Online Advertising: All You Need to Know

In 2023, Google and Meta generated astonishing advertising revenues, signifying the immense impact of online advertising. Businesses worldwide invest billions in paid ads to reach vast audiences, realizing the potential of online advertising when executed effectively. However, navigating this ever-evolving landscape can be daunting due to the continuous emergence of new platforms, ad types, and targeting capabilities. To guide you, we’ve compiled this comprehensive online advertising guide to provide you with the essential knowledge you need.

How to Advertise Online

In the digital age, 93% of online interactions commence with a search engine. For businesses aiming to capture their audience’s attention, leveraging platforms like Google and Bing, which people use daily, is imperative. Additionally, with people spending an average of 2 hours and 31 minutes daily on social media, integrating social media into your online advertising strategy is equally crucial.

Advertise strategically by identifying your target demographic and understanding where they spend their time online. Whether you opt for pay-per-click (PPC) ads on social media or search engine advertising, platforms like Google Ads offer the guidance and tools you need to get started.

Benefits of Online Advertising

Digital advertising can significantly enhance your organic marketing efforts in three key ways: boosting brand awareness, gaining a deeper understanding of your audience through analytics, and creating high-performing content. The ultimate goal of any advertising strategy is to secure a positive return on investment, where the revenue generated exceeds the costs incurred.

How Paid Advertising Works

Paid advertising operates on a bidding system, wherein advertisers set a maximum bid for their desired action, such as a click on their ad. This system is akin to an auction, where ad networks, like Google, determine the ad space’s value through competitive bidding. While you might bid a certain amount, you’ll only pay slightly more than the next highest bidder to win the auction.

To calculate your ad spend, work backward from your revenue using this equation: Lifetime Value (LTV) x Average Lead-to-Customer Rate x Average Conversion Rate. This reveals the maximum you can spend on ads to break even. The goal is to spend less than this amount to achieve a positive ROI.

Social Media Advertising

Social media is a bustling landscape with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat, and TikTok, each offering unique opportunities for advertisers. With billions of active users on these platforms, it’s no surprise that digital advertising spending is soaring.

Facebook

Facebook is, hands down, the most widely used social media network, leveraged by 64% of marketers. Facebook offers the highest ROI. I’d also like to shed light on the fact that almost 2.96 billion people worldwide use Facebook. Just think about it — that’s more than 35% of the world’s population. With so many people using Facebook and the platform taking the throne as the highest-ROI social media platform, you’re almost guaranteed to reach an audience that’s relevant to any type of business. That’s where one of the most powerful features of advertising on Facebook comes in: audience targeting. The targeting capabilities on Facebook are unmatched by any other social media network. There are three types of audiences that you can target on Facebook:

Core audiences — an audience based on criteria like age, interests, and geography.
Custom audiences — get back in touch with people who have previously engaged with your business.
Lookalike audiences — reach new people whose interests are similar to those of your best customers. Facebook’s advanced targeting can target your ads to the most relevant audience — and even tap into new audiences you’d otherwise never reach with organic content alone. Advertising on Facebook includes a range of ad types, including:

Photo ads.
Video ads.
Story ads.
Lead ads.
Poll ads.
Carousel ads.
Instant experience ads.

Instagram

You can also advertise on Instagram through the Facebook Ads Manager. Instagram has over 2 billion monthly users globally. The majority of users are between the ages of 18 and 34. There are three ways that you can advertise on Instagram:
Promote posts and stories directly from your Instagram professional account.
Create ads from your Facebook Page and promote them on both Facebook and Instagram.
Create ad campaigns in the Facebook Ads Manager to access full targeting capabilities.

I recommend taking the third option and creating custom campaigns for your audience on Instagram.

Instagram has similar ad types to Facebook, including:

Photo ads
Video ads
Story ads
Carousel ads
Reel ads

By far, the most interesting ad types right now are in-feed and explore.

Ads that appear while scrolling your feed are called in-feed ads. The ads that you see in the “Explore” section while exploring your interests and discovering new content creators are Explore ads.

Ads in Instagram Explore are a great opportunity to put your brand in front of people looking for new creators or content.

The LinkedIn platform has over 900 million monthly active users worldwide. Users on the platform are largely working professionals, which makes LinkedIn a great place for B2B (business-to-business) advertising.LinkedIn is the go-to platform for working professionals, which provides B2B advertisers with a large audience pool to reach. Plus, the advantage of advertising on LinkedIn is its unique targeting capabilities. On LinkedIn, you’ll have access to unique targeting criteria that are unavailable on other platforms. you can target users on LinkedIn by unique demographics, including job title, job function, and industry.

Maybe you only want to advertise to potential customers at the director level who work in customer service within the recruiting industry. LinkedIn’s targeting capabilities make that possible. Plus, with the option to include lead gen forms in your LinkedIn ads, LinkedIn can be a lead generation machine. This will allow you to reach a very specific audience and drive leads without directing them outside of the LinkedIn platform.

X (formerly Twitter)

Digital advertising is less common on X (formerly Twitter) because organic reach is still a significant driver of a brand’s performance on X. This is very unique to X — but even so, ads can still deliver strong results depending on what your goals are. X has over 556 million monthly users globally. The majority of users are between 35–65 years old. Advertisers have discovered a few niches that have high engagement on X: B2B and e-commerce. Many B2B companies are using X as a digital marketing tool, and X users are known to spend a lot of money online.This makes advertising specifically to these audiences a great strategy.

Pinterest is a unique social media platform with 445 million users who are highly engaged and predominantly female.

Some people say that Pinterest is the only platform where users actually want to see ads from brands they love because Pinterest is all about visuals.

Here’s how to advertise on Pinterest in four steps:

Pick a pin. Promote your best pins so they appear in the most relevant places.
Decide who sees it. Set up targeting so the right people see your ads.
Pay for results. Choose to pay for engagement or visits to your site.
Track what’s working. Once your campaign starts, see how it’s doing and make adjustments as necessary.

YouTube

the second largest search engine boasts 2.5 billion monthly users. It offers multiple ad formats and precise targeting for captivating specific, relevant audiences.

Snapchat

Snapchat’s 635 million users are predominantly made up of people between the ages of 18–24. Snapchat offers a few ad types, including story ads, sponsored tiles in Snapchat Discover, and augmented reality (AR) lenses. Snapchat’s ad types feel pretty similar to the advertising options on Instagram. What makes Snapchat unique is the augmented reality lenses. AR lenses are sponsored by a business to create interactive moments that users can use and share with their friends.

TikTok

with 1.05 billion monthly users, excels in short, creative videos. Marketers can tap into its popularity by creating funny, engaging content aligned with the platform’s tone.

Paid Search Advertising

Paid search advertising allows you to reach users actively seeking specific information. It offers distinct advantages:

Digitally prepared businesses anticipate four times better revenue than less-prepared ones.
Protects your brand from competitors advertising on your branded terms.
Search ads appear at the top of search engine results pages, garnering prime visibility.

Paid search relies on keywords, one-word or phrase descriptors of search queries. These keywords align your ad with relevant user searches. Brand and non-brand keywords play key roles in your advertising strategy. Brand keywords safeguard your brand identity from competitors, ensuring your website traffic remains secure.

By understanding these fundamental aspects of online advertising, you can navigate this dynamic landscape with confidence and precision.