What are Digital Ads? Skipping Line Direct To Consumers (2023).
Updated: Apr 11
In our increasingly more digitized, a business' online presence will determine efficient outreach to their potential customers or risk leaving money on the table. Newly established businesses with little brand recognition will want to take advantage of as much digital tools as possible in order to scale for exponential growth.
Digital ads are an opportunity for brands to stress-test their brand's appeal, optimize for conversions on their landing pages, & analyze consumer behavior based on data.
With the emergence of digital ads, anyone can bid online in auction formats to advertise their business in customized settings such as specific time slots, targeted demographics, geography, & other personalized features.
Digital advertising is the shortcut to the front of the line for immediate attention, let's dive in.
How Do Digital Ads Help Businesses?
Digital ads are helpful for those looking to expand the customer base of their company by building brand awareness & finding the customers who want what the brand is offering.
It has been noted that 81% of all online shoppers, were found in a study to do research on the internet before making a purchasing decision. It is found that a company that consistently advertises online is thought to be a well-established business.
Simply put, digital ads put your business in front of customers who are browsing the internet. Many advertising companies have available data to give to businesses to optimize & personalize the campaign experience to make the most out of their marketing budgets.
Specifically with Google and Facebook’s paid ads platforms, they offer a wide range of specific data which can be analyzed by the business to make better informed decisions. The data can include demographic information, the devices used to see the ad, a specific timetable during a week or month in which the advertisement may see a lot of traffic and interactions with it.
Instead of the business having to worry about pulling and creating this analytical information, paid advertising can do it for them which will save lots of time and money.
Digital ads gives businesses data that traditional advertising (billboards, television, etc.) fails to provide.
Search Ads
As mentioned before, most customers do online research before buying a product. To dive even further with this information, of that research group discussed earlier, most of them start their research journey via a search engine.
One of the specific types of paid advertisements is search ads, search is one of the first places people go when they are looking for information. Therefore, paid search advertising is very popular & if leveraged right can be very lucrative for strategic ROIs.
Search ads are typically displayed at the top or bottom of search engine results. The ad is simple, only having a title with a short description along with a direct link to a specified landing page for the targeted consumer to click if they are interested.
The reason search ads are very powerful is because they are the first or last search results that people see when they type words into the search query, thus increasing the likelihood that visitors will visit that landing page.
Search ads can be used in a variety of situations such as directing users to a products page, for service offerings, free consultations, & other lead generation funnels of choice.
It is a short-term strategy because paid ads quickly give businesses eyeballs fast since organic search is a lot more cost-effective but takes a while to develop overtime.
For businesses who want to serve people in their local community, search ads are even more effective because you can target people based on geography. However, in order for a link to start receiving relevant links & conversions, keywords must be triggered in order for the ad to pop up.
What this means is that if a business doesn't do enough keyword or market research for their product/business, then they won't be properly leveraging search ads & possibly not even have their ads show up.
Search ads are awesome, they direct visitors to your site or landing page. But they aren't the end all be all. They're most useful to businesses who have websites & optimize their landing pages for conversions.
Social Media Ads
Besides search ads, social media ads are the other major piece of paid advertising. Many people use the internet for searching information, but also to engage with other people using social media sites such as Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok.
For some businesses, each social media platform targets a different audience; some research should be incorporated prior to starting a page to save for time & accounting for demographics.
Social media ads can be super-efficient in connecting with your target customer base simply because of these apps personalization/ad-targeting features similar to search ads. These platforms will target ads based upon user data, interests, & behavior in order to properly connect the right audience to the right businesses.
These ads are presented differently depending on the social media platform. Instagram ads can show up while a user is subconsciously browsing through posts or stories, while YouTube will have ads in the suggested search videos list and in-stream video that users can click on.
Social media ads are desirable for small business owners because of their targeting features. Facebook has tools specifically for small businesses & have their ad platform ready for big businesses to be able to scale to wider audiences.
If budgeting is a concern, there are minimum daily advertising spending that businesses can decide to spend per day.
Thanks to segmentation tools as mentioned earlier, social media ads will target the audience most likely to engage & interact with your brand.
These types of ads are powerful because now brands have an opportunity to build a direct relationship with each new customer acquired & direct them throughout the customer journey.
Conclusion
Based on the evidence presented, the information put forth, & the increasing year over year revenue for these companies, businesses have a great opportunity to find the users who also want to find them.
From cost-effective strategies to providing measurable growth simultaneously, digital ads gives businesses the ability to filter for ads that stick & the ones that don't. These ads also give businesses the opportunity to reflect on their online presence to improve when an ad is clicked on but there are no conversions happening.
There is little to lose, & much to gain. In an increasingly technology-driven age with more & more users logging on, these tools are paramount for brands to scale quick & find life-time customers.
If you've enjoyed this post consider following me on LinkedIn! Or check out more of my personal work on my other site.
Need consulting on your website? We got you covered!
References:
-Everything You Need to Know About Paid Advertising (innovationvisual.com)
-4 Reasons Your Small Business Needs Paid Advertising (benchmarkone.com)
-Search Ads vs Display Ads: The Differences & When to Use Each Type (instapage.com)
-What Are Social Media Ads? Examples & Types of Social Media Advertising (cyberclick.net)
-Good reasons to invest your digital advertising budget in social networks (adsmurai.com)
-81% of Shoppers Conduct Online Research Before Buying [Infographic]