The most common types of online advertising are paid search advertising (also known as pay-per-click or PPC), social media advertising, and display ads. Paid online advertising is one of the most efficient ways of reaching new customers at the time they are most likely to buy your products or services. Depending on your goals, you pay either whenever someone engages with your ads or based on impressions (how many times your ad was shown).
PPC Advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) ads are online text ads that appear in search results (e.g. in Google, Bing, or Yahoo). They are probably the most common form of online advertising as everyone online is searching for products, services, or information using one of these search engines.
Research indicates that people click on paid search ads more often than any other form of digital advertising. This provides tremendous opportunities for advertisers. Your ads will appear whenever your target customers are searching for products and services you offer, and you pay only if people click on your ads. Both AdWords and Bing Ads provide detailed reports to help you optimize your ads for greater ROI.
Social Media Advertising
Social media ad platforms such as Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, LinkedIn Ads, and others provide a way of reaching your target customers on the social networks where they hang out the most.
Social ads provide targeting options based on the demographics and interests of your customers. This way, you can find your target audience easily instead of waiting for them to find you. All popular advertising platforms provide insightful reports on how people engage with your ads. This allows you to continuously optimize your campaigns for greater ROI.
Display Advertising
With display advertising, you can promote your business online in a more visual way. It consists of ads that can be shown on millions of websites, blogs, and apps in the form of banners, text, videos, and other ad formats. Google has the largest network of websites (more than 2 million) where your ads can appear providing you with the chance of reaching about 90% of the online users worldwide.