How does digital advertising work and how can businesses leverage it to promote their brand and increase sales? Find out in this guide.
In marketing, there are a lot of terms that sound simple enough but are so nuanced and detailed that very few people understand them as well as they should. Digital advertising is one of them.
In simple terms, digital advertising is advertising on the internet, and includes advertising on search engines, social media, websites, and mobile apps.
But how does it work and how can businesses leverage digital advertising in a way that promotes their brand and increases sales? In this article, we break it down for you.
What is digital advertising?
The underlying goal of digital advertising is the same as all advertising – to increase sales, grow brand awareness, as examples – but the calls to action of digital advertising are specifically digital.
They might include signing up to an email newsletter, making an online purchase, or visiting a website or landing page.
What is the difference between digital advertising and traditional advertising?
Digital advertising is conducted on the internet, which means almost unlimited potential to connect with customers. Advertising appears across search engines, social media platforms, websites, apps and other digital platforms.
Traditional advertising, such as magazine ads, billboard ads, posters, TV spots and direct mail, generally follow the format of catchy slogan and memorable jingle or imagery, whereas digital advertising is more nuanced. They are often interactive and may appear as content, rather than a snappy ad.
Digital advertising allows you to target your advertising to users according to behaviour and demographics in a way that traditional advertising cannot. Advertisers often use programmatic advertising to do this.
Programmatic advertising uses software to buy digital ads rather than buying directly from publishers. This allows businesses to buy ad space to target audiences based on demographics, geography, interests, behaviours and other factors.
Digital advertising allows brands to track a campaign’s progress and make any adjustments in real time, rather than waiting to review results at the end of an advertising campaign.
In both traditional and digital media, ad placement is a key consideration. Just as a business would select a billboard on a roadside highly trafficked for their target audience, so too digital channels are chosen according to where their target audience is at.
What are the common types of digital advertising?
Digital advertising can be broken down into two categories:
1. Display ads
Display ads are the most recognisable as advertisements, and include banner ads placed above or to the side of web content. They can also be pop-up ads that interrupt viewing and require the user to interact with or close them, interstitial ads that require the viewer to wait a few seconds before clicking out of them, and video ads.
2. Native ads
Native ads are not always instantly recognisable as digital advertising. They fit in seamlessly with the content on a webpage and provide information the user has come to the page looking for. Native advertisements can include:
- Social media ads: In social media ads, posts often appear in the feeds of non-followers of a brand who wants to target them. This can include regular posts, carousel posts, stories posts, and even direct messages.
- Paid search ads: Also known as search engine advertising, these take the form of web pages ranked at the top of a search engine results page.
- Promoted listings: This is where products are listed at the top of a search results page on a shopping website, app or directory listing, for example.
- Recommended listings: This is when products are featured in ‘related or recommended’ sections of websites.
- Influencer partnerships: Also known as brand collaborations or brand partnerships, this is when a brand partners with a content creator, also known as an influencer, that has a high follower count or engagement rate. The influencer promotes a brand’s product or service to their audience.
- Sponsored content: When a brand provides content, such as an article or video, to a website so it can reach a broader audience.
What are the benefits of digital advertising?
Digital advertising has some unique benefits to businesses wanting to increase sales and boost their brand awareness.
To begin with, when you advertise on the internet you’re not limited by geography – you have potential access to billions of potential advertisers (and customers), right around the world.
A digital advertising strategy can be rolled out on a limited budget. Businesses can assign a maximum spend amount and then choose tactics that deliver the greatest results for that amount.
Digital advertising gives you the flexibility to choose from different channels and strategies, and tweak them, even when the campaign is underway.
Digital advertising is also highly measurable, allowing you to not only see outcomes, but to also track nearly every touchpoint users have with your brand, providing detailed ROI information.
A great benefit of digital advertising is that it is interactive, allowing a two-way conversation with potential customers through chat, email, and social media.
Yet, what all marketing comes down to is results. Does digital advertising deliver the results? The answer is yes. According to a report by digital advertising data firm Gitnux, traditional advertising leads to fewer than two per cent of all leads becoming customers, while digital marketing has a 9.9 per cent conversion rate.
One of the great strengths of digital advertising is that it supports the work being done by traditional advertising elements.
Speak to the marketing experts
Every successful marketing campaign leverages the advantages of traditional and digital advertising, with the two working together to achieve the best results.
Assemblo is a full-service marketing agency based in Melbourne, and we understand how to harness the power of both traditional and digital advertising.
To find out how we can help your business, give us a call on (03) 9079 2555 or send us a note via the contact form below.