There are several digital advertising platforms available today with unique targeting capabilities to reach your online audience, wherever they are.
For example, Search ads are useful for active advertising, showing ads only to people who are directly searching for a particular service or product.
Display and social ads are more passive and are better for exposure or brand awareness campaigns to increase visibility around a product or service.
Your online campaign will likely use a combination of multiple digital advertising platforms to reach your audience across multiple channels.
In this article, we’ll examine the top paid ad platforms, their applications, and their unique ad formats so you can begin advertising your company’s products and services as soon as possible.
The targeting options available to you
Every online advertising platform offers custom targeting capabilities to hone in on your target audience. The main targeting options made available to you include:
- Geographical location
- Demographics
- Similar audiences
- Affinity audiences
- Interests
- Browsing habits
These are just the basic targeting options. Each platform has its own targeting capabilities to make it easier to fill in the gaps to reach more people you may not have considered before.
The main types of online advertising formats
As the internet continues to grow, and more platforms, apps, and websites are created, new advertising formats will be created to reach new audiences.
As of 2022, these are the four most common types of online ads you and your target audience are likely to encounter during a routine internet session:
Search
Search ads are the go-to pay-per-click ad format that most people are familiar with. They are text-based ads that appear in search engines, such as Google or Bing.
To purchase a Search ad, marketers must bid on the competitive keywords used to trigger their ad campaigns to their target audience after a search.
When a user types in a search query, Google’s search engine results pages (SERP) now shows the top three results as paid ads.
Search ads closely resemble organic search results, except they have an “Ad” disclaimer in front of the domain name.
Search ads comprise of a few parts:
- A headline
- A display URL
- A meta-description text
- Extensions: such as sitelinks, snippets, price extensions, click to call, location, and more
Social media platforms
Social ads are placed on social media sites, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, either in sidebars or mixed into the news feeds to show ads to highly targeted audiences.
Social ads can range from sponsored posts, pictures, graphics, videos, and more.
To purchase social ads, marketers can set up campaigns based on particular demographics, pages followed, interests, and more targeting capabilities.
Unlike search ads, which are triggered by specific keywords, social ads are more passive advertising, showing ads to people who follow particular interests or pages.
Display
Display ads are banner ads or visual-based ads that usually inhabit the sidebars or top banners of a website.
Usually, display ads can be seen on millions of Google Display Networks websites that monetize by showing display ads on their sites.
Display ads can also be combined with retargeting ads, showing display ads to people of websites they’ve previously visited before, in order to entice them to come back to their website.
Video
Video ads are becoming a popular paid ad format. Because of the increased competition with search-based ads, some marketers find more success creating video ads to stand out from their competition.
Video ads can be shown on YouTube, Facebook, and before videos shown on Google Video partners network.
What devices will your audience be viewing content on?
Did you know half of all internet traffic is done on a mobile phone?
This is useful to know when setting up an online ad campaign. You may wish to consider creating a click-to-call campaign, particularly if you’re a local Home Services business in need of more foot traffic.
7 popular PPC digital advertising platforms for targeting traffic
Many people are familiar with Google Ads or Facebook Ads, but did you know there are even more platforms available to reach your targeting audience?
Let’s examine the top choices, as well as choices you may not have considered.
Google Ads
Google is the reigning king of all paid online ads. Currently, Google Ads offers up to 7 different ad formats:
- Text
- Responsive
- Image
- App promotion ads
- Video
- Product shopping ads
- Call-only Ads
Google is also a leading educator on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, offering Google Ads certifications to teach marketers the best online advertising practices.
Facebook Ads
After Google, Facebook Ads is the second most used ad platform for social media advertising.
Because Facebook’s audience is massive (around 180 million US users) it’s an attractive option for marketers looking to reach new audiences.
Facebook Ads is simpler to set up than Google Ads and offers many useful features such as Lookalike Audiences, which uses machine learning to deliver your ads to new people who are likely to be interested in your products.
Instagram Ads
Through the Facebook Ads platform, users can also create visual Instagram ad campaigns. These ads can be videos, pictures, or graphics that get inserted into users’ feeds as sponsored or promoted posts.
Twitter Ads
Twitter Ads can be set up to show sponsored posts within users’ feeds, or on the sidebar.
Twitter lets users set up promoted ads, follower ads, Twitter amplify, Twitter takeover, and Twitter live.
Twitter has multiple media formats to reach targeted audiences, including:
- Images ads
- Video ads
- Sliding carousel ads
- Moment ads
- Text ads
LinkedIn Ads
For targeting professionals, LinkedIn Ads is a must.
LinkedIn Ads can be used to sponsor content, sponsor messaging, create text and dynamic ads, or be used for lead generation.
Microsoft Ads
Microsoft Ads, formerly Bing Ads, while not as popular as Google Ads, is still a viable option for meeting your audience who doesn’t use Google products.
Because Google has a higher market share, it can charge more for biddable keywords. Luckily, Microsoft Ads keywords can be up to 70% lower than Google, so it’s worth considering for your next campaign.
Amazon Ads
If you’re looking to sell physical products, you need to consider Amazon Ads.
Amazon offers multiple campaign types used for brand awareness and sales, including:
- Sponsored Products
- Sponsored Brands
- Sponsored Display
- Stores
- Video Ads
- Audio Ads
- Custom Advertising
- Amazon DSP
- Amazon Attribution
Get more online advertising success rates with Denver PPC
Denver PPC is a Colorado-based team of pay-per-click professionals and is a certified Google Partner company.
Our team of paid media specialists excels in creating and managing online advertising campaigns across multiple digital advertising platforms and industries.
Denver PPC also offers white label PPC management and white label PPC outsourcing for marketing agencies looking to offer their clients PPC services.
Do you have an existing Facebook, Microsoft, or Google Ads account? Reach out to receive your Free 10-Point PPC Analysis — we’ll take a look at your accounts and let you know how we can optimize to get more out of your digital marketing campaigns.
Text or call us at 877-584-3772 or click here to get started.
