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Online advertising: get it right!

06 March 2023

Online advertising: many people think it's the future, but they're wrong - it's now the reality of the present. You could say you are missing out if you are left behind and don't take advantage of the many opportunities this digital tool offers. Advertising tools are diverse and lifelong learning in this field is guaranteed. But how is online advertising different from its older brother, offline advertising? What capabilities do older types of advertising have that make them less effective? Our blog article explores these questions and the answers.

Offline advertising

Even ancient ruin scholars have discovered that advertising, marketing, the promotion of goods or services has always been part of human history. There is nothing new under the sun, except perhaps the tools: the forms that can still be part of a campaign and are still considered offline tools have evolved alongside the technological revolution. The most important of these are:

THE PRESS RELEASE

It appears in daily & weekly newspapers and magazines. It is characterised by a passive, receptive reading culture, with no interactivity. Although it is constantly being simplified, even today it still expects a certain intellectualism from its recipients, who have to interpret the intellectual unity usually represented by images and text. The physical nature of press advertising means that it cannot be altered, and the advertiser must be sure that there are no errors in the material delivered. It also has the disadvantage that only one advertisement can be displayed at a time on a single advertising space.

THE HIGHLIGHTS

Its huge advantage over, for example, an advertisement popping up on a website is that it cannot be switched off or on. Its large surface area makes it very attractive, but paradoxically, it is also the reason why you cannot put a lot of information on it, because people are not willing to spend a lot of time on a cluttered ad.

THE RADIO RECORD

Although podcasts have led to a renaissance in audio culture, non-interactive, single-sense radio spots are generally not as effective. People often encounter this marketing tool while driving and are unable to follow up on a product being advertised. It is no coincidence that the role of radio in the advertising mix worldwide is declining.

THE TV AD

No, television isn't dead, it's just slowly moving into the digital space - anyone watching Netflix or consuming content on YouTube is proof of this change in behaviour. But TV advertising is an almost inescapable branding tool, because ‘I saw it on TV’ is still an important argument for the product being promoted. Nevertheless, many people use TV as a background and viewers tend to switch on when the advertisements start - dampening the power of the TV ad.

Although press and TV advertising, for example, still has more prestige - appearing in a trade magazine is the optimal solution! - there are many questions about their effectiveness.

The disadvantages of offline advertising

The main counterargument is that these channels cannot be accurately targeted and measured. If anything, the emergence of websites and web pages and the spread of Google Analytics have taught us to respect numbers. In other words, every advertisement is only worth as much as the number of people who see it and are willing to act on it. While offline tools were measured long before the advent of the internet, the digital world has given advertisers and agencies a fantastic opportunity.

In the beginning was the WWW

The latest history of advertising was started by the graphic representation of the internet, and it is being written ever since. Around 1993, the World Wide Web broke out of the previously dull world of research institutes and, as the saying goes, was waiting in a colour-rich robe to connect the world.

It was soon decided what its advertising model would be: the banner appeared for the first time in 1994. This first online ad in the form of a strip was created for the legendary Wired (then Hotwired) magazine, and users clicked on the never-before-seen graphic almost mindlessly.

Observe and measure

Since it was already possible to measure it accurately, it was soon decided that the digital advertising ecosystem on the internet was based on the so-called "observation-based economic model". This meant that ad creators knew exactly how many clicks and visits were following their online platforms. Based on this, several innovations could strengthen marketing:

unlike physics, the ‘cost of entry’ has become cheaper,
it was faster to put together and publish an online ad,
it became easier to change ads even within a day,
A/B tests could be used to assess which ads were more effective,
new digital formats could be introduced (webisodes, special films, layered pop-ups, etc.).

This brings us to the specialisation of online advertising, brought about by the digital technology revolution and the start-up world. But which platforms, channels and tools are we talking about?

Online advertising

WHEN AN ADVERTISER USES THE INTERNET TO GET THEIR MESSAGE ACROSS, IT'S AN ONLINE MARKETING TOOL, ONLINE ADVERTISING.

Since the 1990s, there have been many different sub-areas: website or homepage, SEO, social media marketing, PPC, email marketing, content marketing, etc. The most important of these are the followings.

Google Ads

The Great Search War ended with the launch of Google in 1998. Who remembers the names Altavista or Lycos? Google's search engine gave users more useful and more numerous results than ever before. The relatively young company soon found out that it was possible to place advertisements on their website in place of the results, matching the search queries.

The sponsored content is displayed according to an algorithm that ranks and displays ads related to keywords entered in a search. The final ranking is decided in a lightning-fast, automated online auction at the moment of the search.

Ads are ranked according to a wide range of factors, including budget, relevance and landing page quality. Google Ads currently has no serious global competitors, except in two markets where it is not the market leader.

Facebook

Founded in 2004, Facebook has successfully broken into a segment where previous competitors have faltered. Before that, MySpace had gained relative prominence, but Facebook took it all: users, advertising, global interest and engagement.

Like Google Ads, the Mark Zuckerberg-branded business enables highly precise targeting, aided by the ongoing collection and processing of user data based on consent. Targeting by categories such as gender, interests, age or location makes it particularly inescapable. A popular product is the Messenger messaging service, which now also accepts ads.

ONLY FACEBOOK?

Video and picture ads are generally more attractive than text ads on Google. On the downside, despite its large user base - 3 billion people a month - it seems to have started to decline in popularity. But Facebook's parent company Meta still has a weapon when it comes to online advertising.

Instagram

Meta acquired the then two-year-old platform in 2012. Instagram is a platform for uploading images and videos - and the online ads that run on it follow the same recipe. Following the example of one of its smaller competitors, Snap, users have the option to use so-called Stories, a self-destructing stream of related images and photos within 24 hours. This was later adopted by Facebook, where ads can also be displayed.

Adverts in more visual industries (e.g. fashion, gastronomy, etc.) can be well targeted here, making them highly cost-effective. Instagram is therefore an excellent platform for branding.

YouTube

In 2006, when YouTube was just a year and a half old, it was bought by Google for a hefty sum. The move was worth it: today, YouTube is almost the world's unofficial interactive TV channel. With its huge user base and its triumph of video-movie culture, YouTube is a popular online advertising tool. Ads appear for 5 to 15 seconds before a video is started, so that you have to watch them all the way through. The trick to this form of advertising, called preroll, is to make the first few seconds exciting, as this is the only way viewers will let the ad continue.

Waze

It is also an app acquired by Google that has combined social media with interactive car maps. This is why Waze is particularly strong in places that advertise to road users: petrol stations, restaurants, car-related products (e.g. tyres). It supports advertisers with four different types of advertising.

TikTok

Chinese company Bytedance's app is well on its way to becoming the world's most popular interface and software. Its huge advantage is that it is easy to use and its algorithm rewards its users better than even Facebook or Instagram.

The platform, which typically features masses of shorter, 30-60 second uploaded videos, is in line with the media consumption habits of our time: we see videos, short, almost endless, and entertaining. Unlike YouTube, the screen here is vertical, not horizontal: so creatives designed for essentially flat, longitudinal screens (TV, cinema) need to be rethought.

If you're curious about the mysteries of TikTok advertising, you can read about it here.

SEO

As we have seen, a company's communication fate is greatly influenced by how it performs in Google search. Experience has shown that only a fraction of users are willing to look at the second results page. For this reason, it is in the interest of every business to have its website ranked as high as possible in organic (non-paid) search results for the words and phrases that are relevant to it. In order for a website to rank well on search results pages, it needs to be ‘adapted’ to Google's algorithms.

Metaverse and the world of AR/VR

But what does the future hold? Will newer devices and channels leave the world of science fiction films? It is still difficult to answer that question. What is certain is that if we have to learn something new in this field, we will do so along the lines of what we have already learned in online advertising: we will continue to monitor, measure and react quickly, and therefore continue to produce such advertising for the next decade or two.

Do it right!

Effective online advertising and digital marketing is not a matter of magic, it's a matter of know-how. It's worth knowing the ins and outs of advertising platforms, and choosing a partner who is a professional at it! If you're looking to run online campaigns that get results, you couldn't have come to a better place: with Meraki Marketing, you'll find the best solution. Contact us for a quote!

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06 March 2023