If you are looking to promote your products or services on the internet, paid media is precisely what you need for your business. Paid media is a key component of digital marketing. It is widely used by digital marketing experts all over the world to promote their brands and get more leads. There are different ways to use paid media depending upon your products, services, target audience, and marketing budget. In this article, we will find out how paid media works and what are its types.
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What is Paid Media?
Paid media refers to buying ad spaces online in an attempt to fulfill certain marketing objectives such as brand awareness, lead generation, more sales, and building a positive brand image. It is basically media that you pay for, hence the name. Paid media has been around forever in the form of newspaper ads, magazine ads, billboards, and tv commercials. However today we are just going to take a look at the digital part of it. Paid media is essential to attain potential customers that a brand wouldn’t have been able to reach otherwise. Online paid media is the least expensive form of advertising and also the one the performs the best. The efficient use of it would almost always help you achieve your marketing goals in a business.
Types of Paid Media
Search Engine Advertising
Search engine ads are the ones that appear on the top of the search lists every time you search for certain keywords. They work on the basis of keywords and demographics. Some tools used to publish search engine ads are Google Ads and Bing Ads. Under these tools, you can select certain keywords that are commonly searched by your target audience. Well, not only that you can also a few demographics like age, gender, location, et cetera. When you select these demographics and launch the ad, the tools will ensure that your ads are shown only when specific keywords are searched for and only to the target audience you have selected.
Search engine ads are also called PPC ads. Let me tell you how PPC ads work. Pay-per-click ads are charged to the publisher every time a user clicks on the ad and lands on your website. While setting up the PPC ads one needs to keep in mind that the bid amount on the keywords is optimum. In the beginning, you can experiment with a few keywords and then slowly eliminate the keywords that have a lower conversion rate. With the appropriate use of PPC ads, you can truly increase your return on investment and get the best results.
Display Ads
Also called banner ads, display ads are highly visual and effective. A lot of thought goes into the creation of banner ads because they need to be very visually appealing to consumers. Display advertising is one of the most traditional forms of advertising that has now turned digital. Do you remember all those billboards and skyscrapers with huge ads on them? Yes, that’s exactly what display advertising is. Now that most consumers are found online, we have online display ads. These ads can be both PPC and CPM. Here when you bid on keywords. The tools you use to publish the ads will find out the websites that include these keywords the most and show post your ads on those websites. Another way of using banner ads would be buying ad spaces on the websites where you think your target audience spends most of their time.
Now there are 2 ways to publish display ads.
- You can just create your campaign on Google Display Network and rely on Google to post your ads on the relevant website through AI learning.
- You can buy ad spaces from media buying platforms on websites that do not fall under the radar of the Google Display Network.
Though banner ads can be both PPC and CPM ads, their main intentions are fulfilled by CPM ads. CPM ads are Cost-per-mile ads which means they cost the publishers per thousand impressions. Let me say that in simple words, every time 1000 people see the ad, the brand has to pay a certain predetermined amount. CPM ads are suitable to promote new products, video productions, and brand awareness where you just want the ad to be seen by more and more users.
Social Media Ads
Social Media Ads refer to advertising on social media platforms. These ads have gained popularity over the past few years. Facebook has played a great role in the growth of social media advertising. The company began placing ads on Facebook back in 2006. Ever since digital advertising has taken a new turn. This has caused social media ads to become one of the most cost-effective and efficient types of paid media. It is a great help to small businesses that can’t afford to spend a lot of money on large-scale advertising and want to reach the target audience efficiently.
So that was all about Paid Media and how you can use it to advertise your brand effectively. You can decide the best advertising strategies based on your brand and its target audience. For deeper insights into display advertising, check this out.
