What kind of ads do you see on a blog post, Google search result page, or social networks like Facebook or Instagram? Are they relevant to your business? How do you know?
Google, Facebook and Instagram are some of the biggest advertising platforms in the world. They both offer advertising options that allow businesses to reach their target audience.
Advertising on these platforms is a great way to promote your brand. But how do you choose the best ad format for your business? There are several types of ads that you should consider before deciding which ones are right for you.
Google recently rebranded its popular advertising platform Google Adwords to Google Ads.
Whether you call it ads, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, paid search ads or paid search, one thing’s for sure is that the revenue from these adverts forms a significant chunk of the income generated by the search giant.
Money derived from serving ads to an active user or potential customer is also a significant source of revenue for other online giants such as Bing, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and lots more.
Answers to FAQs On How to Create the Best Ads Online.
Below are brief answers to some questions people also ask me about ads. The following are based mainly on Google, which operates one of the most popular online advertising platforms.
What Are Ads in Short?
An advertisement (often shortened to an ad) promotes a product, brand or service to a viewership to attract interest, engagement and sales. Advertisements come in many forms, from copy to interactive video, and have evolved into a crucial app marketplace feature.
Ads are adverts in text, image banners, or videos that show across search engine result pages on Google, Bing etc. Ads are texts or image banners and videos placed on various websites online to advertise products and services.
If your brand has an online presence, you will undoubtedly have dabbled in advertising on one of these platforms. Or you had their adverts placed on your website too! Right?
How Do I Find My Ads?
Sign into your Google Ads account and click Ads & extensions in the left page menu. You can see statistics about your ads from the Ads page, such as clicks, impressions, clickthrough rates, etc. Use the date range selector in the upper right corner of the page to filter the statistics by date.
What Does Google Ads Mean?
Google Ads is a product in that you can promote your business, help sell products or services, raise awareness, and increase traffic to your website.
What are the four main types of ads?
Display Advertising: This is graphic advertising on Internet websites, apps or social media through banners or other advertising formats. The primary purpose of display advertising is to deliver general advertisements and brand messages to site visitors.
Video Advertising: A video ad comprises online display advertisements with videos and advertising before, during and after a video stream on the internet.
Mobile Advertising: This is a form of advertising via mobile phones or other mobile devices. It is a subset of mobile marketing. Mobile advertising can be text ads via SMS or banner advertisements embedded in a mobile website.
Native Advertising: This is also called sponsored content. It is a type of advertising that matches the form and function of the platform upon which it appears. Often, it functions like an advertorial and manifests as a video, article, or editorial.
What Is the Most Effective Way for a Small Business to Advertise?
The following are some of the most effective ways for a business to advertise online.
Paid Search Marketing: According to Econsultancy, paid search marketing allows businesses to advertise within the sponsored listings of a search engine or a partner site by paying either each time their ad is clicked (pay per click) or, less commonly, when their ad is displayed (CPM or cost per thousand) or when phone contact is generated, which is ‘pay per call’.
Social Media Advertising: Social media advertising is an offshoot of digital marketing that uses a social network and website to promote a product or service to your ideal customer or custom audience.
Referral Promotion: According to Shopify, a referral program is a system that incentivises previous customers to recommend your products to their families and friends. Retail stores create their referral programs as a way to reach more people. It’s a marketing strategy that asks previous happy, loyal customers to become brand advocates.
Email Marketing: Email marketing sends a commercial message using email, typically to a group of people. Every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing broadly. It uses email to send advertisements, request business partnerships, or solicit sales or donations.
Local Listings: A local listing (or local citation) is an online mention of a local business’s name, address, phone number, or website. These listings can occur in Google search and map, local directories, websites or blogs, social media, or within apps.
Optimising for Local Search: According to HubSpot, it is improving search engine visibility and conversion rate for local businesses, primarily those with brick-and-mortar locations. By following local SEO best practices, companies can improve organic traffic from searches performed by customers in nearby areas.
Which Method of Advertising Is the Best and Most Cost-effective for Your Business?
Online advertising is generally more cost-effective and practical because you can target your advertising budget at a more select group of people and closely measure how that audience responds to your advertising.
Are Online Ads Effective?
In one word. Yes! But it depends on various factors. These factors include the organic content, search engine or social platform you’re running your ads on, the format of your ads, the goal of your ads, your target audience, your product or service, your budget, the time of the day, week, month or year that you’re running your campaign and so on. You can calculate all these with a tool like Google Analytics.
That Google is well on its way to becoming a trillion-dollar company shows that its ads are effective; otherwise, its users will not be advertising! Right?
How to Target Ads
How to target ads often depends on the goal of your ad campaign. You can focus your ads on demographics, psychographics, and previous site visits. The targeting you choose will affect the performance of your ads.
Which Ads Work?
Again, this depends on factors such as your product or service, your industry, your target audience, the campaign you’re running, the goal of your ad campaign, your budget, the time and duration of your campaign, title, design, keywords, text/copy of your ads, your ad platform.
Which ads work often varies from one person or brand to another based on the factors above.
I have summarised my personal experience over the years of which ads work. Contact me to request a copy of the My Experience with Ads pdf guide. Get this guide to find out my personal favourite ads that work.
Mind you, these are ads that worked for me! You still have to do your research to discover which ads work for you. But you can use my experience as a guide to know how to create your ad campaigns.
The fact that Google is well on its way to becoming a trillion-dollar company shows that its ads are effective. Otherwise, their users will not be advertising! Click To TweetWill Ads Ever Go Away?
Most people hate seeing unexpected ads popping up here and there online. You hate seeing ads when trying to connect with your loved ones. It’s natural.
But will ads ever go away? I doubt it. Instead, the technology behind the ad campaigns will become ‘smarter’ to ensure the advertisements you see are more relevant to you and add value to your online experience.
Can Ads Read Your Mind?
No. Instead, using technology, Google and other tech giants can study and analyse your online behaviour. With that data, they can predict your intentions when you’re online to present ads relevant to your online experience. Therefore, you are less likely to view the ads as intrusive, and you are more likely to take the necessary action requested by the advertiser.
Where Do Adverts Appear?
Regarding search engines, ads appear on your search result pages and other websites that the search engines have partnered with to display their ads. Regarding social media, adverts appear in your feed and other sites partnered with the social media platform to show ads.
Why are Adverts on My Phone?
These days more and more people spend a significant amount of time on their mobile devices. To be considered helpful, an advert has to reach its target audience. So, if your target audience is mobile, your ads must be on mobile phones too!
How to Determine When Ads Work?
Determining when ads work depends on your goals before launching your ad campaign. If your campaigns meet your goals, you know it works.
Regarding digital marketing, you will need to dig into the data provided by the various ad providers to see whether your ad is working. Finally, if your advert can improve your bottom line, it works!
Who Buys Ads?
These days the organic reach of content has reduced, especially for brands. So, any business owner serious about growing their business online and becoming more successful invests in adverts!
Do you need help with your paid search ad campaign? Get in touch.
Conclusion
This article taught us about the different types of ads and how to choose the right ad type. We also saw the importance of testing other ads and why you need to try different types of ads.
In conclusion, it’s essential to test different ads to determine which ones perform best for your business.
Related Article(s)
- Best Practices for Email Marketing Campaigns
- The Top Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
- Understanding Social Media Marketing
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