Not too long ago, putting up a website was the only online advertising strategy that a business owner needed. Start a Facebook business page, grow organically, sales were great. Today, most the platforms, including Facebook, are pay to play, meaning to grow organically, well, just don't try. All the platform survive off advertising spend, it's no surprise they increasingly make spend more of a forefront for all businesses that want to use their platform to grow.
Why Online Advertising is Crucial
Roughly 70% of the population has some sort of social media profile. You can bet the other 20% still uses Google, Bing or any other major search engine on a daily basis, too. Not only are all your potential customers online, but online advertising has given you a unique way to target your users. When online advertising is done correctly, you're only showing your ads to your ideal customer, and in many cases, the customer is appreciative they were either reminded you exist (because we are shown a million other items every day) or they now know about a new product that can change the way they live their life.
Display Advertising
Display advertising uses websites, apps and some social profiles (Youtube) to show advertisements and deliver specific brand messages. This online method employs a wide variety of formats and includes images, videos, flash, audio, and text.
There are many ways display ads can reach your ideal customer. One common technique is to pay for sponsorship. This adds a brand or a logo to the design of a website. Another way to make space visible online is through overlays - advertisements that pop up or appear as a website is opened.
The Real Value of Display Advertising
Many advertisers say that display advertising does not yield a satisfactory number of clicks. A good number of critics say that to drive clicks, paid search advertising is still the way to go. I wouldn't argue that statement.
If any business enters into a display ad campaign and expects the same results and say Google AdWords (now Google Ads), you will be disappointed.
The role of your display ad campaigns is brand awareness. Always reminding your customer you exist. So when something breaks, they get a bonus and want to splurge OR they see your Facebook ad running, they already know who you are.
You are priming their mind to recall your brand!
Making the Most of Online Advertising
Online advertising, particularly display ads, provide an opportunity for companies to target their ideal prospects. This intensive focus is achieved through thorough study of the demographics, the interest, the geography, and the purpose of Internet users as they go through thousands of websites. Examples can include showing ads to people who visited your website before, city they live, sex, age, income, political views, buying habits, car they drive, and the list goes on and on and on.
Optimizing Online Advertising through RTB
Attention on the internet is...minimal. We have so much information coming at us, it's hard to stay focused on one particular item or task. This poses some problems for a business when you're trying to get someone to pay attention to your message.
To conquer your ideal prospects from among the masses, online advertisements need to be targeted, massive and widespread. As a business, you need to be showing your ads on multiple websites and multiple times a day for each consumer.
Real time bidding achieves this with display advertising, getting you in-front of your ideal customer in the most cost effective way.
How Real Time Bidding Works
With RTB, an advertiser bids in real time for online ad impressions through supply-side platforms or ad exchanges. Auctions for RTB take place in the time that a webpage would load, and the site being auctioned is one being viewed by a user. Once you win a bid for that site, your ad is immediately loaded. This whole process will only take seconds, and the viewer will catch your advertisement while he or she is on that page. The key to all this is the ad impression. The ad exchange is able to project the advertisements that a user is more likely to welcome.
RTB has several characteristics that allow your display ads to successfully accomplish your online branding targets. RTB is efficient. You are able to access a wide number of sites and pick the ones with impressions that you think will work best. Everything happens quickly enough to catch your ideal prospects while they are browsing around the Internet for similar goods. In addition to this, RTB allows you virtually limitless exposure.
When all is said and done, in today’s business environment, display advertising and RTB are a combination that bring your brand and products or services to the market that you want to reach.