Internet advertising is a set of tools for delivering promotional messages to people worldwide, using the Internet as a global marketing platform. As web technologies evolved in the 1990s, internet advertising appeared as a virtual equivalent to traditional marketing methods like TV and radio ads, newspaper advertising, billboards, etc. In 2019 marketers expect that companies will spend more money on digital advertising than on traditional ads. Let’s find out why online advertising has become so popular and explore its most commonly used types — search engine marketing, email marketing, social media advertising, display ads, native advertising, and more. There are more than four billion internet users all over the world. This gives a huge boost to internet advertising. People look for products by using search engines, following their favorite brands in social media, and subscribing to their campaigns via email and push notifications. Advertising opportunities are enormous, but using them correctly is not that easy. So, let's have a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of internet advertising. Advantages of internet advertising
Disadvantages of internet advertisingThe main challenges associated with advertising online include fierce competition, the cost of mistakes, complicated analytics, and ad blindness. Let’s have a closer look.
Advertising is part of marketing. To make it clear, let’s define both terms. Marketing — a process of promoting your products to the target audience. It includes market research, identifying your buyer persona, and analysis. It involves activities that bring your offer to clients. Advertising — one of those activities that helps spread the word about your brand. Advertising is one marketing element. Others include public relations, sales promotion, direct selling, personal selling. So, advertising is part of marketing, while marketing is not exclusively advertising.
The Internet offers vast opportunities to connect with potential customers, so let’s review some of the most influential types of internet advertising on the market. Search Engine MarketingA search bar is the starting point of the users’ buyer journey. Entering a keyword, people focus mainly on the first page results. Search engine marketing is all about getting your webpages to the top of the SERP (search engine results page), whether in an organic or paid way. Google Ads displays paid results based on the ad rank auction. Companies name their price for a particular keyword, while Google analyzes the quality and relevancy of the content. Here is the formula of the ad rank: Ad rank = cost-per-click bid × quality score. Below are the search engine ads for the query “Chelsea fan shop.” For the more popular keywords, there might be up to four ads in the top section. But you already know this if you’ve ever searched on Google. Email MarketingThis is a marketing approach based on communication via email. This type of internet advertising is one of the oldest players on the field and the most adaptive one since email marketers are always searching for innovations such as recently launched interactive amp emails. You may personalize, segment, and A/B test your email campaigns to better target your audience.
Let's make email advertising work! Generate more subscribers with professional subscription forms and move them down the sales funnel by sending relevant email campaigns with SendPulse. Register and advertise via email! Email marketing is the least obtrusive platform for advertising because subscribers willingly opt-in to receive email newsletters and promotions; plus, they can opt-out anytime. The main idea of email marketing is to drive warm marketing leads to the website, mixing promotions with valuable non-sales content. Social Media AdsThis means advertising on socials like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest for B2C, and LinkedIn for B2B. Companies tailor their news and promotions to the target audience via social media in two ways:
Display Ads40% of Americans avoid banner ads, wallpapers, pop-ups, flash, and video ads with ad-blocking software due to the unsolicited nature of display advertising. Furthermore, many non-blockers unconsciously ignore the information in the ads because of a psychological phenomenon called “banner blindness.” Since the mid-1990s, display advertising has gained a negative reputation for being annoying media. Unless ads are highly relevant to the user, they are largely ignored or worse, totally invisible via ad-blockers. Website owners with massive traffic to their site want to monetize it, so they sell some of their space with Google AdSense, while the advertisers buy it with Google Ads. Google shows relevant ads based on two pricing approaches: CPC (cost per click) and CPM (cost per thousand views), and allows companies to retarget their promotions. The ads below are targeted by geographical location and may be interesting for the locals. The website below is from a newspaper based in California. Native AdvertisingIn a way, this is a non-irritative alternative to the display ads. Companies pay popular sites like BuzzFeed, Bored Panda, and the New York Times for placing promotion materials in their publications. As long as it happens in an entertaining and casual manner, the readers don’t realize they’ve actually been advertised to — that’s why this phenomenon is called “native.” It’s like putting a replica of the stone in the Japanese stone garden: no one knows it’s plastic because it looks natural. The example below is nominal, since any of these articles may contain plastic stones. Video AdvertisingAs the name suggests, these ads are in a video format and placed on services like YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion, and Vine. This is an expensive type of advertising but also an effective one, since high-quality videos may go viral. A video advertising campaign called “Save The Ocean” encourages people to join the company that aims to reduce water pollution. Web PushThis technology allows you to grab users’ attention whenever they are online. These messages appear in the corner of your screen, and a click on it redirects a user to a particular webpage. For example, a coffee shop can send you a morning notification about the 20% discount for making an order before 10 am. Users subscribe to push notifications to stay in touch with the brand and be the first to know the news and updates. If you own a news resource, you can also take advantage of web push monetization. It means that your subscribers will receive relevant materials from other companies from you in the form of web push notifications together with your promotions. Mobile AdvertisingThis type of advertising appears on smartphones and tablets. Companies can advertise with SMS after the user opts-in or with display ads in the browser optimized for mobile devices. If you run a shoe shop, mobile ads are especially good for advertising to the local audiences with the time-sensitive offers. You can create SMS campaigns in no time with SendPulse, and their open rate is extremely high: up to 98%. Small businesses falsely believe that any type of online advertising is too expensive for them. We want to dispel this myth. There’re lots of effective advertising formats that require no investment. Check them out.
These five methods of advertising online for free are just the tip of the iceberg but proved in practice. Try them out!
Below is an example of pay-per-click advertising. It means that an advertiser pays a fee to an ad network each time users click the link. PPC ads are located at the top of the search engine results page. Mac sent this email to advertise their hot deal. The brand offers seven top-selling products for the low price of $63. Lots of brands use social channels for brand promotion. GoPro advertises its products via one of the most trendy channels — Instagram. They use videos and user-generated photos to show the quality of their cameras. References
Tech giants like Google and Facebook collect tons of data about billions of users and create convenient, highly targeted tools for connecting buyers with sellers. Besides, internet advertising can be adjusted for any communication platform, be it email, SMS, social media, messengers, or push notifications. All this makes it easy to contact your target audience and promote your products and services via the internet.
Before the early 2000s, internet advertising was chaotic and spammy, until the governments began regulating it with laws, like the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. Since then, marketers must get user permission to advertize via channels like email, SMS, messengers, or push notifications. Moreover, massive competition for user attention made businesses switch to a customer-centric approach. As a result, internet advertising is more personalized and relevant than ever before. Last Updated: 24.05.2022 Rate this article about "Internet advertising" |