Digital ads: getting the reach for your messaging.
The power of digital advertising
You’ve made it through the ads that we allow on this page. Perhaps even one of our competitors managed to grab your attention and lure you away from our own site. But in that case, obviously, you came back.
What we want to prove with allowing others to advertise here is that digital advertising presents opportunities to catch the attention of internet users. Almost anywhere they go. Be it pop-up ads or native ads, utilizing publishing space on websites that your potential customers visit is a valuable method for placing your messages.
Methods of digital advertising
Despite their clear distinction from their surroundings, display ads are helpful elements of campaigns, since they appear as “friendly reminders” to buyers who have shown an interest in product categories, or have already been in touch with your brand.
The fact that many internet users don’t like ads that look like ads is not always relevant. It all depends on the emotional value of the products/services you sell and their potential for creating interesting ads. If created nicely, display ads can be real eye candy and a welcome distraction for users. Take a look and see for yourself what works and what doesn’t! We allow ads in our blog.
The costs of display ads depend on the display network you choose. To give an example for display advertising in Germany: The CPM in popular online media, like Spiegel and Stern, varies between 50 EUR and 90 EUR (+10-25 EUR for more target group specifics). With an average CPM of 100 EUR and display ad spending of 5,000 EUR, you can reach approx. 50,000 relevant users.
Native ads and sponsored content are less invasive forms of advertising since the ads blend in with the surrounding elements. Such contextual ads can take different forms, like (paid) search results, social media posts, long-form (sponsored) articles, videos, and e-mail ads. The costs can vary substantially.
For example, while the costs for a search ad on Google (yes, paid search is functionally native advertising) are limited, publishing an advertorial in Spiegel Mobilität or Spiegel Wissenschaft will cost approx. 35,000 EUR per month. But with this investment, you can reach approx. 15,000 readers that are highly attractive for many brands of different industries.
There are advertising partners that offer a phased combination of display ads in survey form for pre-vote activation and native ads for post-vote conversion. This model looks for maximum engagement and is particularly interesting for web traffic goals, as you can get approx. 15,000 website visits for 10,000 EUR.
Google search ads can contribute significantly to your digital marketing success. A monthly investment of 1,000 EUR can help you reach up to 100,000 consumers per month in the German market, which dramatically increases your product/brand visibility. And with very good ad headlines, ad copy, and ad configuration, including a good keyword and bidding strategy, you can achieve more than 2,000 landing page visits.
This is where your on-site journey sets in. Hopefully, you have created content that will inspire visitors to explore your offer, subscribe to your newsletter, or even make an initial purchase.
Social ads on meta, YouTube, and LinkedIn are very useful elements of your digital advertising, as well. Depending on your industry and the visuals you have at your disposal (remember: social channels are very much about attractive visuals that trigger interest), with an investment of 1,000 EUR you can reach up to 60,000 users per month and achieve up to 1,500 clicks in Germany and the other DACH-region markets.
Opportunities of digital advertising
Online advertising is a valuable contributor to your brand’s online visibility and your product sales campaigns. Just like social media ads, native ads or display ads give you the means to reach customers far beyond your owned channels.
Ultimately, that means adding substantial numbers of internet users to your instant-buy customers, if they follow the ad’s destination and purchase your products online. If they don’t buy directly, then you can add them to your leads whom you can retarget later.
Whatever you would like to achieve in terms of reach and awareness, your digital advertising will inevitably form part of the communications mix you need to implement to successfully increase your sales volume.
Trust-building content & ad-awareness
And let’s be honest: the reach of your organic content on almost any digital platform is limited. Algorithms only allow for high reach in very specific situations that will not evolve every time you post. Thus, the most informative and trust-building information that you place on your website and through social media posts needs to be supported by digital advertising.
A content strategy agency, we advise our clients to create a good mix of inbound and outbound methods to get the messages through to their potential customers.
While exceptionally good content delivers the essentials that convince buyers to opt for your products, it is digital ads that get their immediate attention. And, like your social ads, they will help you generate traffic for your website or your physical PoS, where you can convert your visitors.
Platforms for digital advertising
The platforms you will want to use for your native or digital advertising always need to reflect your target groups’ search behavior and your budget. As we explain above, the costs can vary considerably and you should carefully evaluate if the results merit the investment.
What we’ve shown here on our site is an example of placing display ads in the context of digital marketing. And in our case, it is delivered through the Google Display Network in different ways, depending on the preferences that you, as our visitor, may have.
As a publisher, we don’t know the exact look of the ad or where the specific ad you have seen was placed on this page. What we can see, is the number of visitors that clicked on the show or dismiss button. But as an advertiser, you will have more thorough info on the visitors that click your ads. After all, you’ve set the keywords and the targeting and bidding parameters and you’ll get more info on them when they visit your site/landing page.
In addition to Google Ads, which show on Google search and/or the Google display network, you have corresponding options with the Microsoft Advertising platform.
