The Power of Online Advertising
In October 1994, the first online advertisement appeared to promote seven art museums, sponsored by AT&T, to the readers of HotWired.com; the banner ad has earned publishers billions of dollars in revenues.
This type of advertisement was considered a massive jump to a new media era that will continue to evolve. It has opened new doors for Digital Giants to dominate the media industry.
What helped in the evolution of digital advertising was the appearance of monster players offering wide advertising opportunities marketers can use to reach their objectives. One top of these players are Google, Facebook and Twitter.
But which is better? Does Google dominate the digital advertising industry or could it be that Facebook has taken over the era now? What about Twitter? In this article, we will highlight the benefits of each and show you when to use what.
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Google Advertising
In the year 2000, Google launched its advertising platform under the name of Google AdWords where marketers pay Google a monthly fee in exchange of launching and managing their campaign online. Soon, Google launched their self-managed campaigns through text-based advertising appearing on the Google’s Search Engine Result. Today, Google has developed a lot and made major updates on their advertising platform to help marketers expand their reach. Below are some of the benefits offered by Google AdWords
Measurable
Google provides a detailed measuring analytics that helps advertiser monitor every single marketing activity that is happening going down to the number of clicks, number of impressions, click through rate (CTR), number of conversions, click through conversion, cost per click (CPC), cost per acquisition (CPA), etc. This gives marketers the needed tools to evaluate each campaign on its own making it easy to measure the Return On Investment (ROI) and modify accordingly.
Cost Effective
One of Google’s success is that it is extremely cost effective. You only pay when a potential user clicks on your advertising regardless of the number of impressions your ad acquired. This means you will not be charged on unwanted impressions; only people who are interested in what you offer will be redirected to your site. The good thing about Google
Relevancy
Considering that Google AdWords mainly uses keyword matching to show ads, this offers marketers the opportunity to be visible to surfers who are interested in their content and eventually increases the chances of qualifying potential leads and converting them to clients. The relevancy of ads appearing to surfers have made Google one of the top inbound marketing channels with low percentage of spamming. Of course there are other aspects of relevancy offered by Google such as the placement of the ads when targeting display network, the re-marketing option, etc.
According to studies, almost 71% of adults using the Internet are on Facebook which helps marketers reach out for a very huge number of potential clients. Facebook offers various advertising opportunities to get people to like your Facebook page, or making them interact with a single post you publish. You can also make them visit your website in addition to other features. These are some of the features of Facebook advertising but what makes you really advertise on Facebook, here are some features.
Targeted Targeting
What makes Facebook advertising really powerful is the targeting options offered in this platform. You can target specific people with really detailed interest starting from their location and ending with deep insights such as their earning power or the places they like to go. Facebook gives you a real detailed targeting feature to call out for particular audience who is potentially interested in what you are offering. It’s a game of how well you know your audience and how well you know your product targeting.
Reaching out for Mobile users
Do you know that over 800 million users access Facebook through their smartphones? This is big and Facebook today offers you as a marketer the smooth option to reach out these people with very simple and interactive advertising option that definitely would make an impact on your marketing campaign and result in better ROI.
Detailed Analytics
Facebook has developed its advertising dashboard to help you read and understand how people are responding to your ad and what metrics is performing better and where to leverage your investment. The data is clearly visible and easy to read so that you can do what inbound marketing is all about; which is proper measuring. You can measure your ROI easily through the analytics of your advertising and the insights given to your page to make the proper decisions. Try it, it’s easy!
Twitter, on the other hand, is now considered a competing giant in online advertising. Yes, Twitter advertising had some technical problems when first launched, but today it is considered a steady and lead-oriented advertising channel that you can’t take for granted. Twitter allows you to interact with potential customers and businesses interested in what you are tweeting about and makes it easy to grab users of this social media attention in a smooth way. Here are some of the features offered by Twitter advertising.
Target Followers of Specific Accounts
One of Twitter’s amazing advertising features is that you can target ads to followers of specific accounts that matters to you. That means if you are targeting people interested in social media marketing in Lebanon, you may target companies and accounts offering such services to reach out for their followers.
Target by Keywords
Like any other ads, you can target people by keywords on Twitter. However, knowing that Twitter is mainly a “Hashtag” Social media, the keyword selection would be efficient for you to target users really interested in what you’re offering. Additionally, and in many cases Twitter Keyword targeting can be less in cost than that of Google since Google’s bidding strategy may reach.
Of course, the Internet is loaded with other online marketing channels that are efficient and goal oriented such as LinkedIn, Bing, Instagram and other players; however we made sure in this article to highlight the main three players.
