Digital Advertising: The Ultimate Guide to Advertising on Internet 2022

What Are the Digital Advertising Formats?

Digital advertising has seen constant innovation since it was first introduced in 1994. Different ad formats make up the diverse digital advertising landscape of today. Even better, combine two existing ad categories to make a new one. Remarketing with display ads, for instance, can be used to contact returning visitors and prompt them to make a purchase. Five of the most widely used digital ad types are listed in this section.

The purpose of this section is to provide you an overview of the most popular ad categories; it is not a comprehensive list.

1. Search Engine Marketing

A few search results with the tag “Ad” display at the top of the Search Engine Results Page when using Google or Bing to conduct a search (SERP).

The most popular ad format is probably search engine marketing (SEM). In SEM, you and your rivals compete for the top spot by bidding on keywords.

Pay Per Click (PPC) SEM advertising are those that are displayed regardless of whether anyone clicks on them, while Cost Per Mille (CPM) ads are those that are displayed regardless of whether anyone clicks on them.

2. Display Ads

This is where advertisements as we know them now started. On websites that belong to third parties and are typically connected to search engines or other ad networks, display ads are largely made up of text and graphics. Display advertising are frequently self-hosted on websites. Images, mobile, text, banners, pop-ups, and video advertising are the most popular display ad formats.

3. Social Media Ads

Social media is where your audience spends a lot of time, which gives you a great chance to promote your brand. Social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, and others can be used to market your company and goods. Establishing a community, generating leads, improving event attendance, boosting website conversions, encouraging app downloads, and increasing foot traffic in your physical business are all things that social media ads may help you with.

4. Native Advertising

On social media platforms or other websites, native ads can be shown, and they don’t look like standard advertisements. They visually mimic the content you’re reading when they appear under “Recommended Reading,” “Related Stories,” or “Promoted Stories,” but when you click on them, you’re taken to the advertiser’s website.

5. Remarketing

Have you ever checked out goods on Shopee and then subsequently found an advertisement for the same product while browsing your social media feed? And that is remarketing. Remarketing, which is often referred to as retargeting, follows you online using cookies. The remarketing feature is presently available on Google and almost all significant social media platforms.

5 Aspects of Digital Advertising

Let’s go over a 25-point list separated into five sections to assist you have a working understanding of the key components of digital advertising now that we are familiar with the idea and the different formats of digital advertising.

1. Digital Advertising Metrics

Metrics enable you to make sure-footed decisions about your next moves. Five digital advertising KPIs that you should monitor are covered in this section.

Note that these metrics are applicable to all types of digital advertising campaigns and are not specific to any one website.

• Reach and impressions

The term “reach” refers to how many individuals were able to see your advertisement. The term “impressions” refers to how many times your advertisement was shown. The number of impressions may frequently be higher than the “reach” because an advertisement may be displayed to a single person more than once.

• Click-Through Ratio

The ratio of clicks to impressions is known as the click-through rate (CTR). Your CTR is 2 percent if you receive two clicks for every 100 impressions. This metric can be used to evaluate the success of various advertising efforts. For instance, if two campaigns acquire the same amount of impressions, the campaign with more clicks will have a higher CTR and will therefore have performed better.

• Conversions

The number of persons that clicked on the advertisement and followed your Call to Action is referred to as “conversion” (CTA). The action can involve buying something, joining up for your services, or downloading an e-book.

• Cost Per Acquisition

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) is a metric used to determine the total expense incurred to bring in a paying customer. By dividing the entire campaign expense by the quantity of conversions, it may be calculated.

• Return on Investment

Return on Investment (ROI) is the gold standard metric for assessing the success of your marketing campaigns. ROI, also referred to as Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), gauges the campaign’s profitability in relation to its operating expenses.

2. Digital Advertising Best Practices

Here are five straightforward yet essential best practises to get your next digital marketing campaign off to a strong start.

Note: The advice provided here is independent of digital advertising platforms or media.

• Include a Powerful Call to Action

CTAs nudge your audience in the right direction. Action verbs like “Download Now,” “Buy Now,” “Learn More,” or “Register Today” nudge your user to do the required action.

• Keep it Simple!

Digital advertising is one area where the cliché “less is more” holds true. There is no need to be redundant or clog up your ad copy and creatives because your viewers won’t have the time in the world to read a lengthy, text-heavy advertisement. The more straightforward the advertisement, the better!

• Be Device & Channel Responsive

Your customers live in a multidevice, multichannel world, therefore advertising creatives must be created so that they are not only relevant to the media or platform in question but also render effectively on every device or screen size, including mobile, laptop, desktop, and tablet. A TV-designed advertisement won’t function online or on a mobile device.

• Follow Brand Guidelines

You stand out from the competition thanks to your distinctive brand identification. Always strategically position your brand identity design on your adverts to ensure that they stand out.

• Test, Test, and Test

To learn what appeals to their audience, marketers and advertisers frequently employ A/B testing. Continue testing your advertising to determine what is most effective, then concentrate on doing more of it. Additionally, keep up with the most recent ad platform updates and innovate with them.

3. Digital Advertising Frauds

In addition to the advantages that digital advertising offers to organisations, the sector is regrettably plagued by fraudulent practises. Hackers and scammers utilise unethical methods that consume a significant portion of advertisers’ budgets. Here are five things to watch out for in 2022.

• Bots

False publishers utilise botnets (a group of bots) to increase website traffic and clicks in order to reach their revenue targets while providing no value to advertisers. Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks can also be brought on by botnets by overloading the web server, rendering the targeted users’ access to the website impossible. Click farms are the human version of bots. There are virtually free resources whose only purpose is to click on adverts, giving the marketer no real advantages.

• Pixel Stuffing

The practise of inserting advertising that are 1*1 pixels in size (invisible to the human eye), also referred to as “iframe stuffing,” is known as “pixel stuffing.” Therefore, even though the visitor did not see the advertisement, an impression is still recorded for every pageview. In the end, the advertiser pays money for nothing.

• Popunders

The reverse of pop-up windows, popunders are frequently used on shady websites. Instead of above the primary window, they show below it. Even though the visitor was largely oblivious of the advertisement, a valid impression was nonetheless recorded. Popunders don’t precisely constitute fraud, yet they nevertheless offer nothing to marketers.

• Domain Spoofing

Simply said, domain spoofing tricks an advertiser into thinking that their ad will show up on a valuable, premium website when it won’t actually do so. In domain spoofing, a number of tricks are used to deceive the advertiser and website users, with the fraudster being the only one to gain.

• Ad Stacking

In terms of outcomes, ad stacking and popunders are pretty comparable. This technique loads a stack of adverts on top of one another, making only one ad visible while still recording impressions for each ad. The other advertising, which are paid for by advertisers but produce no results, are never seen by the user.