06/28/2022

Complete Guide to Digital Advertising Ad Types and Formats

Insights

8 min remaining

Today’s economy’s key driver is constant change. No matter how experienced or new to the field, marketers need to be on the cutting edge of the market to stay relevant. They can then focus on improving their online advertising strategies.

Online advertising is a new challenge as there are many different ad types and platforms. 

Online advertising has many benefits

Today’s most important marketing medium is online marketing. However, mass marketing such as radio advertising and printed media will not help you build a personal relationship with your customers like online marketing.

Online advertising allows you to reach millions worldwide and target your audience. Online advertising is simple and easy.

As if that wasn’t enough to convince you to look into internet advertising, there are many other top benefits. You can also save money by using online advertising instead of traditional marketing methods that cost money. Some sites allow you to promote your website for free. This will help the environment and reduce paper usage.

Different types of online advertising 

Online advertising is possible regardless of whether you’re a veteran or a paid specialist. Online ads come in many forms.

These are the four types of online advertising that you should be familiar with to choose the best ad format for your campaign.

  • Social media ads 
  • Paid Search Ads
  • Native advertising
  • Display advertising

Social media ads

Social media advertising should be a priority with over half of the world now using social media. 

You can promote your business using social media. Different channels will allow you to reach targeted audiences. You can reach specific audiences through different channels.

Think about who your target audience is and what platforms they use. Consider the characteristics of your promotion. This will help you choose where to spend your money to get better results.

Facebook

Targeting your audience has never been easier. Facebook boasts over 2.7 billion users per month, and more than 90,000,000 small business owners who make use of its free tools to help them reach their target audience.

  • Core audiences: This tool will allow you to identify your core audiences based on their age, interests, and geographical location.
  • To reach people who are already interested in your company, you can create custom audiences.
  • By looking at similar audiences, you can reach people like your customers.

Facebook offers many advertising options. These include story ads, image, and video ads.

  • Video ads have become very popular due to their visual appeal.
  • Story ads let you combine short-form videos with photo content.
  • Lead ads can be used to gather information from your newsletter subscribers, event registrations, or follow-up services without redirecting users to the Facebook platform.

Find out more about the different formats and how you can use them to make Facebook ads that work.

Instagram

Instagram has the second-highest ROI of all social media channels. This is particularly relevant for marketers targeting audiences aged 18-34 years old. You can also create ads for Facebook and promote them on either one or both of the channels. You can also create custom campaigns in Facebook Ads Manager to target your Instagram audience.

Instagram ads are similar to Facebook. Shop for products and ads in Explore ads.

  • Users have the option to use Explore to find new content and explore their interests. This allows marketers to reach new audiences.
  • Shopping Post ads include a product tag. Shoppable posts can help increase the visibility for your products, or you can create an ad in Ads Manager.

Twitter

Twitter is used by more than 187 million people each day. Twitter has over 187 million daily active users worldwide. If your target audience ranges between 35-65, ads can help you reach your business goals.

There have been many success stories of B2B and E-commerce companies using Twitter ads through influencer marketing campaigns. Statistics show that over 40% of people have purchased after viewing a sponsored tweet.

You can leverage your advertising strategy across Pinterest and Instagram by targeting a specific audience via Twitter. You can also use Conversational ads to target a specific audience on Twitter. These ads include CTA buttons that promote specific hashtags and are great for word-of-mouth promotion and product launches. You will need to open a Twitter support ticket to gain access.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn ranks second among B2B marketers. It is second only to Facebook. LinkedIn ranks second only to Facebook.

LinkedIn’s message ads let you communicate one-on-one with your audience. You can promote free trials or registrations, and many other interactive features like Lead Gen Forms and automated calls to actions, LinkedIn’s Message ads will increase your website traffic and help generate more leads.

YouTube

YouTube ads are the fourth most popular social media platform for marketers. You can reach potential customers with YouTube ads. They also allow you to get them to click on videos they have viewed. Only people who are interested in your advertisement will pay.

Advertising on YouTube can appear in videos before and during searches. can also be with targeted demographics and different ad formats.

Pinterest

Pinterest boasts over 442 million monthly active users. Most of the users are women, and they place a strong emphasis on visuals. Marketers can link the pinned items with their pages to drive traffic.

This website is worth looking at for your online advertising strategy.

Paid search ads

Paid search ads, also known as SEM or search engine marketing, help businesses reach customers who are searching for their query on search engines. This means that you don’t have to pay until someone clicks on your advertisement.

While organic search results can be a great way to grow your company, they’re not as effective as paid ads. Search engines help protect your brand from potential buyers.

Bing and Yahoo are the most widely used search engines for paid search advertising. Google is also the most popular. More than 70% of global searches are made through Google. 

Use search engines to determine where you should invest your money. We have a guide for advertising on Google that will help you build your online advertising strategy.

Native advertising

Native advertising functions according to the media format it appears in. Studies show that although 31% might not know they are seeing a paid advertisement they are still more likely to buy from the brand than other people.

There are three types of native ads. Native ads are found in your social network feed as “In Feed”. Google searches will show search and promoted listings at the top, or sidebar, of Google search results. After you have read an article online, content recommendations will appear.

These ads let you advertise your products or services online to a wide audience and establish a relationship with publishers. Your ad, although it isn’t very promotional, still does the job.

Display advertising

You can choose to display ads that are text-, image, or video-based. These ads are intended to encourage users to click on a page to take a specific action (e.g. make a purchase or go to the next page). You can click through to a page and make a purchase ).

Display ads are a very popular form of advertising. Display ads can trick users into clicking on misleading advertisements. However, they can be used to target the right audience with the correct data.

Google display ads

Advertisers can create visually appealing ads by using Google Display Network (GDN). They can place them on millions of sites (including YouTube, Gmail, and YouTube) from their Google Ads account. 

Google Ads can handle bidding. It uses its automated targeting and bidding capabilities for determining your ideal audience.

Facebook’s audience network

Facebook’s Audience Network uses the same targeting data as Facebook to allow you to place native ads, banner ads, in-stream ads, and real-time bidding to maximize every impression.

About the author

Kobe Digital is a unified team of performance marketing, design, and video production experts. Our mastery of these disciplines is what makes us effective. Our ability to integrate them seamlessly is what makes us unique.