digital advertising

Digital Advertising v/s Digital Marketing: Know the Difference.

In this digital age, marketing is no more a choice but a prerequisite for businesses who are leaving no stone unturned to get their message across to the customers effectively and powerfully.

Then the question arises, in order to put forward the message in the right way to the right people, which one to go for? 

Marketing or Advertising?

Well, aren’t they both the same?  The answer is ‘No’.

There is a thin line of difference between them. This article will help you to understand it and justify the answer to the above question.

Know the basics-

Digital Advertising:

It is also called online advertising, web advertising or internet advertising

Digital advertising is defined as a form of marketing or advertising where businesses leverage internet technologies to deliver their promotional advertisements to customers.

In simple words, if you see an ad on the internet, it is called digital advertising.

There are three types of digital advertising:

1. Pay-per-click (PPC) ads: (Adwords search ads, bing ads, etc)

For example, the ads you see in search results.

                                Image Credit: Wordstream

2. Display ads : (Banners, video, mobile, pop-ups, etc)

For example, this ad by eBay is promoting its products. eBay is the biggest player in banner advertising and invests a lot of money in display advertising.

Image Credit: Bannernack

3. Social ads: (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc)

For example, A ‘suggested post’ on Facebook is a social ad.

Image Credit: Social Media Examiner

Digital Marketing:

Digital Marketing includes all the marketing efforts using the internet or digital technologies. Businesses leverage digital channels like emails, search engines, websites, social media, blog posts, logos, and everything else that is helpful in online promotion and connect with current and prospective customers.

There are six types of digital marketing:

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
2. Social Media Marketing (SMM)
3. Content Marketing
4. Email and Mobile Marketing
5. Affiliate Marketing
6. Online advertising

The following infographic explains digital marketing in detail:

Image Credit: Smart insights

Now that we know the key processes in each segment, let’s look at the major differences –

• Digital Advertising is a part of Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is a broader term whereas digital advertising is a part of it. This raises a question,

Is digital advertising necessary for your business?

Not really. Your business can survive without digital advertising. 

Why and How?

The definitions make it clear that digital advertising is a subset of digital marketing. When you start with a business idea, from that very moment you are involved in marketing and not advertising.

Product creation, Product Pricing, Packaging, Promotion, market segmentation, target audience are all a part of your business strategy and marketing mix.

  Image Credit: BBC UK

Digital advertising is part of the marketing mix. It comes into play when you use the internet to promote your product or service or to generate traffic. However, you can also choose from other tactics – a search engine, content management, social media, email marketing, etc to generate traffic.

It is not necessary to use digital advertising at the promotion stage to reach your target audience. 

For instance, DemandBase in one of the campaigns used white papers, infographics, Slideshare, and webinars to generate new leads. This helped the company to generate over $1 million in new revenue through content marketing resulting in 1700 new leads and connect with 125 webinar viewers.

You can run your business without digital advertising but not digital marketing. The purpose of all marketing techniques is to generate leads and generate traffic and so you can choose any tactic – SEO or PPC or both whichever helps to grow your business.

• Digital Advertising is an activity while digital marketing is a process: 

Digital marketing helps to build a strategy to market your business in the following way:

• Define your target audience,
• Ways to attract, engage, convert and retain the customers, 
• Evaluate existing and new digital channels like SEO, PPC, content marketing, etc
• Analysis and monitoring

In broader terms, digital marketing is a process that runs your entire business on the internet and it begins from the moment you start with the business idea.

       Image Credit: Abhiseo

The digital marketing process is continuous. It begins with the research phase and continues until the refining stage and the data from the refining stage is used again for the research to develop a new marketing strategy. It is a perpetual and never-ending process.

Digital advertising is an activity in the digital marketing process. It fits at Step 6: Promote- the purpose is to promote your primary digital identities (blog, website, app, product or anything else) via ads to relevant people in order to generate traffic. To do this, a digital advertiser will need inputs from a digital marketer on what to promote, who to promote, advertising budget, etc. An advertiser will accordingly create an ad to generate traffic.

• Digital advertising is tactics while digital marketing is strategic

A strategy is a long term and complex plan which involves decision-making at various levels while a tactic is a short-term plan or means to achieve the desired result. 

Digital advertising is tactical in nature as the promotion of a particular product or an offer to the target audience is momentary and short term. Subsequently, it can be easily replicated by competitors.

For instance, Facebook ads are short-lived. You might run an ad on Facebook to promote your product or an offer during Easter. Once you achieve the goal from the campaign, you will discontinue it and move on with another ad campaign or platform.

Whereas, digital marketing is strategic in nature that involves long term planning, projections, defined goals and objectives, budgets and resources to achieve the objectives.

For instance, Slack is a collaboration tool that allows teams to share files and communicate easily. They had an amazing rise at the launch with 15000 users in 2014 to over 500,000 in less than a year, and currently holds nearly one and a half millions of which are paid accounts.

Their strategy was clear from day one – focusing on the customer experience. They believe in selling solutions and not products. The company acknowledges to 8000 help desk tickets and up to 10,000 tweets every month.

This is what digital marketing plan does versus a digital advertising campaign that shows results instantly.

A digital ad campaign if fails will not impact the business overall but if digital marketing campaign fails it will affect the running of the business immensely.

• Digital advertising promotes the brand while digital marketing develops the brand image.

Digital Advertising promotes a brand, product or services. A compelling ad engages the customers, generates leads and creates brand awareness.

For instance, Typeform, a survey software company offers a freemium option with a condition that customers should include a thank-you page that includes its logo and message. It is a win-win situation that helps customers get to know the product for free and the brand gets free advertising. 

              Image Credit: ThinkIt Training Institute

Digital marketing builds a brand and brand image with a strategy in place. You plan the logo, design, taglines for your brand. You will develop a strategy on how your brand will be perceived by the target audience and what message your brand will convey to the target audience. It is a long term planning to build a robust brand image based on values and ethics that remain etched in the minds of the consumers.

• Digital Advertising is sales centred while digital marketing is audience psychology centred.

Digital marketing is not always sales-driven. The ultimate goal is to increase your ROI and sales but along with building a relationship with the target audience.

Let’s say you write a blog and publish it not only to increase traffic and revenue but build a relationship with your readers. This is what digital marketing does, it is based on audience psychology. To understand your target audience, their needs, and wants, it is essential to know audience psychology.

On the contrary, digital advertising focuses on a specific segment of the target audience that can be reached via ads. For instance, if you pay $50 for a $5 CPM slot, you are content as long as you get your 5000 impressions. In digital advertising, you are not much concerned about who sees it as long as the ad is performing and reaches out to the people.

Conclusion-

After reading this article, you may now have a clear idea about digital marketing and digital advertising. They are not the same and has an individual role to play.  Let’s have a short recap to have no doubts in mind.

Creating Stunning Visuals That Also Deliver Results Is A Science. Today, We Decode It.

Good advertising is not always about selling a product but creating a long-lasting impact and that is precisely what visual adverts do. An attention-grabbing image has been proven to increase engagement and performance. 

The world is now more visual than ever before.

The old adage ‘Picture speaks a thousand words’ is certainly true in this digital era. Check out the key findings below to comprehend the power of Visuals.

Image Credit: Mdg Advertising

However, visual creative advertising can fail if the various elements like the subject, color, lighting, focus, the text are not optimized. There is a reason why visuals are more compelling than text. It taps into the ‘consumer psychology’ and influences their buying behavior. This psychological effect can be created through colors, repetition, or call-to-action.

1. Color: There is a science behind how emotions react to various colors. When you create your visuals, you just don’t put colors but use them to create an emotional response. When your brain sees an image, it subconsciously decides whether the content is important or not. This is the impact of colors on the mood and where colors and creative advertising merge together.

The psychological effect of colors is used in branding and designing ads.

• Branding: Brands have always called on colors while creating their own identities. According to the infographic by Kissmetrics.com reveals color influences 85% of a customer purchasing decision. Some brands opt for bright and bold colors while some go for subtle colors pointing the emotions the product brings out. Brands like Google or Microsoft have multicolor accentuating that their product embraces any emotion anytime.

Image Credit: Blueberry labs

• Ads: While designing an ad knowing your target audience is essential to build the correct color scheme. For example, men and women have different color preferences. If your product is feminine and targeted for girls/ women then pink is the color to highlight.

                                                                  Image Credit: Kissmetrics

2. Call-to-action is heard and attended 

Naturally, CTA is an important element in your visual creative advertising. For example, a company found a 245% increase in leads after optimizing the landing pages. Make sure to keep your ad copy crisp with minimum textual content. Let your visuals do all the talking.

Ensure visuals take the center stage, followed by text to guide the users to take the next step and focus on optimizing it. You should end up with something like this:

                               Image Credit: Bannersnack

As you can see, the ad features the product image and call-to-action is in front and center to get attention immediately.

3. Repetition:

The trick of repetition works to build memories and equally, is an essential element of visual creative advertising. Repeated elements create easy brand recall but build variations to avoid fatigue.

Image Visme.co

4. Ownership of the Visual creatives:

Whenever someone looks at your ad and say, “Oh! I think to have seen this before”. This moment you lose the ownership of the ad. It is common to use images from the internet for ads but doesn’t help and loses its unique appeal.

Here, ownership comes into the picture and additionally helps to make brand memorable. For instance, when you look at BuzzSumo ad, there is the same character in all their visuals. Easily, you recognize the brand seeing the character. Three things in one creative: Repetition, Recognition, and Ownership. 

Image Credit: Buzzsumo

Choosing the right images is the key in Creative Advertising

While preparing for an advertising campaign, the right choice of images is vital. People are visual by nature. With shorter attention spans, images express ample of information with a quick glance and subsequently highly effective.

The target audience is drawn to images that are attention-seeking and compelling. The popularity of Instagram says it all. The image-sharing platform has 1 billion monthly active users and it is a fact that businesses are using it to run their ad campaigns. Do not undermine the power of images!

But, how effective is it to have a great image?  To answer this, here are the Instagram statistics and insights of businesses using IG for their creative digital advertising.

• ⅓ of the most viewed stories are from businesses – Instagram started with IG business Profiles to help businesses to grow and advertise. An estimated 71% of US business uses IG.
• Photos with faces get 38% more likes:  Adding faces to your image increases the scope of positive response, so include people in your campaigns.
• Instagram generates 4x more interactions compared to Facebook: IG engagement rate is on the rise and has increased by 29% between October 2017 and May 2018. With increased engagement, advertisers are spending more on Instagram.
• 83% of users discover new products and services on Instagram:  This implies that apart from being a discovery engine for brands, it has a strong impact on people’s shopping journey.    
• 65% of the most prominent posts feature product: The target audience wants to see the product and know what it has to offer.     
• Photos posts drive more engagement than video: The engagement rate of the image is more than videos,1.03 %. Videos attract more comments and images draw likes.

Examples of Visual in Creative Advertising Campaigns

• Powerful Images

Lemon and Line: The accessory maker has chosen the right image with the right color palette and the whole ad is compelling. Red, Blue and yellow are the right mix of primary colors, creating a high contrast but maintaining a strong balance. The highlighting point is the product is seen on the model’s wrist still it is a part of the whole image and not the focus.

Image Credit: Ad Expresso

• Visual Metaphor

It can be created by looking for the element to mimic the actual situation. Simple but out of the box concept to attract eyeballs and deliver a strong message.

Image Credit: Visme .Co

In this ad, the message is loud and clear whereas the human helmet becomes the visual metaphor. The elements like color, font, lightning can be tweaked.

• Video Advertising

Volvo Trucks: Videos supports explaining big messages in a few frames. Technically, you simplify the idea compared to an image or GIF. in this ad, Jean-Claude Van Damme performs a split. With this ad, Volvo trucks try to demonstrate the sturdiness and stability of the truck’s steering. Youtube responded that when an ad is successful, people search it online on Google and not when it pops out before any video.

This is what every ad should aim for creative space to visit again.

In Closing

Good design can help you to widen your reach and grow. Effective visual adverts are a combination of many elements like color, images, text, lightning or platforms. 

Focus and optimize the visual creatives for a positive impact. When advertising visually, ensure to use your own images as far as possible. Use attention-grabbing images to boost engagement.

Digital Advertising Industry Plans To Replace Cookies With First-Party Data

As the third-party cookies crumble and in the wake of privacy regulation coming into effect, the online advertising industry is facing an identity crisis. They are in search of a new identity and one possible solution is people’s email addresses and phone numbers.

At the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm Springs, California, on 10th February, the IAB wants to partner across brands, agencies, publishers and tech companies to develop new means to power digital advertising.

“Project ReArc”, a chosen name for re-architecture, a critical part of their multi-phase plans to build a replacement for the third-party cookies presently blocked by Safari and Firefox browsers and Google Chrome to follow soon.

IAB Tech labs proposed to build a new identity based on e-mail addresses or phone numbers, which provide a constant and rational way of recognizing someone than the third-party cookie did,  without giving up on user’s privacy. 

The IAB and all the involved entities are supporting the future of online advertising based on email advertising and phone numbers. They have witnessed Facebook and Google dominate the online ad world thanks to their platforms logged-in user bases and see e-mail addresses and phone number identifiers as a way for the open web to rival the walled gardens.

However, Megan Pagliuca, Chief Media and Data Officer at Hearts & Science says the people with signed-in users are going to win. If grounding the identifier on first-party data will create a disadvantage for long-tail and mid-tier publishers as they don’t have a sizeable number of registers. It is also unlikely to benefit the open web as a whole.

To protect the advertising business, if publishers are pressured to compel users to provide their email address or phone numbers, it is highly possible that many sites will put content open after registration so that only logged-in users can access it. While this can be a precarious situation for publishers to gain user registries, it could also lead them to lose a part of their audience. As a result, there is a  potential negative impact on the small and mid-sized publishers leading to an unanticipated consequence.

A publishing executive asked earnestly, “Do ad networks have a chance of returning?”

Ad networks started for small publishers like individual bloggers and act as mediators between publishers and advertisers to curate ad inventory from publishers and sell to advertisers. Eventually, supply-side platforms came up and replaced ad networks with third-party cookies on these sites to auction off their inventory to sell targeted ads. However, without third-party cookies, these small publishers will face difficulties to collect email addresses or phone numbers and once again will have to be under the umbrella of the ad network. 

The primary reason for ad networks struggles to attract advertisers is generally they are not transparent about where an advertisers’ ad appeared. However, this is not true in the case of brand advertisers who care about the context in which their ads appear while performance advertisers care whether the ad drove sales or any conversion event.

I could see a world where performance buyers return to using ad networks because they don’t care about transparency,” said the unnamed SSP executive to Digiday.

The return of the ad network is a concern for publishers because of the possibility for ad networks to siphon some of their revenue. While some ad buyers direct their money to big publishers as they have signed-in users, others may see ad networks offering a lower price and move their money in that direction to become cost-effective. 

Top 5 ads of 2019 that swept all the awards, and hearts.

A good commercial has the power to increase your brand value, new customers and generate sales. Catchy phrases, jingles, creative taglines and more can draw mass attention and become history when done right, bring the companies higher returns. 

2019 saw some of the most interesting and brilliant concepts and with digital media growing, we are likely to see even more fantastic campaigns in 2020.

With digital and online consumption growing, Hubspot research states,  “Turn your Customers into your biggest advocates and promoters.”

Image Credit: Hubspot

Still, wondering or creating a plan for your 2020 campaigns to reach the goal and get the ROI?

We have gathered a few of the best ads of 2019, take a look and get which may get you inspired for your next. It can be helpful to learn from these award-winning, revenue-generating campaigns and implement a few strategies or elements in your next ad campaign.

In the world full of competition and ads literally everywhere, let us delve into the details of the finest campaigns and embark on your creativity for 2020.

1. IKEA: Real Life Series

Image Credit: The Drum

A brilliant concept of cross-referencing and recreating the living rooms of iconic TV shows to capture the cultural imagination of the United Arab  Emirates (UAE). Unlike the U.S and U.K, where the brand has a strong presence and is a retail novelty, gaining mass attention and relevance in UAE is a little difficult.

The brand selected Publicis Spain to recreate the set of living rooms of the classics ‘The Simpsons’ or  ‘Friends’ and ‘Stranger Things’. The print ads show real furniture from the store’s inventory, modelled and edited using 3D software to give the real effect. 

The project ‘Real Life Series’ is on IKEA’s social media and catalogues and even appears in stores in the Middle East. It has launched a website that offers exact iconic decorating pieces from the shows.

The tagline ‘For Real families’ highlights the diversity in Ikea’s products among the diverse population of the UAE. As per the press release, it aims to prove it can provide relevant solutions to all cultures.

2. Tetley -Now We’re Talking

Case Study

A classic example of Rebranding and Brand Positioning. 

To help the brand target a wider and more diverse audience, the tea brand decided to create a mire meaningful positioning, fresh identity and a creative campaign that would win the hearts and minds of the nation.

The concept of the ad campaign was developed on the premise of the emotional territory of ‘togetherness’ with a strategy around conversations flowing. The idea is Tetley Tea can get anyone talking even, an unlikely friendship of a dog and cat.  As soon as the owners leave the house, the dog puts on the kettle. He and the cat enjoy a cup of Tetley over everyday conversations that people have on the sofa.  

While the Tetley Folk represented the brand, the new brand assets cat and dog represent regular people and their conversations. The brand wants to remind us of this campaign that it feels good to have a face to face conversation over a cuppa. 

The mission is to rebrand Tetley Tea more modern and for everyone by implementing an emotionally engaging idea that can connect everyone and anyone. As soon as the ad went on air, the brand’s social page was filled by the people with love for the furry twosome.

Here is a small selection of comments on the Sparks 44 website.

3. Casper, Sleep Puzzle

Image Credit: Adweek

Don’t be surprised if mattress brand Casper is a part of your subway commute. Confused? No trendy campaign or strategy to sell mattresses but PUZZLES at subways stations. 

The answer to the above is SN +Booze -B =Snooze and F+Vest-V =is Fest. Snooze Fest. These puzzles with many more are strategically being placed in trams and stations. This has caught the attention of many bored, idle or tired travellers.

What makes this idea brilliant is the simplicity and curiosity of people. Casper encourages the audience to crack the puzzle and when searching for the answer, hover to the website for the right answer. This lands them in the market for a new mattress.

Another highlighting point is the placement and timing of ads. Who better to market than the people waiting around and searching for the answer. It might seem like a short span to grab attention but has a long term effect than any typical ad. It’s more fun and interactive where Casper is giving them a direct path to a quality product that solves sleep puzzles and sleep problems.

4. Wistia, Brandwagon 

Wistia, a video software company launched its marketing show “Brandwagon” instead of parking their funds in different types of ads.

A glimpse of the show to give you an idea about it.

This video series shows interviews with Wistia’s experts and other companies as well about marketing campaigns and strategies. This content enables us to keep viewers on the Wistia’s website, display its marketing credibility and inform marketers about different techniques.

Video series is a long format compared to blog posts and there is a growing trend of online series. Many brands like Mailchimp and Uber have started their own series, talk shows, and documentaries. This binge-worthy content enables marketers to re-purpose episodes into micro-content.

Hubspot survey says, 83% of marketers prefer video as it gives them a good ROI and more than 50% of consumers want to see video content more than any other type of content from brands.

5. Microsoft, We all Win

In Microsoft’s emotional Super Bowl campaign, the mission is to show how Microsoft Xbox Adaptive Controller to help gamers with limited mobility. 

When it came to the attention of Microsoft that people with limited mobility are having trouble pressing buttons or trouble holding the remote of video game controllers, the company built a controller with touchpads rather than buttons.

The Gold-Clio winning commercial shows how Microsoft interviewed children with missing limbs on their love for video games, troubles and difficulties with controllers due to their disabilities. Parents and children featured in the campaign and explained how gaming helps them to connect with friends in ways which they might not be able to do otherwise. 

The most engaging part of the commercial is the contrast before and after Xbox Adaptive Controller and made a big change. Before the new controller, the kids thought that’s the way of life but the new technology and controller allows them to play games fairly.

An emotional and heartwarming campaign with in-depth content shows how Microsoft took time to develop a product that solved problems of a unique set of customers. It makes you feel that Microsoft as a brand truly takes care of its customers and takes extra effort to make a smooth experience with their products.

It has more than 29 million views and 25k likes on YouTube. It has the highest Unruly EQ score of 7.5.

Wrapping Up for 2020 Campaigns

The above list of campaigns shows the creativity of expert marketers that win attention with deep content. Brands have found a unique way to educate their customers or competitors with out-of-the-box thinking like puzzles or fun activities generating revenues.  

Get ready to launch campaigns in 2020 as the stage is set for new ideas and thoughts.