Display advertising is one of the oldest forms of advertising strategy known to the world of trade and commerce. As opposed to classifieds advertising, display advertising can appear on any part of the magazine or newspaper. Display advertising in general uses graphics extensively though there is no hard and fast rule that display advertising should do so. If the nature of your advertisements should require only textual content, you are free to use a text only display advertising format. It is totally up to you. However, since the use of bright graphics gets the attention of the readers better than the textual content, display advertising tends to use images, graphics, logos etc.
Online Version of Display Advertising
Display advertising has evolved extensively and today you can find online versions. You will be able to see these on websites in the form of display banners or web banners. There are static online display banners, dynamic display banners and flash animated display too which is not uncommon in the online display advertising industry.
It is not necessary that your display advertising should appear on web pages. You can even make your display advertising appear in emails or in other online applications. This kind of advertising can also be found in instant messenger chat interfaces or other free software applications online.
Display advertising has been in use in both online media and print media for many years and its effectiveness makes entrepreneurs frequently opt for this mode of advertising.
There area number of advantages of using online display advertising along with print media. When you make use of only print media, the number of people that will get to see your display advertising will be limited. This is because the life of your advertisement in the print media is only until the end of the active period of the magazine or newspapers. The reach is further limited to the number of magazines sold during that particular period and the popularity of the magazine or newspaper.
On the other hand, if you use online media, your advertisement will be seen by people from all over the world. It will have a global reach. Moreover, you will be able to serve highly customized ads based on the location of the visitor and geographic IP.
Cost Effective Approach to Display Advertising
If you are looking for a cost effective approach to display advertising, then you must choose online. It is much cheaper to advertise your products and services online. You will be able to find monthly or annual advertising packages that will allow you to use buy your advertising space online and run multiple formats and multiple advertisements depending on your need during a particular time of the year. Display advertising in the online media will allow you to use a number of formats including text, images, audio, animation, video etc. You can even think of interactive content for your online display advertising.
Tracking the Performance of your Display Advertising
Whether you are using online or offline advertising, tracking of the performance of your advertising efforts will give you insights into your marketing strategy. It will help you learn what works and what does not. If you are using magazines or newspapers for your display advertising, you can make your customers bring a cut out coupon to claim a special discount. The same can be done with online promotional codes. This will help you keep track of the positive results that you get through your display advertising. However, this method of measuring the effectiveness of your display advertising will be suitable only for B2C advertising. You cannot employ this method for B2B campaigns.
Performance tracking is much easier with online display advertising. You will be able to see how many people clicked on your display ads and how many people actually bought your product or hired your service after coming through the ads.
Performance tracking is one of the important aspects of marketing. It will help you calculate your ROI and also help you to decide your future marketing strategy.
Innovative Approach to Display Advertising
As people are being bombarded with lots of advertisements online and offline, they have developed a natural immunity towards them. They tend to ignore automatically the display advertising banners. Therefore, a traditional approach to display advertising may eventually become less effective.
As people are becoming more and more immune to display advertising, advertising has evolved to come in forms such as a free application, which they can use to get some useful information. Examples of these are: a small widget to calculate currency conversions or a global clock for the desktop which displays the banners advertising a certain product or service. Here the users are drawn towards the advertisement rather than turning away from them.
The idea is to create a give and take environment. If you want the attention of the visitors, then you need to give them something useful. This is indeed one of the most cost effective approaches to get the attention of the users. You may have to invest once in developing the mini applications or mini widgets and popularize it online. If implemented well you will be able to send a considerable number of potential leads to your website.
While online display advertising is more effective than print, you must not totally ignore the print media too. You should take advantage of all possible platforms.