Effective internet advertising relies on the delivery of impactful messages to consumers through the digital media channels that will provide optimal return on investment. Advertising agencies use a variety of internet advertising strategies according to the goals of the brands with which they work. These strategies can include email marketing, search, social, and display marketing, content marketing, and more often than not, a combination of all of these types of internet advertising.
There’s no formulaic path to follow when embarking upon an internet advertising campaign, and the trends and tastes of digital consumers change over time. If you want to keep up, consider implementing some of the most frequently used and most effective forms of ad buying strategies found below.
1. Video Advertising on Social Media
There’s no denying that we’re consuming more and more video content on social media. 45% of users watch over an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos a week and 43% of people want to see more video content from marketers. For these and other compelling reasons, social media platforms are including more ways for advertisers and publishers alike to create and engage with video.
Large video sharing platforms like YouTube have been selling video ad space for years, but have continuously enhanced their offerings, now allowing advertisers to have their videos appear in users’ search results.
“What we have seen over the last two years is an explosion in video consumption on our platform, which in turn has created a great opportunity to take advantage of internet advertising,” said Graham Mudd, Director of Monetization Product Marketing at Facebook.
Live Videos
Since Facebook first took a chance on incorporating live streaming into its platform in April 2016 with “Facebook Live”, the video advertising landscape has undergone a turn. Previously, Twitter had bought and introduced a mobile device integration with Periscope, and most recently, Instagram launched Instagram stories. Similar to Snapchat, Instagram stories allow users to post photos and videos that can be viewed for up to 24 hours, however, Instagram differentiates itself with a live streaming feature.
This evolution in video advertising allowing for more personal interaction with users is key to understanding why many companies are deciding to allocate more and more of their ad spend towards social channels.
Big brands are capitalizing on these changes in information consumption to enhance their internet advertising strategies. Lowes, for example, unveiled its Black Friday deals on Facebook Live to an audience of 32,000 people and the recording was viewed an additional 891,000 times in the days following the live stream.
2. Remarketing
Have you ever looked at a flight without buying it and then it started to appear everywhere as you navigated the web? How many times have you been on the verge of buying a product on Amazon, but you ultimately remove it from your cart and it shows up on almost every page you visit? This form of internet advertising is what’s known as remarketing.
Remarketing is an advertising strategy that leverages browsing data in the form of cookies to remind users that they can still convert and purchase the product or service they left behind. If a user has shown interest in any of your products or services, but has not yet converted, tactful remarketing can attract the user back with display ads on other websites.
A Customized Strategy
Remarketing is considered one of the best internet advertising techniques for both small and large advertisers. The best thing about this ad buying tactic is that you can customize the message in a way that will increase conversions.
However, advertisers should use this tactic carefully because poor use of remarketing often reflects a negative image of a brands as being quite aggressive or annoying. Set yourself up for success by doing your homework on which users will be most likely to convert upon exposure to a remarketing ad.
A great place to start is the Google Display Network, where you can reach potential customers that have already shown a strong interest in your product or service. One of the best features of the network is its audience segmentation capabilities which allows for keyword, contextual, behavioral, and geo-targeting, among other tactics.
3. Inbound Marketing
Although inbound marketing is no longer the newest or most innovative of strategies, it’s still a great technique to drive internet advertising results. The reason? Inbound has adapted to the changing consumer-brand relationship.
The most important thing to prepare when planning your inbound marketing strategy is content. Not only does the content have to be consistent and available on the digital channels that your users access, but it also must be valuable content and tailored to the various audience segments to whom you’re trying to convert.
Identifying a variety of consumer personas and generating content catered to those personas is always the best first course of action before putting paper to pavement. However, once you’re ready to launch an inbound marketing strategy, the below inbound lead generation tactics are a helpful roadmap to follow if you want to yield conversions for your business.
Inbound Marketing Tactics
- Attracting Traffic: The first step of inbound is to get the user’s attention. It can be published periodically in your blog quality content, streamlining the different profiles of social networks or through the sending of newsletters, among other actions.
- Conversion: If you offer quality content that provides value to your audience, such as free ebooks, thought pieces, infographics, guides, and videos, users will become loyal visitors to your site. Offer valuable materials that require a lead form from a landing page, so that
- Closing: Once you’ve acquired the lead, it’s time to nurture it by further engaging the potential customer. Direct emails, webinars, and other personalized are all effective ways to capture leads.
- Post-Campaign Analysis: Don’t forget this last step. In order to widen your inbound sales funnel, it’s important to analyze your campaign. What piece of content received the most downloads or site visits? What lead nurturing techniques worked best to seal the deal with your leads?
4. Native Advertising
Native Advertising is a type of internet advertising that, like inbound marketing, has also arisen because of the new digital consumer’s relationship with brands.
Native is popular because it’s a less intrusive digital advertising tactic compared to traditional banners and other forms of display advertising. Each ad unit appears as if it were just another piece of the publisher’s content because it integrates its creative to mirror the publisher’s. A common form of native that you’ve probably encountered are ads found amongst the posts in a social network’s newsfeed.
Characteristics of Native Advertising
Native Ad Units share similar attributes with publisher content like image size & ratio, layout, headline, caption, font colors and style. The key differences lie in that native ads also include ad labels.
If you manage to sell your brand in an original way and offer content that your user needs, you’ll start to win over your audience. Providing solutions rather than asking for a purchase grabs a user’s attention and might even encourage sharing of the ad with others.
5. Augmented Reality
Augmented reality is one of the most innovative forms of internet advertising to date, integrating the digital and physical world together to create experiences that surprise even the savviest of consumers.
The interactive nature of augmented reality is exciting and catches participants off guard, leaving an impact and sometimes even causing the campaign to go viral. Most campaigns are setup to allow smartphone users direct their phones’ cameras at certain objects, whether a print advertisement or even just a cup of coffee, in order to prompt a 3D video to play.
According to Nielsen, 97% of millennials own a smartphone, making this internet advertising strategy highly accessible to users, and more specifically, users that aren’t always apt to engage with traditional advertising.
One of the most exciting aspects of augmented reality is its room for growth and expansion. It’s very experimental, but the evidence is there to back up its effectiveness. According to Deloitte, there are already 88% of mid-market companies implementing some form of virtual or augmented reality into their business
Choose your Audience Wisely
As you plan your next internet advertising campaign, consider the internet users that you’re trying to reach and which strategies at your disposal will result in those users being receptive to your campaign. The above digital ad buying strategies all focus on the current, yet constantly evolving, consumer-brand relationship.
Today’s most effective online tactics generally aren’t implemented as a part of a campaign used to drive direct sales, but instead boost brand engagement. Advertisers must always question how they can break down barriers between their brand and the user. How can you reach and connect with your buyer personas?
Partners like Digilant can help you move forward in your next internet advertising campaign, leveraging actionable data science to analyze user behavior and create campaigns that reach consumers across the digital ecosystem, while uncovering new insights and audiences along the way.