Online Advertising

In 2019, the average American spent 6 hours and 11 minutes online every single day.^[1]

This means for 40% of their waking hours they were browsing through websites, social media and other online content.

It’s no wonder businesses are increasing how much they’re spending on online advertising as an essential part of their marketing mix.

Digital advertising spend grew 12.2% in 2020, despite an initial decline due to the Covid-19 pandemic.^[2]

A staggering $41.5 billion was spent on advertising just on social media, nearly 1/3 of the total online ad spend across all channels.

So why is online advertising so appealing to businesses? Well, consider this…

Online ads target specific audiences

Companies that serve online ads, such as Google and Facebook, also track and collect detailed information about web users across the entire Internet.

Because of this, they’re very good at being able to place your ads in front of people within specific detailed demographics — much more so than can be done with traditional offline advertising.

You can target your ideal customers by geographic location, age, gender, personal interests, and much more.

Online ads are measurable

When your ad is displayed to people online, every interaction with that ad — from it being viewed to someone clicking on it — is tracked and reported to you.

You can see in real-time how many people your ad is reaching, how many times they see it, how many times it’s clicked, etc. — and also the general demographic breakdown of the people taking these actions.

This means you can analyze your ads to determine how effective each one is and what type of people it is connecting with.

Online ads are cost-effective

Compared to traditional advertising — such as billboards, radio ads, TV ads, direct mail, etc. — online ads are relatively inexpensive.

This opens the door for small businesses to compete on a level playing field with the big companies who normally dominate the traditional advertising landscape.

Online ads form immediate connections

Not only do you get real-time tracking and reports with online ads, you also get the benefit of nearly instant feedback and interaction with people viewing your ads.

For example, on Facebook, people can post comments on your ads and start conversations, provide reactions (“Likes,” etc.), save your ad for later viewing, and share your ad with others.

Additionally, to respond to an online ad, a potential customer can simply click on the ad and be instantly taken to your website — where they can shop and make purchases 24/7.

Online ads can be optimized on-the-fly

Optimizing a traditional ad for improved response is tricky and time-consuming. You have to run it for a period of time, then make estimates of how effective it was, and then take your best guess based on the limited available data on how to improve it.

With online ads, you can track and get instant reports about who is interacting with your ads in real-time, including how many of them are being captured as leads and how many are making purchases on your website.

This means you can make adjustments on the fly to test and optimize different variations of ads to find the ones that are most effective at getting the results you want.

If you haven’t started running online ads for your business and aren’t quite sure where to start or how to manage your ad account, let our experienced advertising specialists do it for you.

We can also help if you’ve been running ads but are not getting the results you hoped for.

Get an instant quote, or contact us for more information.