Digital Advertising: 5 of The Latest Strategies

Digital advertising is growing and maturing in response to fast-changing technologies, creating new opportunities that increase marketing ROI.

Here are some of the hottest approaches to digital advertising today – as well as some strategies that certainly will become advertising’s bread-and-butter in the world of tomorrow.

01| Go Native 

Presenting more successful results than traditional ad formats, native advertising is lately becoming one of the hottest ad formats, especially among major publishers. Native advertising actually seeks to mimic the editorial content surrounding it and creates a less disruptive advertising experience—with readers frequently thinking they are reading a story or a column, not an ad.

Using native ads as a part of your campaign strategy can be highly effective but also highly cost. The best way to start—if you are operating on a lower budget—is to explore native advertising options for niche or trade publications.

02| Real-Time Bidding

The problems of display advertising are simple: For advertisers, we’re still working with a CPM model of buying impressions in bulk and it’s a challenging model, because you are forced to purchase impressions for the same price per unit even though each has a different value to a campaign. For publishers, the traditional display model is flawed because, sometimes, up to 70% of inventory is unsold (or sold for little money). For small publishers, there frequently isn’t a sales team that can properly sell quality, targeted inventory.

Digital advertising needs to find ways to provide better value. Enter RTB. RTB leverages a bidding system that allows display inventory to be purchased by the individual impression. It happens in milliseconds…before a page is loaded by a consumer.

For advertisers, RTB offers to target and cost efficiency opportunities that will change the online advertising landscape. It provides more cost-effective reach and nearly eliminates wasted impressions. For publishers, RTB delivers higher revenues on inventory. It opens up the inventory to a buying market that is designed to increase the value of every impression.

03| Mobile Video Ads

Consumers are watching and sharing videos wherever they are, and the result is that mobile video advertising is growing exponentially—expected to reach $6 billion by 2018.

Marketers are using video in apps to engage audiences between game plays or tasks, while social media networks like YouTube and Facebook are capitalizing on the growing demand and offering premium video ads for businesses using their platform. It seems that, generally, the strongest video ads are those that are funny or heart-warming and have a strong call-to-action. Extra points go for being interactive, like in Wendy’s recent full-screen Facebook app, which was a real hit with fans.

04| Behavioral Targeting

Behavioral targeting is about offering targeted advertising experiences based on individual Web-browsing behaviors (such as pages visited or searches made). By fleshing out consumer profiles with details about geography, demographics and purchase history, advertisers can fine-tune their messages, leading to improved click-through rates and higher levels of interaction.

If you’re just starting to implement a new behavioral targeting strategy, I find that the simplest entry point is to provide different messaging for new or repeat visitors—or to adjust messaging depending on how visitors landed on your site.

05| Give Me What I Want!

The big shift in the growing range of digital marketing options is that these emerging strategies create new and greater opportunities for relevant and personal advertising. Consider capitalizing on these new forms of content sooner rather than later—or, at least, develop a plan for when and how to jump into the game.