It’s a fact that people only buy things they know about. It does not matter how amazing your product is, no one is going to buy it unless they know about it. This is exactly why Advertising is so important. Advertising lets you educate and tell your customers about your product and its features. Now that we have established the importance of Advertising, it is equally important to choose the right Advertising Platforms to do it. There are many such Digital Advertising Platforms available in the market and choosing the right one can be daunting.
Don’t worry, in this article, you will be introduced to the 5 most popular Digital Advertising Platforms out there so that you can choose the right fit for your business. Having said that, it is often beneficial to use a combination of multiple Advertising Platforms to reach a wider audience. In this blog post, you will also learn how to integrate data from these multiple sources and use it to your advantage.
Table of Contents
Any advertising that takes place online is considered digital advertising. Advertisers can place ads on a variety of channels, and each channel has its own set of tools for managing campaigns. For catching the attention of potential customers, each channel supports different types of digital media and placement options. Advertisers are paid differently on different channels based on different metrics. Advertisers, in short, have a lot to consider. To make things easier, G2 Crowd has compiled a breakdown of each digital channel to give you the background you need to implement a digital advertising strategy.
While this guide focuses on the options available to advertisers when entering the online advertising landscape, including the digital advertising software that may be the best fit for your company, the space as a whole is much larger and includes other parties, such as website publishers.
The main concern for advertisers is purchasing ad space on publishers’ websites in order to reach their target audience. Advertisers buy digital ads programmatically through advertising software or through direct, person-to-person deals.
Advertiser campaign management tools aid advertisers in serving and managing ads across multiple ad channels. Display, video, mobile, social, and search are examples of digital channels. DSPs are also included in advertiser campaign management products because they are required to bid and serve ads in real-time via ad exchanges.
What are the Top 11 Digital Advertising Platforms?
1) Digital Advertising Platforms: Facebook Ads
Wondering how Facebook Ads work? Facebook can also act as one of the Advertising Platforms. Facebook collects customer data when they interact with any Facebook service. When you give your email id or phone number to a company it is matched with your Facebook profile, Facebook then uses this data to show you customized ads that you might be interested in. It also collects location data to show you products available in your area.
If you’re an Advertiser all you have to do is tell Facebook a few things:
- Your Business Goal: Are you looking to sell a product? Do you want to create awareness about a new product?
- Your desired Audience: Who is the target audience? Who are the people who will be most interested in your business? What age group do they belong to? Which location are they based in?
- Decide where to run the Ad: Choose where you want to run your Ad, on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Audience Network, or across them all?
- Your Budget: You can set a budget and lifetime for your Ad. Never pay more than your budget. You should also know how to analyze your advertising spend.
- Pick a Format: You can choose from six versatile ad formats – they’re designed to work on every device and connection speed. You can see the available formats here.
Facebook then places your Ad on its Ad Auction which helps it display your Ad to potential customers. You can monitor and track the process of your ads through Facebook’s Ads Manager.
2) Digital Advertising Platforms: Google Ads
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Google is the most popular search engine in the world. People search for what to do, where to go, and what to buy every day on Google. Google stands out for Google Ads which is one of the best Online Advertising Platforms. Google Ads can pop up on Google the moment someone searches for products or services like yours. When you are trying to get new customers, good timing is your best friend. A well-timed and well-placed Ad can make all the difference. Google lets you reach people looking for a product like yours thus improving your chance of converting them to a customer.
Google Ads provide a number of features that make them part of our top 5 Advertising Platforms list:
- Promotion Extensions: This is excellent for E-Commerce businesses or any other company trying to run a promotional offer.
- Message Extensions: This helps you connect to your customers without them having to end up on your page.
- Call Only Ads: This can be used on call-enabled Ads, it provides clickable links which will directly place calls.
- Ad Variations: Google provides the flexibility to change your Ads easily and see which ones run better.
- Custom Intent Audiences: Google’s Machine Learning models ensure that your Ad gets displayed to the right audience.
To read more about Google Ads, refer here.
3) Digital Advertising Platforms: Linkedin Ads
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Linkedin is a great platform to meet people for business. Linkedin Ads is among the top Online Advertising Platforms. It is the right choice for you if you are trying to target people in the business world, people looking for Jobs, Corporate Employees, Entrepreneurs, etc.
Linkedin Ads can be of four types:
- Sponsored Content: You can display Ads in a business and professional News Feed. This helps you target professionals who are interested in your business.
- Sponsored Messaging: It allows you to send direct, one-on-one messages to your audience’s LinkedIn Messaging enabling you to communicate with them at a personal level.
- Text Ads: They let you create your own Ads, decide your own budget and get in front of the audience that matters the most. It also provides a pay-per-click option.
- Dynamic Ads: These Ads feature personalized information from a professional’s Linkedin profile to curate ads to capture their attention. job title, and more.
To read more about LinkedIn Ads, visit here.
4) Digital Advertising Platforms: Twitter Ads
Twitter Ads help you advertise easily and economically. Twitter provides reasonable rates per click. You only pay for your promoted tweets when you have achieved your marketing objectives. It improves your online marketing ROI.
Twitter provides different kinds of Ads, including Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts, and Promoted Trends. These Ads may be displayed to users whether they are logged in or logged out of Twitter. Working with Twitter Ads is super easy – choose your target audience, amplify your message and pay for performance.
5) Digital Advertising Platforms: Bing Ads
Bing Ads, better known as Microsoft Ads is one of the Online Advertising Platforms that lets you reach customers based on your preference. You can reach millions of unique searchers on Bing — by country, city, or within a specific distance.
Bing Ads also provides support for other Ad campaigns. If you already have a campaign on Google Ads, you can easily pull that campaign into Bing. You can also optimize your ROI by leveraging its flexible payment structure. Bing Ads does not require any minimum fee, only pay for clicks. It also allows you to track your advertisement campaign closely and tweak it accordingly.
To explore more about Bing Ads, visit here.
6) Digital Advertising Platforms: Instagram Ads
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Instagram Ads are the ads shown in the Instagram app for which businesses pay to advertise their products and services to users and pay a fee to Instagram. Similar to Facebook, Instagram also shows ads in feeds, posts, stories and also adds CTA buttons to it.
Types of Instagram Ads:
- Instagram Ads With Pictures: Pictures can be used as Instagram Ads in posts, stories, and feeds.
- Sequential Ads on Instagram: Sequential Ads are posts or stories with multiple pictures and videos in a single feed.
- Instagram Ads With Videos: Video Ads put more impact and are more attractive than any other kind of Ads, Advertising Platforms like Instagram Ads prefer Video Ads for more conversions.
To explore more about Instagram Ads, visit here.
7) Digital Advertising Platforms: Pinterest Ads
Pinterest Ads is different from other Advertising Platforms, which use posts in terms of pins. It is mostly used for products for women. One can use Pinterest Ads using its promoted pins feature that allows anyone to start their paid Ads Campaign. The Ads are shown to the user based on their interests and past activities.
Different types of Pinterest Ads formats:
- Standard Pins: These are the most used Ads. It allows one to post Ads pins in a square or vertical fashion.
- Carousel Ads: It is similar to the Standard Pins type, but it allows users to swipe to different pins of the Ads. Advertisers can add many images or videos in a single Carousel Ads.
- Video Pins Ads: People are more likely to buy products after seeing a video of the product. Video Pins showcase complete product profiles using attractive videos.
- Shopping Pins: It allows advertisers to add products from their catalog as an Ads pin and reach more people.
- App Install Pins: These Ads are action-oriented Ads as it allows users to download an app.
To explore more about Pinterest Ads, visit here.
8) Digital Advertising Platforms: Quora Ads
Quora Ads is a self-service platform where advertisers can create and publish their Ads by themselves and target customers based on topics and questions. Advertisers can also use behavioral targeting to get to know more about people and target the right audience. Quora Ads supports image and text-based Ads.
Basic Components of Quora Ads:
- Business Name: 30 characters
- Headline Sentence: 65 characters
- Body Text: 105 characters
- Display URL: 30 characters
To explore more about Quora Ads, visit here.
9) Digital Advertising Platforms: Snapchat Ads
Snapchat Ads is one of the most attractive Advertising platforms that publish very engaging content because it features Snapchat which is a camera and messaging application. Snapchat Ads are stories that entire screen and can contain CTAs, photos, and videos. With Snapchat filters, Snapchat Ads become more appealing and not clickbait Ads.
Snapchat Ads are easy to apply and come with many features that advertisers can use to optimize Ads and find a better target audience. Among all Advertising Platforms, Snapchat Ads is are good for targeting people from age 18 to 24.
To explore more about Snapchat Ads, visit here.
10) Digital Advertising Platforms: Reddit Ads
Reddit Ads is recommended for those advertisers who have well-structured Ads Campaigns ready to target audiences. Reddit offers advertisers a place where they can target audiences specific to particular communities and it greatly helps advertisers to tackle the right audience.
Types of Reddit Ads:
- Promoted Post: These Ads look similar to user posts on Reddit. It is of 2 types – link Ads and text Ads. IT comes in handy as it takes little space but is highly impactful to get visits to your website or landing page.
- Display Ads: These are the banner ads that are displayed on the right-hand side of the screen and display the content based on the user’s interests and behavior.
To explore more about Reddit Ads, visit here.
11) Digital Advertising Platforms: Display/Native Ads
Display and Native Ads are not any Advertising Platforms like the others you read about above. Native Ads are another way of reaching people by placing banner ads on popular websites with the help 3rd party advertising platforms that only show Ads on other websites. These ads are best for those advertisers who don’t know their target audiences or their product or service is entirely new that no one knows about.
To explore more about Display/Native Ads, visit here.
Why Integrate Data Across Different Advertising Platforms?
As the number of Marketing and Advertising applications increases, the amount of data a company needs to handle, manage, store and analyze also increases. To make the best possible decision and understand the whole picture it is important to look at all this data together from different Online Advertising Platforms. To look at these data items individually and then try to connect the dots would be a waste of time. It is thus important to integrate data from multiple sources into central storage, gain actionable insights and act accordingly.
Bringing data from different Advertising Platforms would enable you to decide which Advertisements are working, which campaigns are driving the most number of customers, what changes should be made, etc. Integrated Marketing data is thus the key to augmenting and optimizing your Marketing ROI. Integrating data delivers a single source of truth for all your marketing analyses and strategies. Every team in the company can leverage this data to improve their performance and achieve their goals using online Advertising Platforms.
What are the Manual Methods to Integrate Data?
Integrating data manually is a herculean task and anyone willing to take it up must consider all its challenges. Data Integration is done manually by using Spreadsheets, writing Custom Scripts, running Macros, etc
This poses some serious challenges:
- It is extremely time-consuming. Companies now require Dashboards and Reports to be updated in real-time which is not possible to achieve manually.
- Any data loss or corruption must be located and troubleshot manually which is not efficient and there is an increased chance of error.
- Data silos make managing data even more difficult.
- Data from different sources are in different formats and may require different skill sets to comprehend and handle.
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Conclusion
You now have in your arsenal knowledge about the top 11 Online Advertising Platforms available in the market. You also have a tool, Hevo that will bring all your data together.
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