Online Advertising

Ever Wondered about when you log on to your web browser to check out a news story and see a banner ad of the shoes you really wanted to buy. You venture over to Google to search for a new case for your smartphone, and up pops an ad for a newer version of your phone. You check out your newsfeed of your favorite social media site, and you see advertisements for a new restaurant and a dress you’ve had your eye on. Online advertisements are pervasive, showing up in all areas of our Internet, social media, and mobile experiences. Have a closer look to this term by reading further.

Digital marketers have been using online advertising since the first days of the web. Online Advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web for the expressed purpose of delivering marketing messages to attract customers. These can appear in a web browser, search engine, on social media, on mobile devices, and even in email. There are many different types of online advertising, but you should know which is to be used by your business. These range from Display Ads to SEO to PPC, and are never ending.

Types of Online Advertisements:

Display Advertising or Banner Advertising

or Banner ads were the first major method used for online advertising. This online paid advertising typically uses images and text. Most commonly, these are found on websites and blogs to redirect user’s attention to the company’s product. Working together with remarketing, display ads can have great success.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

When we use SEM in the unpaid form by optimising your website for keywords, it is known as SEO. Search engines list the unpaid results based on relevance, so improving the SEO of your site means you’ll be able to get more hits for free.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

It is a process by which multiple methods are utilised to improve market visibility and  Exposure for a brand, product or service. This includes Search Engine Optimization  (SEO), social networking, pay-per-click (PPC), contextual advertising, Adsense and Adwords.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

It basically focuses on branding, reputation enhancement and enhanced customer service via social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Smaller SMM channels include Digg, Delicious, Wikipedia, Stumble Upon and Myspace.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

When we use SEM in the paid form mainly it is by Pay Per Click. You bid on keywords and your results appear at the top of the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) based on bid value. This is the best value package because you’re only charged when people click on the ad.

Google AdWords

The best platforms for SEM are Google AdWords, these allow you to create highly targeted campaigns.

Email Marketing

This is one of the dominating form of advertisement on the Internet and is so intrusive and ineffective but still is considered a fundamental piece of your digital marketing strategy. Email marketing is a popular way for businesses to reach customers. In email marketing, you have the complete attention of the potential customer. Pop-up ads or other internet advertising often get in the way of what the potential customer is looking at: The content. But with direct email marketing the advertising is the content.

Blog Advertising

Blogging is a marketing tactic that uses blogs to make your business more online visible. A business blog is a marketing channel that helps support business growth. It basically includes the creation of textual, audio or video content on your website’s blog. It’s a practice that has a direct impact on a brand’s discoverability. This method of marketing can be quite successful, as many companies have already used it to improve their business.

Pop-Up Advertising

It is basically a window used for advertising. When the program is initiated by some user action, such as a mouse click or a mouse over, a window containing an offer for some product or service appears in the foreground of the visual interface.

Mobile Advertising

This is one of the advertising strategies on the Internet that has gained most popularity in the past years since practically the entire world has a smartphone or other type of mobile device they regularly connect to the internet with. This leads more and more companies to opt to adapt their advertisements to the fastest growing medium. And contrary to what happened before, now advertisements are more intended to be viewed from a smartphone without being bothersome, whether they be text, video or images. Thus, keeping in mind that users don’t use smartphones and computers in the same way, choose a responsive design, adapt the design and make sure that your page is adapted to be seen on a mobile phone. And above all, we need to make sure that the loading time is not too long, calls to action stand out and that buttons are visible.

Video advertising

It is considered as the king of advertising. There are even social networks which are solely designated to videos such as YouTube or Vine. These platforms are an excellent place for advertising your product and service. By using YouTube, Dailymotion, Vimeo and Vine video advertisements, they’ll be shown to the user before the video even starts to play; they can even be placed on websites and search results. This is a good option and in addition is an economical option that’s easy to configure.

Effective online advertising is basically making sure that the audience of the site matches with the audience you are advertising. It should be valued in terms of the business it creates and from the new users it attracts to your site. Animations can be used to attract the audience. Undoubtedly, online advertising offers potential benefits like target ability, tracking, deliverability, flexibility, interactivity, etc., that are not available through traditional media. But Success of online advertising requires sound strategy, management understanding, commitment and integration of the Internet with companies' overall marketing strategy. It is very hard to predict the future of online advertising because this industry is too young to allow analysts to reach any concrete conclusion.