Best Digital Advertising Platforms
Introduction to Digital Advertising
Digital advertising refers to any advertising that takes place online. Several channels are available for advertisers to place ads and includes tools to manage ad campaigns for each channel. Each channel supports different ad formats and placement options for catching the eyes of potential customers. Different channels also have varying metrics by which advertisers are charged. In short, advertisers have a lot to think about. To simplify it all, G2 Crowd has pulled together a breakdown of each channel to provide the background needed to implement an online advertising strategy.
While this guide focuses specifically on the options advertisers have when entering the online advertising landscape, the space as a whole is much broader and includes other parties, such as website publishers.
From the advertiser perspective, the main concern is buying advertising space on publishers' websites in order to reach their desired audience. Advertisers do that either through direct, person-to-person deals or by buying ads programmatically through advertising software.
Advertiser campaign management tools help advertisers serve and manage ads through a variety of ad channels. Channels include display, video, mobile, social, and search. Additionally, DSPs are included in advertiser campaign management products as they are needed to bid on and serve ads in real time through ad exchanges.
To get a more in-depth overview of how advertisers fit into the bigger digital advertising picture, take a look at G2 Crowd’s Marketer's Guide to Digital Advertising Infographic.
What are the Goals of this Guide?
We’ve geared this guide specifically towards marketers learning about all the options they have when considering online advertising. Our goal is to be as comprehensive as possible while still keeping things simple and digestible.
Each of these 5 questions is answered for each advertising channel:
Why: Why is that channel important? What makes it unique and why should you consider it?
Where: are potential customers going to see these ads? On what kind of websites and where on the page are these ads located?
Formats: What are the different ad formats that a channel supports? What are they called and what are the specifications? What do these ads look like?
Pricing: How are ads on this channel priced? By which metrics are ads being charged (i.e. CPC, CPV, CPA)? What are the average prices for these ad formats?
Trends: What are practitioners and experts in the digital advertising space talking about with regard to each channel? What trends should you be aware of when considering advertising on a channel?
Continue to the guide below. At the end of which, readers should feel well-versed and confident with the advertiser side of digital advertising space.
If ready to begin placing ads, marketers can evaluate software options by accessing real user reviews and ratings for products in each channel:
Cross-channel advertising software
Search advertising
Display advertising
Mobile advertising
Social advertising
Video advertising
Demand-side platforms (DSP)
What is cross-channel advertising?
Cross-channel advertising refers to the process of advertising across multiple digital advertising channels through either direct deals with publishers or cross-channel advertising software. Advertisers have several avenues through which to advertise online, with search, display, mobile, social, and video advertisements all being viable options for reaching potential customers. While advertisers may already be utilizing one or two of these channels, forming a comprehensive and cohesive cross-channel advertising strategy helps ensure advertisers are reaching the right audiences.
Why is cross-channel advertising important?
Now more than ever, consumers are interacting with an ever-expanding set of media on any number of devices. According to Nielsen’s 2014 report on The Digital Consumer, Americans own four digital devices on average and spend an average of 60 hours a week consuming content on them. On top of this, desktop usage has continued to grow, with ComScore reporting and increase of 37% in 2014. As consumers’ media consumption habits become increasingly more liquid: flowing from device to device, from short- to longform video, and from social media to news articles, it is becoming more and more difficult to track down where audiences are at any given time. Whether they are browsing the web on desktops, watching the new episode of The Walking Dead on tablets, or checking Instagram on their phones, it is important for advertisers to be able to reach their audiences anytime and anywhere.
What's important to know when adopting a cross-channel mindset?
Cohesive Data is Key — Audiences are jumping all over the map, interacting with brands on a multitude of different touch points. For cross-channel exploits to be most successful, it is important to reel in all of these data points and form a cohesive, integrated consumer database. As the Boston Consulting Group highlights highlights, “Advertisers should ensure that no major digital assets are being underleveraged… and that no data is lost along the way.”
Consumers are in Control — With consumers having their choice of what media to consume and where to consume it, advertisers need to relinquish control to them and present their brands to where their audience naturally is.
Keep Messaging Consistent — When performed correctly, brands will be interacting with consumers at a variety of different times and in a multitude of different places. Maintaining a unified message across channels will help consumers better, and more consistently, recognize a brand, increasing their likelihood of interacting with ads.
Channels aren’t Created Equally — Digital advertising channels are not created equally. Each channel has its own strengths and weaknesses that advertisers should acknowledge when adopting a cross-channel mindset. For example, search advertising tends to perform better for direct response, while video ads have more of an effect on brand perception. Knowing where each channel excels will help best optimize cross-channel campaign performance.
What tools can help garner cross-channel advertising success?
While the big-money digital advertising buys are still made through direct deals between advertisers and publishers, the majority of digital ads are increasingly being purchased through programmatic technology. Below are a few tools that help advertisers best manage their cross-channel advertisements.
Cross-Channel Advertising Software
Cross-channel advertising software manage ads across three or more digital advertising channels. To the left is a table from G2 Crowd’s Winter 2016 Cross-Channel Advertising Grid℠ Report that breaks down which channels each product can access. While this list only represents products with 10 or more reviews on G2 Crowd, it can be seen that few, if any, cross-channel advertising platforms access all advertising channels. Furthermore, performance across channels isn’t particularly consistent in any single product, and many platforms only truly excel on a couple of channels.
DMPs
As mentioned above, it is important to integrate consumer data to achieve the best cross-channel performance. Data Management Platforms (DMPs) help advertisers do this. DMPs are key for cross-channel initiatives as they help companies keep all customer data in a single, centralized location. They serve as a central hub for all customer data, integrating every consumer touchpoint into a single reservoir of information. DMPs also offer a wealth of third-party data providers that add another dimension to existing information. DMPs analyze all of this information and recommend high-value audience segments for advertisers to target in future efforts.
As audiences continue to diversify their media consumption habits, advertisers need to adopt a cross-channel mindset in order to keep up. Understanding the differences in each approach is a good start, but as the landscape is in a constant flux, staying on top of digital advertising trends will help keep advertisers a step ahead.
What is search advertising?
Paid search, also referred to as search advertising, search engine marketing (SEM), or pay-per-click (PPC), is the process of advertising on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. Search advertising software serves to automate this process. Search marketers use paid search in conjunction with search engine optimization practices and organic search marketing software to form a comprehensive search strategy. Search marketers may also utilize other digital advertising channels such as display, mobile, social, or video as further avenues to reaching their target audience.
Why is paid search advertising important?
Paid search advertising allows advertisers to place their product in front of people who are already looking for it. Because paid search advertising is targeted based on people’s searches, ads are only shown to those already seeking out a product or service, increasing the likelihood that they will click on an ad and convert to paying customers. Furthermore, there are more than 3.5 billion searches performed per day on Google alone, and not targeting that audience is significant lost potential.
Where do potential customers see search ads?
Paid search advertisements run across search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Search ads are generally purchased based on relevant keywords and appear after someone includes that keyword in their search. Ads may also appear across a search engine’s search network. Search networks consist of a collective of partner websites through which search engines can deliver keyword-specific content, allowing advertisers to cast a broader net with their ads.
What do search ads look like?
Search ads come primarily in two different formats: text ads and product listing ads.
Text ads are simple text-based ads that appear above and to the right of organic search rankings. As shown here, these results are clearly marked as ads to avoid any confusion to the end user. Some search engines also offer extensions to include contact information, location, and other supplementary information.
Product listing ads (PLAs) are for products and merchandise, and they provide more visibility by including an image and price along with the description and link. The format mimics organic e-commerce results, so it’s familiar and accessible for consumers.
How are search ads priced?
Search ads are paid for on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis: Advertisers pay each time someone clicks on their ad. The price per click is determined based on how competitive a given keyword is. The more popular the keyword, the more expensive it is. Price also varies across search engines. The average cost per click (CPC) across Google and the Yahoo! Bing Network ranged from $0.50 to $5.82—depending on the industry and search network—in the first quarter of 2014.
What are important trends in paid search advertising?
Mobile Prominence — In May 2015, Google reported that more searches are performed on mobile devices than PCs in the US. As more and more users turn to their phones and tablets to search, companies are seeing more mobile clicks. As such, advertisers should take a mobile-first approach and take appropriate measures to optimize their PPC ads accordingly. Making sure landing pages are fast, simple, and to the point will be key to getting the most out of your paid search advertising.
Personalized PPC — With more data than ever on searchers’ personas, paid search advertising will continue to become more data driven. In particular, remarketing will continue to increase, allowing marketers to “follow” their audience around the web based on a consumer’s prior engagement with your brand. This people-based marketing is becoming ever more evident as conversion rates of these ads grow. The logic is simple, your audience is much more likely to click something when they have engaged with it already.
Keyword Importance Waning — It is the “beginning of the end for keywords“, according to Larry Alton, contributor to Search Engine Journal. Experts predict that keywords will be knocked off as top priority in PPC strategies with the adoption of product listing ads (PLAs) and search engines’ growing focus on semantic search.
Paid search advertising is nothing new. While it is not the most flashy of advertising methods, when performed correctly, it continues to provide fruitful results that raise the bottomline. That said, as the channel begins to truly embrace a new, data-driven approach, there are opportunities to capitalize on the new possibilities not previously provided by search engines.
