What is Digital Advertising?
Have you ever wondered what are the highlighted “Ad” or “Ads” trademark next to the subject title in your mail inbox, or even on your Google search result? How about those square images with texts or animations that keep popping in the news article you just read? What do they actually do, where do they come from and what will happen if you click it? Why should you include digital advertising even if you’re just a small business in Miri?
One thing that we’re sure of is that it all comes down to digital advertising. Digital advertising refers to marketing through digital channels like social media, websites, apps, etc. It is also known as online advertising, internet advertising or web advertising. Digital advertising is relatively new as opposed to traditional ways (such as through television and newspapers) in the broad field of advertising. In fact, the massive change in recent events of the pandemic was the turning point in the digital world. Digital advertising has become more vital than ever since businesses nowadays have been relying heavily on it.
Horizn Digital plays a huge role from behind the scenes of digital advertising in Miri. Serving our purpose as a digital marketing company, we assist multiple businesses in projects including those related to digital advertising. With our accumulated experience and knowledge, let’s dive into the basics of digital advertising.
Is Digital Advertising the Same as Digital Marketing?
The short answer is no. However, here’s the tricky part. The term “digital advertising” and “digital marketing” are used interchangeably by marketers. There are too many similarities that make these two terms confusing. But how is digital advertising any different from digital marketing?
Digital advertising is an element of marketing. It is an activity that helps to promote your product, brand or offer to your targeted consumers by engaging digital technologies. Hence, if you see an ad while scrolling through the internet, that is basically digital advertising. It is run usually for a short period and can be easily reproduced. However, it is not necessary for your business to incorporate digital advertising into your business strategy.
There are several types of digital advertising:
1. Paid Search Advertising
Paid search advertising or also known as pay-per-click advertising (PPC) works such that you’ll be charged only for ads that customers click on. In short, you are purchasing the traffic instead of earning it organically. It is one of the most common and effective types of digital advertising. Your ads will be displayed at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). PPC allows you to target customers by bidding on any specific keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business.
2. Social Media Advertising
Social media advertising is the second biggest market in digital ads. With an expected number of 3.9 billion social media users across the globe, you can leverage the abundance of data to target a highly specific audience. You also have the option of producing ads in a variety of formats that make sense for your business. There are numerous platforms to perform social media advertising such as Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin and more. Keep in mind that each platform has a different range of audience demographics.
3. Display Advertising
Display advertising uses more visual online advertising formats such as banner ads, pop-ups, and promotional image tiles. These formats usually contain images or videos and texts that can help drive brand awareness. However, these ads have an incredibly low average click-through rate of 0.35% and can come off as pushy and annoying to viewers. They can be published in designated places on any given website. You can purchase them directly through platforms such as Google Ads Keyword Planner.
4. Native Advertising
Want a less annoying ad for your audience? Then you should consider native advertising. Native advertising refers to partnering with an online publisher to create sponsored content that relates to your industry. All you need to do is prepare high-quality contents that utilized SEO, email marketing and lead nurturing. Statistics reveal that native advertising increases purchase intent by 18 percent. Thanks to native advertising, this can help you create an honest and reliable persona surrounding your brand and company. Apart from that, doing so can also build up your customer’s trust by sharing your knowledge and experience that help solves their problems.
Digital marketing on the other hand is a process to build promotion as a form of marketing by involving digital technologies and media. It requires long term plans and decision-making for branding and building brand image. The activities included in digital marketing are search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing (SMM), content marketing, pay-per-click (PPC), affiliate marketing, and more. If you want to know more about digital marketing, check out our article on Types of Digital Marketing You Should Know.
The Perks of Digital Advertising
1. Global Coverage
As of January 2022, 4.95 billion people around the world use the internet, which is 62.5% of the world’s total population. With this much access to the Internet, you can reach over 4 billion people, especially if you’ve set your eyes on expanding your business or starting a business beyond the domestic market. Digital advertising is your golden pass to present your offers to the entire world. Simply put, you can attempt digital advertising from a small city like Miri and still create an online presence and promote to a massive audience within your budget without travelling anywhere.
2. Allows Retargeting
Have you ever decided to check out that new pet shop in your area on Instagram, just for a brief second, only later to be bombarded by thousands of dog-related ads while scrolling through your social media? Even the random news blog you just read this morning was displaying some pet products ads. FYI, you’re officially part of the retargeted audience in the ‘pet dog’ category. Retargeting enables your previous visitors (especially first-time visitors) to view your ads on another website. The psychology behind this is: we favour things more as we see them more. Those who are retargeted are 70% more likely to convert to buyers than those who aren’t.
3. Flexible
Are you the type that hates errors and is determined to change them when you find one? The flexibility of digital advertising makes it effortless to edit your mistakes. All you have to do is revise your materials for any necessary changes and press reupload to correct the defective advertising materials. But of course, it’s always recommended to proofread your materials to ensure that they are error-free before uploading. Because as soon as you release them, quite an audience has viewed your content. Reuploading could possibly waste the level of engagement of the previously uploaded content.
Including digital advertising as a way of marketing will benefit your business to a great extent. The digital world has a lot to offer to all existing businesses not only today but also more in the coming future. If you’re interested to start digital advertising, especially for as a business in Miri, get in touch with us to see how we can help.