The internet offers the opportunity for data-driven, targeted advertising that can deliver real results for your business. Digital advertising can be used to convert potential customers by capturing their interest multiple times across different platforms. 

Before you can dive in, you need to know what digital advertising options are out there. From graphic display advertising to in-feed advertorial content, here’s a rundown of what’s available to you and your business.

We’re all familiar with banner ads — visual-based ads on third-party websites, apps or social media, usually across the top of a webpage. The graphic nature of display advertising allows for the use of text, images, flash, video, animation and audio to grab the audience’s attention and link through to a landing page with a call to action. 

While display ads have a relatively low average click-through rate of 0.05%, they can be a powerful visual tool for building brand awareness, recall and loyalty or for introducing new products, all with a lower cost per click than search ads. 

You can work with Display Advertising Networks using segmentation techniques to make sure your ads are placed and targeted to the right audience. Or make use of programmatic advertising, which uses machines and algorithms to determine when and how to target ads and to purchase online advertising space. 

Just be aware that ad-blocker technology is widely popular and ‘banner blindness’ is common.

You can pay for your business to be included in search engine results pages (SERPs). Through a pay-per-click model, paid search marketing is based on keyword analysis and a bidding process for ranking, rather than the search engine’s actual ‘quality score’ ranking system.

This form of measurable and controllable advertising is great for immediate results, as consumers are actively searching for related content.

While you can reach large audiences through organic content on social media, you can also use advertisements or sponsored posts on all the same platforms to reach consumers beyond your business’s followers. 

These campaigns are easy to set up and are designed to complement your organic social media initiatives. The format allows for effective segmentation and targeting because social media networks collect and hold so much user data.

Social media advertising options are generally offered on a cost-per-click basis on most of the major social networking platforms.

Just be sure to switch out content frequently to avoid repetition and ad fatigue — users spend a lot of time on social media and expect fresh content.

Creating paid content that matches the look, feel and function of the media platform it appears on is known as native advertising. This includes in-feed ads on social media and recommended content at the bottom of websites and blogs, all designed to blend in with the editorial flow of the site they are on. 

With engaging content, this can help you combat ad fatigue from audiences, as consumers look at native ads 53% more than traditional display ads.

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