Introduction to Online Advertising

In this digital age that we live in, there are a lot of different ways to advertise your products and services. It doesn’t matter if you’re a big brand, a startup company, or anything in between. The incredible world of digital marketing helps even the playing field for everyone. In this article, we will discuss online advertising and its common key phrases and concepts.

Over the past few weeks, we have gone through different ways to advertise online. We had discussions about search engine optimization, search advertising and digital marketing. In the next series of articles, we will discuss online advertising, its various ad formats, how to publish adverts, how to run an online advertising campaign and more. 

Introduction to Online Advertising

Before we dive deeper, let us first take a good look into what online advertising is. Simply put, online advertising is advertising on the Internet. Seems easy enough, right?

Well, there are actually a lot that goes into advertising on the worldwide web. Online advertising is composed of advertisements displayed on websites, and on the search engine results pages. Not only that, but it also refers to adverts on social networks, emails, and more. There are also a lot more different ways to advertise online. 

Don’t get overwhelmed, we will discuss all of these one by one in the next few articles. One of the best things about online advertising is that it evolves constantly. Nowadays, online ads are not only on computers. You can see them virtually everywhere – on tablets, on smartphones, and more.

Objectives of Online Advertising 

As expected, there are a lot of different objectives for online advertising. Advertisers and marketers use it for a lot of different reasons. 

Some use this strategy to increase sales. Some do it to improve awareness for their brand. Others use it to raise share of voice in the marketplace. And of course, you can have all these objectives all at once. 

The concept is simple, and is widely based on simple economics: demand and supply. The advertisers’ goal is to stimulate a consumer need, which is the demand. Then, they will work to satisfy that need, which is the supply.

Like in search advertising, web user behavior is followed in online advertising. Ideally, advertisers would want to place their ads where potential customers can see them. After all, what’s the point of putting out advertisements if no one can see them, anyway?

The good news is that this type of advertising is not limited to just one medium or location. Unlike billboards and posters, you can use online advertising to reach people all over the world. 

This is done by placing your ads on the worldwide web. You can use images, videos, text, games, and other interactive elements such as quizzes.

The Benefits of Online Advertising

Yes, the internet provides a lot of medium for advertisers to do their magic. It opens a lot of doors to advertise creatively. 

Another great benefit of online advertising is that it is trackable. Yes, that means every data in your marketing or advertising campaign can be tracked. With this, you can measure a campaign’s success, and see where it is lacking. 

You can track the number of impressions served, how many clicks your adverts received, and more. You can also track how many customers were converted, and what made them convert. There are also ways to see post-clicks and views. Plus, you can see how far the ads went and the number of unique users who have seen it.

All of these are valuable data for marketers and advertisers. It is a gold mine for advertisers. For a lot of different advertisers, this is their bible. It is a must to study and understand these data in order to achieve success in online advertising.  You can use these data to make sensible and effective business decisions.

Key Terms and Concepts of Online Advertising

• Ad server – this refers to the technology that puts advertisements on websites
• Banner – this refers to a type of online ad. It takes the form of a graphic image. Banners usually appear at the top of a web page, or at the bottom. 
• Animated GIF – a GIF is a type of image file that supports animations. These are images that move, but not quite like videos. It allows a separate palette of 256 colors for each frame.
• Clickthrough rate or CTR – is the number of clicks divided by impressions percentage.
• Conversion – this is when a website visitor completes a specific action that you targeted.
• Cost per Acquisition or CPA – this refers to the cost of acquiring a new customer. Keep in mind that you, as the advertiser, will only pay when the desired action is achieved. You will choose what action is that. 
• Cost per click or the CPC – when a visitor clicks your ad, you will need to pay a certain amount. We call this CPC.
• Cost per mile or CPM – this refers to the costs that you, as the advertiser, will settle for every thousand impressions in an ad. 
• Display network – refers to the content websites that serve PPC adverts from the same provider. 

More Keyterms and Concept

• HyperText Markup Language or HTML – web browsers reads this type of programming language. We discussed this in detail in HTML for formatting.
• Internet Protocol Address or IP Address – every computer in a network has its own exclusive IP. 
• Key Performance Indicator or KPI – A KPI is a metric that shows whether or not you have achieved an objective.
• Marketplace Ads – Facebook uses different types of advertisements. One of the most common ones is their marketplace ads. Nowadays, some social media platforms are aiming to use this feature too.
• Paid Search Advertising – refers to ads on search advertising. For more details, read our article about Advertising in Search.
• Popup Ad – this refers to advertisements that popup on top of the window that the researcher is currently viewing.
• Tracking – this refers to the process of measuring the effectiveness of a campaign. You can do this by collecting and evaluating statistics. 
• Tracking code – this refers to a piece of code that tracks a user’s interaction and movement through a website.

What’s Next?

That’s it for this discussion! We hope that you have learned a lot about online advertising, and it’s commonly-used key terms and concepts. In the next article, we will talk about online advertising objectives in detail. 

© Image credits to Burst