What is Digital Advertising and Getting started as a Digital Advertiser

Source: MarTech Advisor’s The Beginners Guide to The AdTech EcosystemOpens a new window

Another frequently used term in the realm of digital advertising is AdTech. The advertising ecosystem has two main entities viz. the advertiser and the publisher.

The goal of advertisers is to create and manage ad campaigns, target them to the right prospects and customers; track ad spend and their results, while also finding ways to optimize the bidding process and ad spend.

Publishers — the entities that own the websites — are the digital equivalent of newspapers or magazines — the place where ads are shown — or ‘served’, in digital parlance. They provide the ‘space’ for ads to be shown, manage the ad inventory of different advertisers, collect campaign data and make sure that the customer experience is as positive as possible during the process.

Also Read: Digital Ads and User Experience: Frenemies Forever?Opens a new window

With the whole process being dynamic and taking place in real time, you need a system that functions flawlessly, while serving both parties.

That’s where AdTech comes in. Advertising Technology (AdTech) consists of tools and software that enable the programmatic buying and selling of ads. ‘Programmatic’ is the automated system by which millions of ads can be served to millions of internet users across millions of websites — in real time — and the clicks and responses can be tracked and measured and reported to the advertiser in near-real time.

The AdTech ecosystem consists of ad servers, Supply-Side Platforms (SSP), Demand-Side Platforms (DSP), Data Management Platforms (DMP), ad exchanges, ad networks, analytics, and data suppliers.

Also Read: Why MarTech – AdTech Convergence Matters for you in 2018?Opens a new window

Section II: 5 Aspects of Digital Advertising
 

As we are now acquainted with the concept and various formats of digital advertising, let’s go through a 25-point list divided into five sections, which will help you gain a working knowledge of the main aspects of digital advertising.

 

1. Digital Advertising Metrics
 

“Tracking marketing is a cultural thing. Either tracking matters or it doesn’t. You’re in one camp or the other. Either you’re analytical and data-driven, or you go by what you think works. People who go by gut are wrong.”

~ Stuart McDonald (CMO at Freshbooks)

Metrics help you decide on the next steps to take, with certainty. In this section, we’ll look at five digital advertising metrics that you should track.

Note: These metrics are not specific to any particular website and are useful regardless of the format or type of the digital ad campaign.

 

 

A. Reach and Impressions

‘Reach’ denotes the number of people who were able to see your ad.

‘Impressions’ denote the number of times your ad was displayed. As an ad can be shown to the same person more than once, the number of impressions might be higher than the ‘reach’ in many cases.

B. Click-Through Ratio

Click-Through Ratio (CTR) is the percentage of clicks to impressions. So, if you get two clicks every 100 impressions, your CTR is 2 percent. You can use this metric to understand the effectiveness of different ad campaigns. For example, if you receive the same number of impressions on two different campaigns — the campaign with more clicks will have a better CTR and therefore will have performed better.

C. Conversions

‘Conversion’ is the number of people that completed the intended action by clicking on the ad by following your Call to Action (CTA). The action could be downloading an e-book, purchasing a product or signing up for your services.

D. Cost Per Acquisition

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) measures the aggregate cost incurred to acquire a paying customer. It can be measured by dividing total campaign expenditure by the number of conversions.

E. Return on Investment

Return on Investment (ROI) is the ultimate metric to evaluate the effectiveness of your campaigns. Also known as Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), ROI measures how much revenue the campaign generates compared to the cost required to run the campaign.

Also Read: 5 Ways to Use Data-driven AdvertisingOpens a new window

2. Digital Advertising Best Practices

“What really decides consumers to buy or not to buy is the content of your advertising, not its form.”

~ David Ogilvy (Founder of Ogilvy & Mather)

Here are five simple yet crucial best practices to help you kickstart your next digital advertising campaign.

Note: The tips mentioned here are digital ad platform or media agnostic.

 

 

A. Have a Strong Call to Action

CTAs act as a gentle nudge for your audience. When you mention action verbs such as “Download Now,” “Buy Now,” “Learn More,” or “Register Today,” it prompts your user to take the next step in the process.

B. Keep it Simple!

The adage “less is more” stands true in digital advertising. Your audience doesn’t have all the time in the world to go through a long text-heavy ad; therefore, there is no need to be redundant and clutter your ad copy and creatives. The simpler the ad, the more effective it will be!

C. Be Device & Channel Responsive

Your customers live in a multidevice, multi-channel world; and ad creatives must be developed to not just render well on any device or screen size — mobile, laptop, desktop, tablet — but also be relevant to the medium or platform itself. An ad designed for TV is not going to work on the internet or on a mobile.

D. Follow Brand Guidelines

Your brand identity differentiates you from the rest of the pack. To make sure your ads stand out, always place your brand identity design strategically on your ads.

E. Test, Test, and Test

A/B testing is a widely used practice by marketers and advertisers to understand what resonates with their audience. Keep experimenting with your ads to see what works best and focus on doing more of that. Also stay abreast of the latest updates to the various ad platforms and innovate with them.

Also Read: 5 Practical Ideas to Gamify Your Marketing StrategyOpens a new window

3. Digital Advertising Frauds
 

Along with the benefits that digital advertising brings to brands, the industry is also unfortunately infested with fraudulent activities. Hackers and fraudsters use unethical practices that eat up a massive chunk of advertisers’ budget. StatistaOpens a new window has predicted that ad fraud practices are going to incur losses of $44 billion for brands in 2022, $23 billion more compared to 2018. Here are five examples to be wary of in 2019.

 

A. Bots

**Fraudulent publishers use botnets (a group of bots) to drive high amounts of traffic and clicks to the website that lets publishers meet their revenue goals, but doesn’t serve any purpose to advertisers.**

Botnets are also capable of causing Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks by tipping the web server beyond its capacity, making the website unavailable to its target users.

The human equivalent of bots are click farms. There are essentially low-cost resources whose sole job is to click on ads, bringing no real benefit to the advertiser.

B. Pixel Stuffing

Pixel stuffing, also known as iframe stuffing, is the malpractice of placing ads that are 1*1 pixel (not visible to the human eye) in size. So, an impression is recorded with every pageview, even though the visitor did not see the ad. The advertiser ends up paying money for absolutely nothing.

C. Popunders

Sketchy websites largely use popunders — exactly the opposite of pop-up windows. They appear beneath the main window instead of above. A legitimate impression is recorded even though the visitor was largely unaware of the ad. Although popunders aren’t exactly fraudulent, they still bring no value to advertisers.

D. Domain Spoofing

**Simply put, domain spoofing leads an advertiser to believe that their ad is going to appear on a relevant, premium website when in reality it is not.** Domain spoofing uses a variety of techniques to trick the advertiser and visitors, where the only entity benefiting from it is the fraudster.

E. Ad Stacking

Ad stacking is quite similar to popunders, in terms of results. This method loads a stack of ads on top of one another, so only one ad is visible, but impressions are recorded for every ad. The user never sees the other ads, which are billed to advertisers, though with no results.

Also Read: 3 Tips For Detecting And Preventing Mobile Install FraudOpens a new window

4. Digital Advertising Challenges

“An ad is finished only when you no longer can find a single element to remove.”

~ Robert Fleege (Robert Fleege & Partners)Opens a new window

Along with ad fraud, the following are five critical challenges that digital advertisers and publishers face.

 

A. Ad blockers

**Ad blockers block ads that appear on websites or mobile apps. Aiming to improve the user experience for visitors, ad blockers incidentally affect advertisers and publishers.**

Publishers have found a workaround to this with native advertising. Since native ads come across as a part of the website UI, they are less prone to being blocked by ad blockers.

B. Increased Ad Costs

In this crowded ad space, social media ads and SEM ads have become quite expensive. Although bigger brands are putting more money into their ad budgets, the ROI is not as it used to be.

C. Lack of Transparency

Transparency has been a focal point of conversations among the digital advertising fraternity for quite some time now. Ad frauds, lack of standard practices and the difficulty in ascertaining accurate metrics sometimes strain the brand–publisher relationship.

D. Ad Blindness

Today’s buyers are smart. They can ignore what they feel is not relevant to them. To support this, a research report by Google found thatOpens a new window 56.1 percent of ads are not ‘seen’ by internet users.

E. GDPR

The introduction of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe has given a large chunk of users control over their personal data, but the stringent regulations have put advertisers and publishers on the backfoot. And similar regulations are being cemented in the rest of the world including America and several Asian countries. Programmatic advertising was able to recuperate after a setback during the initial months of the post-GDPR world. However, with brands already engaging in contextual advertisingOpens a new window and influencer marketing, digital advertising is set to go through a metamorphosis.

Also Read: The Renaissance of Contextual AdvertisingOpens a new window

5. Digital Advertising Trends of 2019
 

Despite ad fraud and myriad challenges, the digital advertising industry shows no signs of slowing down. Here are five digital advertising trends that will rule 2019.

 

A. The Ascent of Video Advertising

Video saw an upsurge in 2017, and it continued to dominate our news feeds in 2018. Looking at the trend, we can safely say that video isn’t going anywhere soon. New trends such as live videos and 360-degree videos have led to new avenues for marketers to generate engagement.

**The easy availability of recording equipment has made it convenient for businesses to get moving with video marketing.** And to top it all off, the ability to add Closed Captions (CC) to videos has made video search friendly, which is a huge shift in terms of SEO.

B. Native Advertising

As mentioned earlier, native advertising is not intrusive and enables ads to blend in with the content of the page. Instead of directly promoting the brand, native ads showcase content that is relevant to what the user is currently reading. It therefore provides value without disrupting the user experience.

C. Making the Most of Micro-Moments

Micro-moments are specific instances where users turn to their smartphone to know more, go somewhere, or do or buy something. US adults spend an average of 3 hours 35 minutesOpens a new window every day on their smartphones, and in 2019 it is predicted to surpass the time spent watching television. Planning your search marketing campaigns tailored around micro-moments, coupled with the latest locational data-based advertising is a surefire way to succeed in 2019.

D. AR Becomes a Reality

Pokémon GO made a splash when it released in 2016. The combination of augmented reality and location-based gaming made every Pokémon fan and gaming fan go gaga over it. **The introduction of Google Lens and Apple ARKit promises huge opportunities for advertisers to use augmented reality in advertising.**

E. Let Voice Search Be Heard

The rise of conversational commerce and the adoption of digital assistants on a massive scale makes voice searchOpens a new window very hard to ignore in 2019. In fact, by 2020, half of the searches will be voice searchesOpens a new window . Therefore, it’s necessary to lay the foundations by optimizing your current SEM campaigns for voice search.

Section III: Conclusion
 

The Future of Digital Advertising

In 1994 AT&T paid HotWired $30,000Opens a new window for a three-month campaign to place their ad above-the-fold on their website. In 2019, the digital advertising industry will be worth $220.38 billion. From the figures, it is evident that digital advertising has seen staggering growth in the last 25 years. This quick-paced evolution coupled with constant innovation is the sign of a bright future for digital advertising and digital marketers.

Here’s to your success!

We hope that this primer on Digital Advertising helped you and will continue to help you in your marketing journey.

Do share your digital advertising experiences with us on social media. We’re always listening and already ready to have a great conversation!