What’s What? A Mess of Online Ads

What’s What?

A Mess of Online Ads

By: Scott Stefani

Source: Advertising in a Digital Age

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n todays technical age many businesses are taking the online advertisement approach as appose to your basic magazine insert or a huge billboard. Why? Simple, because more and more people join the Internet age every day. Newspapers and magazines are being replaced with smartphones and tablets. Not to say that print is obsolete, but online advertisements reach more people, and a wider verity of people.

           

            There are multiple types of advertisements that are on the Internet, some you see everyday and some you don’t. Each type of online advertisement has its advantages and disadvantages, some are better than others, it just depends what you are advertising and what it is that best fits what you are trying to do. Some of the more popular ads are text or link ads, display ads, rich media ads, and takeover ads.

           

            Text or link ads are the ads that you see in the yellow box at or toward the top of the page when your search something into Google’s web browser. An advertiser pays the search engine to suggest there website when certain key words are in your search. This type of online advertising is one of the best ways to advertise for a variety of reasons. The biggest reason this is a great way of advertising is because your ad is shown to your target audience, which increases traffic to your site. Link ads are also the least annoying ad to users, which means users are more likely to read your ad.

            Display ads are some of the more common ads that you see. Those are the ads that are on the side of a webpage, or inside of a box right in the middle of the article that you are trying to read. These ads can include text, images and animations and can rage from medium sized rectangles, leader board style, and long skinny platforms, which comprise the vast majority of ads, said a Google report. These are good starter ads for business that are new to the online advertising world. Display ads tend to be more affective when the ad is linked to the website of the product so users can just click the ad and a new browser pops up. The down side to this type of advertising is that it can be blocked, and there is normally a 10-15 second timer on the ad.

            Rich media ads are the big ads that you see on the YouTube home page, they can be a floating, overlay, expandable, pop-up or transitional ads. These types of ads are effective in boosting users’ interaction with the ads and the brand or product being advertised. While rich media ads tend to be very expensive, they convey much more material and give’s the product more exposure. Rich media ads tend to be one of the less ignored ads because they are eye catching and somewhat entertaining, which makes the ad easier to recall. A down side to this ad other than the cost is the loading speed; these ads cause a small delay when the page loads.

            Take over ads are the bigger more extravagant ad out there, they can pop up when you first enter a webpage, or a product might be a theme of a website that boarders the actual content of the website. These ads substitute all or large portions of a website with the advertisers marketing content. These ads are a good way to enhance an ad campaign and goals as they offer exclusivity on the most visible page of a site. These ads last on the shorter side, normally from one to three days.