Types of online advertising & their formats: the ultimate guide

It is clear that online advertising today is one of the most important means of communication, not only to publicize your brand, but to reach a wider audience that is always immersed in the possibility of making a purchase at any time and from anywhere in the world. While traditional advertising is still present and fundamental, we know that the digital world has grown and will continue to grow over time. In this post we show you the types of online advertising that exist and how to make the most of them.

What is online advertising and how is it changing the world of marketing?

Online advertising is all those marketing strategies that are used to make known either a product or service, an event, or any idea you have in mind to the world and the people who surf the internet. 

While we know that there are several types of online advertising that we will see below, it is important to note that online advertising has changed the world of marketing in several ways. It has transformed the way brands interact with their customers just like many companies were using custom packaging in marketing to showcase their brand to customers, it has revolutionized the way companies market themselves and it is now a fundamental part of how consumers shop. Therefore, in order to succeed in the digital world, it is necessary for online marketers to be constantly learning and keeping up to date with the changes occurring in the digital world.

Types of online advertising and their formats 

Online advertising is a type of marketing that uses the Internet to send promotional messages to consumers.

There are different types of online advertising, such as email ads, search engine marketing, display ads, text ads, social media marketing and video marketing. Let’s look at some of them in more detail:

• Graphical Ads: this type of online advertising is placed on websites and mobile applications. It can be in the form of banners, videos or infographics.
• Text Ads: these ads contain title, text description and are used to be displayed in Google or Bing search engines.
• Search Ads: these are ads that appear when a user searches for something in a search engine.
• Social media Ads: these are ads that appear on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
• Email Ads: these are ads sent to people’s email inboxes.
• Video Ads: these are short ads that seek to generate closeness with customers and increase interaction.

Now you may be wondering, how can you implement each of them? Let’s take a closer look at what each one is, their formats and how to make them work for your marketing campaigns.

Display Ads

Display ads are one of the most popular types of online advertising in the world. They have been around for a long time and work on several levels.

Display ads can be used to increase brand awareness by targeting specific demographics or to drive traffic to your website. They are also great for promoting your products or services and generating leads.

A display ad is usually an image with a link underneath that will take the user directly to a web page. There are many different types of display ads, including banners, skyscrapers and pop-ups.

Text Ads

Text ads are also a very common type of online advertising. They are relatively inexpensive and easy to set up, and have the potential to be highly targeted.

Text ads are a type of ad that is designed to be displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs) or social media platforms. They are usually short, concise messages and are designed to encourage people to take an action.

There are two main types of text ads:

• Text ad with a link to the website: Text ad with a link to the website is a type of text ad that promotes your site by linking to it and telling people what it offers.

• Text ad without a link to the website: A text ad without a website link is a type of text ad that promotes your website but doesn’t include any links directing users back to your site. 

I recommend always using text ads with links to the website, which also contains several links that direct the user to different places on the website. 

Search Ads

Search ads are used for potential customers to consider your product, service, or brand when searching in search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, among others. They can take two forms:

• Organic or SEO (Search Engine Optimization): this format is used to bring traffic to your website in a natural way, without investing any money. It is the most cost-effective type, but it also requires a lot of effort, since the idea is to generate quality content that meets standards to convince and attract your customers without being intrusive.
• Paid, SEM (Search Engine Marketing) or PPC (Pay Per Click): this format is used to bring traffic to your website by investing money. Although it is not organic, it is the best method to achieve conversions (sales) results in the short term. It works by using keywords related to your product categories and setting a fixed budget that you want to invest according to your marketing objectives for this channel.

If you have no knowledge of how to start your online advertising strategy and how to invest in Google Ads, Microsoft Ads or Facebook Ads I recommend that you start with tools that help you in this type of advertising.

Here are 2 useful tools that will help you get started with your marketing strategy:

• Clever Ads:  is one of the best tools to launch your online advertising strategy. It will also help you create automated keyword formats, banners and ad creation for both Google and Microsoft. 

• Google Trends: will help you see how consumers tend to search for a product or service and how they do it.

Social Media Ads

Social media ads have been and will continue to be a key part of your online advertising. They work by investing money in any of these platforms: Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, Instagram Ads or LinkedIn. This way your ads will appear to users who have browsed or searched for products and services related to your interests. 

In addition, the modern consumer today is looking for brands that generate closeness with them, it is something they highly value.

Email Ads

Email ads allow you to reach consumers from a closer and more familiar space. Unlike organic SEO, this modality can be seen as intrusive and consists of directly sending promotional messages of your brand to your current or potential customers using purchased or collected databases. 

These are some of the modalities in e-mail:

• Newsletters: informative emails
• Promotional Campaigns: special discount emails
• Seasonal Campaigns: discount emails for important events (halloween, mother’s day, christmas, etc.)
• Transactional Emails: this reminds the user of the immediate purchase of a product that they forgot in their shopping cart.

Video Ads

Video Ads are a great way to get your message across in a creative, engaging and memorable way. They can be used for anything—from promoting a product or service to building brand awareness. They are meant to captivate your audience to the point of getting them to click on the video and visit your website or social media page.

There are many different types of video ads you can use, but the most successful are those that are engaging and informative.

Nowadays, short videos or “reels”, as they are known on Instagram, are the latest trend. The reason is because they generate closeness to the consumer and give all the necessary information in a short amount of time. It is a good idea to invest in a bid strategy for video ads.

These are some of the most common advertising formats:

• Banner: Format in the form of an image where brand campaigns are promoted. It is placed in a strategic place on the website to capture the consumer’s attention. The standard sizes are 234×60 and 234×90 pixels.

• Superbanner or Megabanner: It is the large version of a banner, with a sizes like 728×90 and 900×90. It attracts more attention because it uses a large portion of a web page.

• Pop Up: Surely, many of us have experienced this format—it is a pop-up window that appears just when a web page is loaded. Although sometimes it tends to be annoying for users, it is an easier way to capture customer data.
• Skyscraper: these are advertising banners that are placed on the sides of website pages and are usually vertical. 
• Robapages: they are commonly found on the sides of websites in the form of a square. 

 

 

Don’t wait any longer! Start using any of the above types of online advertising and in the format that best suits your preferences.