by Jeremy Mace
All of us have been annoyed by the flying pop-up offering the “greatest virus protection software ever” while surfing online. Or, who hasn’t pulled their hair out over the email soliciting male enhancement drugs. Online advertising can be annoying, but there are ways to make it a successful part of your business plan, without hiring hackers and spammers.
Here are some key types of online advertising and a quick definition for each:
Banner Ads – The first kind of advertising done on the web. A banner contains graphics or text that sits like a billboard on another site. When a user clicks on the banner they are generally taken to your site where they are encouraged to buy a product or sign up for a service. In the past this type of advertising was done solely through Ad Networks who kept access to Ad Exchanges that contain Publisher Inventory. Now, through companies like New Fire, you can buy directly through the Ad Exchange, eliminating the middle-man.
Pop-Up Ads – A full web page with text and graphics designed to open up on top of a user’s web page leading them to click through. This irritating form type of advertising is virtually a thing of the past thanks to a variety of pop-up blockers.
Floating Ads – These ads appear on web pages and float over the page for a few seconds. They temporarily obscure vision of the web page and try to grab a user’s attention. They are generally animated or contain video like TV ads. These types of ads are also called Rich Media Ads and can have a high click-through rate.
Unicast Ads – These ads a basically TV commercials that run on web pages. These ads have the power of video and lead to high click-through rates. Also called Rich Media ads.
Contextual Ads – Primarily for content-based sites, this type of advertising appears within an article as a keyword or phrase that sends a user to a product that is based on user’s interest. They are becoming more popular and are found in many magazine and news websites.
Paid Search – By paying services like Google Ad Words, your business or message appears on Search Results pages and throughout Google’s in-page networks. This type of advertising is key business with unique products or services – or for business that need to compete on Search pages with competitors.
Deciding what kind of ads to run on the internet should depend on your business type. A product-based company could do very well with a combination of paid search and unicast ads – saturating the web with video and leading users to their e-commerce site to purchase product. A local services company could use a combination of floating ads on specific websites and paid search to compete with other local companies.
If you need help deciding how best to position your business on the internet, contact us at NewFire Media and we can help you develop an online advertising strategy that will start a fire for your business.
