Online Ad Campaigns

Even the best product or service won’t sell on a mass scale without at least a little marketing. In the past, brands invested heavily in advertising in newspapers, on the radio, television or simply in urban spaces, thus reaching a large audience that was impossible to pinpoint. However, the development of online marketing has brought significant changes in the allocation of promotional budgets – in most cases, first place has definitely been taken by online campaigns on the Internet. What are the types and which channels are worth betting on?

The answer won’t be a surprise – it depends. Depends on what? First of all it depends on the industry in which we operate, promotional budget and the target group we want to reach. Of course we also need to consider what we actually want to achieve through advertising. There are a lot of possibilities of running an online campaign. Let us briefly present the most popular ones below.

Google Ads – More Than Search Engine Ads

One of the most effective ways of promoting a brand online is a Google Ads campaign. The giant from Mountain View offers its users a system by means of which it’s possible to advertise not only on Google products but also on many of its advertising partners’ websites, in formats such as:

• Text ads in the search engine network – this type of promotion is otherwise known as sponsored links. They appear at the top or bottom of the search results page and are marked with the label “advertisement”. Apart from headlines and descriptions, they may contain various types of extensions, e.g. links to other pages of your website, explanations, location or information on promotions. Thanks to this, the link to our site not only appears on the first page of results, but also occupies a large area, so it attracts the attention of recipients.
• Ads in the Google Display Network – this type of Internet advertising campaign has a graphic form and is displayed on partner websites of the giant from Mountain View. This is a very wide network including both small and huge portals, industry websites, blogs, local sites and many other sites on various topics. Ads can take the form of banners appearing between paragraphs of articles or on the side of the page, in the background (behind the main content), full-screen or pop-ups. In the Display Network you can also make available dynamic ads, the elements of which are automatically selected depending on the user’s preferences (based on his previous Internet behaviour).
• YouTube Ads – video campaigns can be skippable or non-skippable and appear before, after or during films. Also very popular are Bumper Ads, which are six-second ads that are highly effective, especially on mobile devices.
• Product Listing Ads (PLA) – they contain a photo of a specific product, its name and price and lead directly to a subpage where you can buy it. They appear on the search results page and in Google Shopping. In order to create campaigns of this type, you need to have an account in Google Merchant Center and implement the so-called product feed, i.e. a file with data about the products you have on offer. Data for the ads are automatically downloaded from the feed. This is an excellent format for online stores, because the user immediately has the key information when making purchasing decisions.

Why Use Google Ads?

Google Ads is a system that gives advertisers a wide range of promotional opportunities that are not provided by traditional advertising on radio or television. The most frequently mentioned advantages of the system include:

• Advanced targeting – with our message we can reach a strictly specified group of recipients, which gives us the highest chance of conversion. We can set the group according to the users’ interests, place of residence, age, life situation (family, children, renovation, house purchase, etc.), reach the people who came into contact with our website or simply place ads on pages with specific topics. We may also freely set the ad display schedule and territorial reach or modify rates depending on various parameters (e.g. device type).
• Paying for the effect – in the case of Google Ads campaigns you do not have to pay for the display of an advertisement. The budget will be used only when we achieve our goal, for example, when someone clicks on our ad or watches a promotional video (depending on the selected model of payment).
• Full control over the budget – at any time during the campaign you can check how much you have spent and increase or decrease your spending.
• Quickly visible effects – we can run an ad on Google Ads at any time, without leaving home, and it becomes visible on the web almost immediately (you have to wait for verification, but this usually does not take long). Thanks to this the effects can be seen much faster than, for example, in the case of positioning.
• Constant access to statistics – on an ongoing basis we can check which of our advertisements have the best results, identify keywords that generate the most conversions, etc.
• Increasing brand awareness – our ad is displayed on the first page of search results or on the Google partners’ websites, so even if the user goes to our website, he may remember the company’s name, logo or special offer.

Google Ads – Who Is it For?

Google Ads advertising is a good way of promotion for almost all brands. It works well for both online stores and service businesses. However, you should know that this type of campaign, to be profitable, should be regularly optimized, and optimization is not an easy task for a layman. Therefore, when choosing this type of campaign, you should learn more about Google Ads or take the help of a specialist.

Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads – When Is it Worth it?

Facebook’s ad system has a huge amount of information about social media users – especially when it comes to their interests and preferences. It is on FB or Instagram that we follow fanpages, talk about our hobbies, contribute to discussions, inform about relationships and their end, baby’s birthdays, new pets, we even tag where and what we eat. Therefore, Facebook’s advertising platform gives a good chance to reach precisely those audiences we care about. In this system we can advertise both the post itself (it will then appear on the users’ wall, even if they are not fans of our profile), as well as the entire fanpage, or direct traffic directly to the website. On Facebook we currently have the following ad formats:

• Image – a graphic ad in which we can present our products, logo, information about the offer, photos from the headquarters, etc.
• Video – this format allows you to promote short films or slideshows.
• Carousel – this is a type of advertisement in which we can present up to 10 images or videos – each with its own link. This allows you, for example, to show several promoted or new products in the offer within one advertisement.
• Instant experience – a format designed for mobile devices. If a user clicks on our ad, a full-screen environment appears where you can show images, videos, products, or place a form.
• Collection – an ad that opens as an instant material, used to show multiple products. Recipients can conveniently browse products on mobile devices and make purchases within the ad.

For Instagram Ads, too, we can use graphic, video, and carousel formats, plus choose whether to display the ad in News or Insta Stories.

Advantages of Facebook and Instagram Ads

An online advertising campaign using Facebook has similar advantages to Google Ads. It is relatively cheap advertising, in which we pay for the effects, enabling precise selection of the target group and remarketing. This system also gives access to a large number of statistics and allows you to control expenditure at each stage of the campaign.

What is particularly worth noting when using Facebook advertising platform is the option of choosing a target group Lookalike Audience. Thanks to it, we do not have to select by ourselves what features should be displayed to users with an ad. The system will do it for us, choosing recipients maximally similar to our current customers. So if we have already gathered a certain group of recipients, it’s an easy way to gain more.

Facebook and Instagram – for Who?

Such campaigns are very common and for good reason – delivering great results in many industries. However, you can’t forget that users go to these platforms mainly for entertainment. It is therefore a place where ads for cosmetics, clothes, cafes, hotels or water parks can work great, but not necessarily for funeral services. The same applies to all those industries that provide services in emergencies – such as roadside assistance, locksmith, plumber, electrician, etc. – There is little chance that users will search for them on social media. In such cases, a text ad in the Google Ads search network with a phone call extension will work much better.

Online Campaigns – LinkedIn Ads

LinkedIn is the only platform that has a lot of data about the education and career of internet users. This makes it an ideal place to establish b2b contacts, find employees, partners and create a professional corporate image. Here we have a choice of formats such as:

• Single Image Ad – a format in which we can insert a photo and a description for it. It appears in the news,
• Carousel Image Ad – allows you to place several images with assigned links,
• Video ad – a type of ad in which we present a video on the board with news,
• Event ads – within this format, you can promote in the news an event that you organize, such as a webinar,
• Text ads – contain a headline, description and image. They can appear in various places, for example at the top of the page or on the right side of the screen.
• Sponsored messaging – this type of ad appears directly in users’ inboxes – just like messages from their contacts,
• Follower ads – encourage users to follow a particular profile on LinkedIn. They are dynamic – meaning that in addition to the logo and name of our company, they feature the photo and name of the user to whom the ad is displayed.
• Spotlight ads – direct users to our website or any other landing page. They are also dynamic and adapt to the specific recipient,
• Job ads – another dynamic format, but it allows you to promote offers, reaching potential candidates.

Who are LinkedIn Ads for?

Ads on LinkedIn work well in very specific cases, when you want to target people with specific professional experience, from a specific industry or in specific positions. Although the platform is becoming more and more popular, there are still representatives of only certain industries, especially IT or marketing.

How About Positioning (SEO)?

Website positioning is perhaps the most widely known method of online promotion. Despite the excellent recognition of the term itself, there are very few customers who know what it actually means. Search engine optimization is an action that aims to raise our website in the organic results for a given search term. It includes a number of activities – optimization of the site itself, so that it’s friendly for robots and users, as well as the issue of linking or providing high quality texts. However, what is most important in positioning is the fact that it must be treated as an investment. While Google or Facebook Ads offer quick and repeatable results, positioning will start to bring results only after a few months. In the long run, it’s the cheapest method of acquiring customers and building a reputation.

Other Online Advertising Channels

Of course, this list does not include all the channels in which we can promote ourselves among web users. Online stores can also use Amazon Ads to increase their offer’s visibility on these platforms. There’s also more and more talk about ads on TikTok or Pinterest, which are alternatives to more popular advertising channels. Is it worth taking advantage of these opportunities? It should be decided by analyzing where our target group spends its time.