Making Sense of Online Advertising
Online Advertising
The term online advertising has traditionally been met with confusion or apprehension by marketers and Sales departments during its short history of existence. Many business stalwarts became used to traditional forms of advertising. This is happily changing as businesses realise they cannot afford to ignore online advertising in their quest for sales.
If you’ve been browsing the internet today, chances are you’ve seen an online ad that was served to you. Over the years Online Advertising has grown to be a multi-billion dollar industry, yet despite its huge transformative impact on advertising, many people are not familiar with how it works, or that it even exists at all.
Online Advertising is the use of software to automate the purchase of ad-space on websites and within apps, such as those you would typically use on your smartphone, tablet or smart TV. Ad-spaces are selected based on certain criteria the advertiser has set, such as the type of website or app the ad-space is on, the user’s current location, the current time of day, age and gender of the user and their interests based on the individual’s browsing activity.
So how does it all work? Online advertising campaigns generally follows the following steps:
Step 1 — Choose your audience
At this stage, we identify possible audiences that would be interested in the client’s product or service. This is accomplished using data that is gathered from users as they browse the internet. A surprising amount of information about users can be deduced from their browsing habits. You may recall the story of how the US chain retailer Target was able to accurately predict when their shoppers were pregnant utilizing data analysis, and offer them coupons for baby items via email.
Step 2 — Decide what you want to achieve with your campaign
At this point, we determine what kind of campaign suits the client’s needs. Would they just like to consumers to keep their brand or product in mind for the future (Awareness)? Maybe they’d like to connect with potential customers and get their contact information for later use (Lead Generation)? Or perhaps convince a user who was looking at items on their online store to return and complete their purchase (Remarketing)? Once these questions are answered, it’s onto step 3.
Step 3 — Tailor your ads to suit your audience
Ad banners or ‘creatives’ as they are sometimes called, can make or break your campaign. Choosing how, where and when your message should be displayed should be very carefully considered. The banner ads are perhaps the most important part of a campaign because you can nail all the other steps involved in launching a campaign but if your ads aren’t enticing, don’t convey your message clearly or are just downright unappealing, no one is going to pay attention to them.
Step 4 — Campaign Launch
Once we’ve identified our audience, gathered our data (or acquired it from a third party company that specializes in this), determined our main goals and designed our creatives to suit, we’re ready to hit the ground running. LAUNCH!
Step 5 — Optimization
We keep our eyes and ears open at all times for potential opportunities or threats. Thankfully, we don’t have to do this completely manually and we rely on the algorithms of our platform to aid us in efficiently maximizing the campaign’s reach and budget expenditure.
Step 6 — Reporting and Continual Improvement
After a successful campaign, we take time to review the performance of the campaign. We determine what worked well and where there may have been opportunities for improvement. These findings are then applied to later campaigns and shared with the client in a comprehensive report.
Online Advertising allows for greater dollar-for-dollar reach and impact when compared to traditional advertising methods and also adds value to your business by providing valuable insights about your target audience. Interested in finding out how Trend Media can make advertising online work for your business? Get in touch with us and we’ll be glad to help. https://trend.media/contact/