The Ten Types of Digital Advertising
No, Eight Isn’t Enough
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It’s true: digital advertising generates three-times fewer leads and six-times lower conversion rates than content marketing. But that doesn’t mean advertising’s over. Far from it. Distribution is a critical component to any content marketing strategy, and — along with organic search, social media and email marketing — digital advertising remains an important medium for reaching your target audiences. Indeed, the digital content you create is meant to be leveraged in your digital ads. So before you abandon the approach, make sure you truly understand all the different types of digital advertising and how they can be used to increase brand awareness, online engagement, website traffic, sales leads, customers and brand ambassadors.
Everything You Need to Know about Digital Advertising
What is Digital Advertising?
Also known as online advertising, internet advertising or web advertising, digital advertising is the practice of delivering promotional content to users through online and other digital channels, including websites, apps, audio and video streaming channels, and search results pages. Digital ads can be created in a variety of media formats including text, image, audio, video and — now in the metaverse — AR and VR.
What are the Primary Characteristics of All Digital Ads?
All digital ads require the advertiser or sponsor to pay for the ad to be served, based on pay per impression (PPI), pay per click (PPC), or pay per action (PPA); all digital ads are goal-oriented (e.g., brand awareness or sales), measurable, and easily integrated with your CDP; all digital ads are backed by data, dictating ad type, target audience, timeline and more; and all digital ads fall into one of two categories: personalized, based on user activity, behaviors and interests, or non-personalized, designed to amplify overall brand awareness.
What are the Different Types of Digital Advertising?
There once were eight types of digital advertising. In our increasingly young, very online, post-COVID culture, there are 10:
- Search
- Display
- Native
- Mobile
- Video
- Audio
- Retargeting
- Social media
- Influencer/Sponsorship
- Metaverse
While not every ad format is appropriate for every campaign or even every brand, every digital advertising (and digital marketing) professional needs to know the ins and outs of each.
Search Advertising
Also known as search engine marketing (SEM) or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, search advertising is designed to leverage search engine results to promote the brand or campaign. These ads are intent oriented, and divided into subcategories like search ads, shopping ads and maps ads. Advertisers target keywords and user personas, pay a pre-established amount per click, and can expect to see their ads appear above organic search results.
Display Advertising
Display ads are the most common type of digital advertising, typically found on banners, websites and blogs, and consisting of some combination of images, text and animation. Display ads can either be traditional, in fixed sizes, displayed in a fixed space irrespective of the device being used, or responsive, adapting to the size of the viewing screen. They can also be personalized based on user activity, behaviors and interests, or released without personalization to increase brand exposure.
Native Advertising
Native ads are sponsored articles or branded content, displayed on websites and blogs to match the look and feel of each individual site and its non-branded content.
Mobile Advertising
Mobile ads are digital ads delivered on mobile devices, either via mobile web, arranged to fit mobile screen sizes, or in app, designed to create specialized customer-brand experiences.
Video Advertising
Video ads use video or motion graphics to promote a brand or campaign; they play before, during or after streaming content, or appear as standalone banners or native ads on streaming platforms. While also leveraged on websites and blogs as ‘outstream’ ads to gain user attention, video advertising is typically employed in places like YouTube, Facebook and Twitch, as well as the free (ads included) versions of Netflix, Hulu and other similar services.
Audio Advertising
Like video advertising, audio ads are used primarily on streaming services, with audio messaging served before, during and after songs, podcasts and other audio. Popular platforms include Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music and SiriusXM.
Retargeting Advertising
Designed to nurture leads through the customer lifecycle, retargeting ads leverage user information (gathered from zero-, first- and third-party data) to deliver followup ads to users who have interacted with your site but not made a purchase (or completed another desired action). Retargeting ads can target based on a product the user interacted with but didn’t buy, how the user found your site, and even how they interact on social media. Retargeting ads are placed by third parties, such as the Google Display Network or Meta (Facebook/Instagram).
Social Media Advertising
Social media ads are highly targeted, based on demographics, interests, buying intent, and psychographic and behavioral characteristics, and served on social media platforms as display, native, video, audio, mobile or retargeting ads.
Influencer Marketing and Brand Sponsorships
Influencer marketing leverages endorsements, reviews and product/service mentions from celebrities, trendsetters and social media stars as social proof to increase sales, brand awareness and trust, and online engagement. Companies that rely on influencers believe they can piggyback on the trust built by the influencer to build trust for their brand. While not every influencer relationship is paid, many are. Influencer ads can appear on social media or a website or blog, in any format; influencer marketing platforms have been created to help organizations find influencers and manage their influencer relationships.
Brand sponsorships are everywhere, online and off, from website and social media account takeovers to corporate names on sports arenas and logos on uniforms. Historically, they’ve been designed to increase brand awareness among a particular, high-value audience. Now, however, they can deliver high-quality leads. Customer Engagement Insider, for instance, offers opportunities for brands to sponsor in-person and online events, whitepapers and special reports, and even webinars.
Metaverse Advertising
Like the metaverse itself, anything is possible in metaverse advertising — including AR and VR. During Metaverse Fashion Week, for instance, German fashion designer Philipp Plein displayed his latest NFT collection inside his $1.4-million “Plein Plaza,” a plot of metaverse ‘real estate’ in Decentraland, a virtual world on the Ethereum blockchain. Plein wasn’t worried about boosting sales of a single product; he created an immersive, branded experience targeted to the fastest growing segment of our population. Meanwhile, Fortnite, a player-versus-player game (and virtual world within the metaverse), collaborated with Nike on an Air Jordan sneaker launch and with Hip Hop artist Travis Scott for a virtual performance in front of 10-million people. And this is just the beginning.
How Do We Get the Right Placements for our Digital Ads?
The most effective way to ensure you get the biggest bang for your digital advertising buck is to invest in media buying. The goal of media buying is to purchase ad space on the channels that are most relevant to your target audience, at the time they’re most likely to view your ad, for the least amount of money. For some organizations, manual bidding through an ad network, like AdWords, is sufficient; for others, media buyers engage in the following:
- Programmatic buys, using AI-enabled real-time bidding on ad space matching consumer profiles
- Direct buys, when ad rates and run times are negotiated directly with a specific publisher
Does Digital Advertising Work?
Digital advertising has worked since the release of the first banner ad in 1994. By 2025, the market is expected to exceed $500 billion. Digital ads can increase brand awareness by 80%; consumers are 155% more likely to search for brand-specific terms after being served a display ad; and pay-per-click ads (like the ones that appear at the top of search engine results pages) produce a 200% ROI while generating more website visitors and conversions than search engine optimization.
What are the Most Important Digital Advertising KPIs?
Google “digital advertising KPIs” and you’ll find a SERP filled from top to bottom with digital marketing listicles. This is because digital advertising is often overlooked; digital advertising can be considered a type of digital marketing; and digital advertising shares many — but not all — of its most important KPIs with digital marketing. To track your success, measure your digital ad performance in terms of new leads generated, returning visitors, click-through rate (CTR), goal completion rate, lead conversion rate, lead-to-sale conversion rate, cost per lead, cost per acquisition, customer lifetime value and ROI, as well as CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions), viewability, cost per click and cost per action.
How Do We Know If Our Digital Advertising is Working?
Not sure what equals success? Don’t listen to so-called experts who claim to know the magic number. Every brand is different, and so is every campaign. My advice:
- Measure your ROI against your costs, and stay in the black
- Continue to monitor all your campaigns to develop an understanding of your own opportunities and limitations
- Iterate and optimize all your campaigns to ensure results steadily rise
- Invest in a CDP to ensure all your data is being stored and used to increasingly target and personalize your campaigns
- Consider investing in other tools to streamline the ad development and distribution processes
Image Credits (in order of appearance)
- Photo by Kate Trysh on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/Dnkr_lmdKi8
- Photo by Firmbee.com on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/eMemmpUojlw
- Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/4q_1c0rd1A0
- Photo by Alex Haney on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/xWkRYoSf8_c
- Photo by Isaac Smith on Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/photos/6EnTPvPPL6I
