When it comes to advertising, most people are looking to influence other individuals into considering purchasing their product or service. The good news is that there are a variety of tools to help you accomplish this goal. Over the past 50 years, there have only been a handful of tools such as TV, Radio, Newspapers, Outdoor and Direct Mail. However, in 2014, digital advertising surpassed all the traditional forms of advertising in terms of overall ad dollars spent. There are seven main reasons why digital advertising is better than traditional advertising and why every business needs to be focusing on digital.
1. Targeting
Digital advertising gives you many more options when it comes to consumer targeting. Most traditional advertising will provide you with some basic targeting such as location or general interests, but its very inefficient and you often end up paying to advertise to individuals would are never interested in your business. For example, a billboard feating a new women’s shampoo might reach a wide number of women in a certain area, but half of the impressions would also be for men, which are also viewing the billboard. Digital advertising gives you a wide range of additional targeting to help ensure your advertisements reach the right person online.
2. Faster
When it comes to traditional advertising, there is often a long run time leading up to the ad being placed. This has to do with the print or publication timeframe. However, with digital most of the advertisements can be placed and running the same day. This allows you to know much faster if the advertisement is working. If its not producing the results you want, you can make the needed changes immediately instead of waiting around for traditional advertising to catch up.
3. Expanding
In 2014, digital advertising became the #1 media source in America. Some experts are predicting that over 50% of this traffic is from mobile devices, and this number continues to grow rapidly. What does this mean for advertisers? You need to be moving towards digital as quickly as possible.
4. Engagement
Traditional advertising is limited when it comes to engaging your audience. Video has traditionally been king when it comes to capturing the attention of your audience through visuals or quality story telling. However, with digital advertising, you have a variety of new methods to connect your audience with your brand via rich media ads, online videos or social media. The end result, you customers become more engaged with your company, increasing the likelihood that they will use or purchase your service.
5. Audiences
The future of digital is moving towards audiences. What does this mean? With the growth of real time bidding and big data, advertisers are no longer looking to purchase impressions in large blocks, but rather, they are looking to target a specific audience, then display advertisements to that group of individuals all over the Internet. This means as your customers are surfing the web and viewing a variety of websites, your ads will be following the audience, not the website.
6. Tracking
With the use of Mobile devices, retargeting and location devices like iBeacon or wearable tech, the growth of consumer tracking is another segment that is poised for rapid growth. What does this mean for advertisers, the more comfortable consumers become with tracking, the more opportunities you have to interact with consumers and engage with them at critical points when they need your product or service. Imagine a person jogging for 10 miles and their phone suddenly lets them know the closest location to purchase a sports drink.
7. Cost Effective
The more companies move away from mass media and into targeted digital media, the more likely they are to increase their return on investment. This is mainly due to the fact that they are no longer wasting impressions on individuals that do not matter. The more waste is removed, the more focused the campaign becomes and thus, makes the advertising more cost effective.
