most likely, you will get acquainted with contextual advertising.
Context is text and image ads displayed in search results or on partner sites of your platform.
The most popular platform for creating and managing contextual advertising is Google Ads. By setting up ads with their help, you get access to millions of different sites. Ads customized according to the portraits of the target audience to whom you want to make an offer will be displayed on the screens of users wherever they are. First of all, this is the search output, if it has been configured. As well as partner sites and applications that host ads in a predefined format.
The essence of contextual advertising is the “persecution” of a certain circle of users. The advertiser creates ads, most often it is a short text from the title and description of up to 100 characters with an image, and then sets the display settings. They include geography, time (days, hours), demographic characteristics, as well as fine-tuning, in particular, the selection of similar audiences through remarketing.
Targeted
Targeting is on the same level of demand with contextual advertising.
Targeting is more often used in social networks, since it is easier to filter users by the full range of characteristics in them – all the information is presented in profiles. Although if you use DMP services in context and display advertising or independently collect audiences through pixels, then full-fledged targeting can be configured in any other campaign outside of social networks.
Targeted advertising in social networks also has different formats:
- Text and image ads displayed in the side panels of the page and on partner sites.
- Advertising posts in the user’s feed.
- Ad blocks in Facebook Messenger.
- Prerolls for videos.
As for contextual advertising, targeted advertising provides detailed audience settings based on demographic and behavioral characteristics. The advantage of social networks is that you can target users from specific communities, thus filtering the audience even more carefully.
The number of impressions is CPM. The advertiser pays a fixed rate for the number of user views provided by the platform.
The number of clicks is CPC. Payment is made for the number of clicks on the ad.
The number of conversions is CPA. The target actions to be paid are indicated in advance: going to the page, filling out the lead form, making a purchase, and others.
Media
By and large, media advertising includes any creative that contains, in addition to text, something that attracts attention – an image, animation, slides, interactive and much more. The most striking and widely used format is banner advertising.
Banners are static or dynamic graphic images that are assigned a special block of a certain size on the page, within which they are displayed.
If earlier the banner was installed once and continued to take its place, like outdoor advertising, now banner networks are mainly working. As part of banner networks, site owners sell places on pages, and advertisers buy either guaranteed placements or bargain for impressions in an auction format.
Like modern advanced types of Internet advertising, banners are also able to target audiences by geo-, gender and age characteristics, interests, model and manufacturer of the device, mobile operator. They can be interactive and contain embedded lead forms.
There are dozens of types of banners:
- Native Video
- Expandable
- HTML Banner (HTML5)
- CatFish
- Rich-media
- ScreenGlide
- Slider
And this is only a small part.
So, the CatFish banner is a massive graphic at the bottom of the page in its full width, which pops up automatically. Despite the seeming lack of modernity, banners continue to evolve and become smart.
Teaser
Teasers are similar to banners in many ways, but they have their own specifics – they are short miniature ads with shocking or unexpected content. Teasers are rarely used to promote serious products that value reputation. Most often, these are entertainment resources created to kill time, or simple one-time items like fake wireless headphones, copies of Swiss watches, weight loss products and the like.
Native
One of the most effective ways to promote goods and services is advertising, as much as possible resembling the natural presentation of information in the form of notes, articles, storytelling.
Native advertising is more inherent in social networks or news resources.
The supplier of a certain product, wishing to promote it, but without resorting to banal advertising, can order an article on a thematic portal. Narration is perceived by people with more confidence than ordinary Internet advertising, so this type of promotion has a high popularity. Thus, an informational article will be prepared for the customer, which will tell about the advantages of the product in a neutral way, while making it clear that the reader will only benefit if he also tries the advertised product or service.