A quick guide to different types of advertising for different purposes

This article explores different types of advertising online. Which ones are effective? Which among them actually help businesses reach their bottom line and business goals? In Digital Marketing: Integrating strategy and tactics with values, published 2014, Ira Kaufman and Chris Horton wrote that we’re well beyond the stage in which digital media is a fad. In fact, over the last 10 years, digital media has become the means by which consumers communicate with their friends and families, especially when making purchase decisions. This is the main reason why marketers embrace and invest in digital marketing and advertising. But, alongside these welcome developments in customer behavior and expectations, marketers are faced with increasing challenges - algorithm updates, changes in tracking, and increased noise in the digital landscape to name just three. As Anatolii Labinskyi put it 'change is…

Christmas advertising is bigger than ever, but are brands delivering festive cheer this year? We've taken a look at the biggest Christmas adverts from 2019

It seems like Christmas advertising starts earlier every year, with brands determined to make an impact with high-budget ads that tell stories and promote a festive feeling as well as their products. But is this push actually paying off or are brands failing to deliver the messaging that people want at Christmas time? We've taken a look at Christmas ads from some of the biggest UK brands to see whether they think they were worth the marketing budget.  

Ikea - James Story

Making a Christmas-appropriate advert that avoids all the hits (Santa, snow, large present boxes, etc.) is a challenge and Ikea takes a decent stab at things here. It’s distinct, but I’m struggling to get past…

Chart of the Day: New research on web users' perception of ad types and formats

The Nielsen Norman Group has been helping make the web a better place through their research and advice on usability and customer experience for a long time. In fact, it's since 1998, about as long as I've been involved in advising on digital marketing. While their research usually has a solid methodology and sample, I've always felt, it often takes a 'pure usability' perspective that isn't necessarily useful to businesses and marketers who are promoting their service. But perhaps marketers need that counterpoint. This research is a case in point. In this survey, participants were shown 23 wireframes (not actual ads) corresponding to different types of advertisements and rated how much they disliked them on a scale of 1 to 7. Here's an example: So, which were the most hated?…

It's easy to ignore banner ads. Here is how to make yours stand out and increase clickthrough rates

Online ads have become an inseparable part of our internet life. An average person is exposed to more than 1700 online ads every month and 77 percent are left unseen, resulting in low ad CTRs even if a click isn't essential to making an online ad effective. Some ads are too stuffed with information and visuals, others don’t seem to be relevant to you and some just lead to thoughts like “what is this ad even about?” To maximize the effectiveness of your ads and avoid falling into one of those categories, there are a few things that you need to keep in mind when creating your ads.

Evoke curiosity

Humans are very curious species. It’s natural for us…

3 techniques to make Native Advertising more effective

Following the move made by many other online publishers in recent years, the picture-hosting site Imgur recently announced its plan to roll out native ads. The site bootstrapped for most of the past six years and built a loyal community, but — like most publishers — it has the need for a consistent revenue stream. More publishers are riding the native advertising (definition and example) tide to monetize their platforms. For advertisers, native ads are a natural and effective way to boost engagement. In fact, Yahoo reported that, on average, users give native ads three times more attention than display ads. But like all innovation, native advertising (definition and example) also follows an S-curve cycle of adoption and maturation. From display to search to video ads, each cycle inevitably brings a unique set of challenges and risks. And as native advertising matures, the issues advertisers and…