What Is Digital Advertising? 7 Types of Digital Advertising

Digital advertising is advertising that occurs online. It offers business owners the ability to reach their target audience on a level that was previously unattainable with traditional advertising. Today, businesses have a wide variety of advertising tools and platforms at their disposal that allow them to serve hyper-specific advertisements to potential customers. A digital advertising strategy is a powerful tool for growth as it can help build brand awareness, broaden your customer base, and boost sales revenue.

Consider seven of the most common types of digital advertising.

1. 1. Display advertising: Display ads are any visual or auditory ad that occupies online ad space. This includes pop-ups, video ads, banner ads, and ad copy.
2. 2. Retargeting: Also known as remarketing, retargeting ads are a type of display ad that uses cookies to serve specific ads to users based on their browsing history. This is a popular type of advertising among e-commerce businesses. Since the business already has data proving a consumer's interest, retargeting ads typically have a high return on investment (ROI).
3. 3. Programmatic advertising: Programmatic advertising makes use of real-time auctions and automation tools to optimize and streamline the process of buying online ad space.
4. 4. Paid search advertising: Paid search ads are text ads that appear above relevant search engine results. Due to their relevance to search queries and positioning at the top of the search engine results page (SERP), they tend to have a high click-through rate (CTR) and create more conversions than display ads. Unlike organic search traffic, which can be generated for free or at a low cost using search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, paid search ads require ad spend.
5. 5. Native advertising: Native ads are considered any ad that is integrated into the native look and feel of a website. Native advertising includes paid promotions, product placements, and display ads designed to look like native website copy.
6. 6. Social media advertising: Social media platforms offer business owners the opportunity to run digital ad campaigns that appear in social media feeds. Social media ads can be audio, video, or text ads. In addition, advertisers can partner with influencers to advertise their products on social media.
7. 7. Audio advertising: Audio ads are recorded narratives pitching the value proposition of a specific brand, product, or service. They are commonly used on radio stations, podcasts, and streaming platforms.

Before running your first digital advertising campaign, familiarize yourself with the different pricing models used by digital advertising platforms.

1. 1. Cost per click (CPC): Cost per click, also known as pay per click (PPC), involves paying a set price every time someone clicks on your ad.
2. 2. Cost per mille (CPM): Cost per mille (CPM) means the cost per thousand impressions. With this pricing model, advertisers pay a set amount for every 1,000 times their ad appears online.
3. 3. Cost per acquisition (CPA): Cost per acquisition requires advertisers to pay a set amount each time a customer takes a specific action, such as joining an email list, visiting a landing page, or making a purchase.

Though digital advertising and digital marketing are sometimes used interchangeably, an important distinction can be made between the two.

• Digital marketing: Digital marketing refers broadly to all the ways a company markets itself to a specific demographic online. This includes email marketing, social media marketing, SEO, content marketing, online ads, and more.
• Digital advertising: Digital advertising refers specifically to the use of online advertisements to sell goods and services to a target audience. Digital advertising could be included in a digital marketing strategy, but not all digital marketing campaigns include digital advertising tactics.

Compared to traditional advertising, digital advertising provides advertisers with more tools for measuring the success of a campaign. Consider some metrics to keep an eye on when evaluating your digital advertising success.

1. 1. Measure site traffic. Before launching a digital advertising campaign, collect data that shows the average amount of traffic your website receives. Once you launch your campaign, measure your click-through rate to evaluate the effectiveness of your ad campaign and any increases in site traffic. If your website is receiving more visitors than usual, the odds are good that you're on the right track.
2. 2. Analyze your bounce rate. While it's good to get new visitors, it's not worth much if they don't stay on your site for very long. That’s why it’s important to look at the bounce rate, a metric that shows how quickly visitors are leaving your site. If your bounce rate is high (meaning visitors leave quickly), then you may want to reconsider the ad content or format.
3. 3. Evaluate traffic sources. Smartphones have made it possible for potential customers to see your advertisements from anywhere in the world. For some websites, more than half of web traffic takes place on mobile devices. Evaluate your mobile traffic versus non-mobile traffic to make a determination of the effectiveness of your ad. If the ad appears not to be as effective on mobile, it may be worth reconsidering the ad format and exploring design solutions to make the ad more mobile-friendly.

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