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Digital Advertising

Vangie Beal
Last Updated October 4, 2022 3:45 am

What is Digital Advertising?

Digital advertising is marketing to a target audience through digital platforms, including social media, email, search engines, mobile apps, affiliate programs, and websites. One of the main benefits of digital advertising is an advertiser can track in real time the success of the campaign. The goal of digital advertising is to inorganically advertise where consumers are and to customize ads to the target audience’s preferences.

The first digital ad ran in 1994 as a banner ad. Since then, the advertising industry has significantly changed due to the introduction of GoogleAdWords, GoogleAdSense, and Facebook in the early 2000s. This industry will constantly evolve as the digital transformation, which is the use of technologies to create or modify business processes, continues.

How to use digital advertising?

Advertisers use concrete data to design digital ads to push traffic to websites, generate leads, build awareness, establish credibility, connect with the target audience, and ultimately, generate sales. Some things to keep in mind when designing a successful digital advertising campaign are the goals of the company, a multi-strategy approach, and resources available. There are multiple different formats of digital advertising, such as:

  • Search engine marketing: These pop up in search results as a small “ad” icon and are the most recognized digital ads. The two most common forms of payment for these ads are pay per click or cost per mile, which is payment based on the impressions the ad receives.
  • Display ads: These are text and images designed in the form of banner ads, pop-up ads, and video ads. Display ads appear on third party sites.
  • Social media ads: Ads that pop up as you scroll through a social media feed.
  • Native advertising: Ads that don’t look like ads; it will say recommended for you and will match content you have previously viewed. You’ll be redirected to the advertiser’s website once you click the natvie ad.
  • Remarketing: This form of digital advertising uses cookies, which follow users on the web and offer ads tailored to recently viewed sites, products, or services.