Digital advertising is the tactic of leveraging the internet and its properties to deliver promotional ads to consumers on various channels.
Like it’s predecessor—traditional advertising—a digital ad can help tell the story of your brand. Unlike traditional advertising, digital advertising is more universal and flexible, enabling you to tell your brand story on the channels that your buyers frequent—through text, images, video, and more.
Digital advertising has evolved considerably since the first clickable ad hit the internet in 1994. Today, instead of advertising creating noise that distracts from the content your buyers want to read, digital advertising can be part of an ongoing conversation that your brand has with its customers.
Digital ads are everywhere. They can be seen on the websites your buyer visits, on her mobile phone, on social media channels, and on her smart watch. Because advertising proliferates across so many channels, including very personal channels, you need to be more cognizant than ever before about providing useful, engaging content. Luckily, due to behavioral targeting technologies and platforms like marketing automation, these continuous conversations are possible. And by leveraging these technologies at scale, you can nurture your buyers in a very personalized way until they are ready to become customers.
As marketers, we may feel like we have come a long way with digital advertising, but we are still in the early stages. With digital advertising continuing to gain momentum, it is more vital than ever before to make it an integral part of your holistic marketing mix.