What is digital advertising, and why should it concern you
As business owners, I think it’s unnecessary to tell you about the importance of advertising and the benefits of it. If you want, I can talk from morning till evening about the advantages of advertising, presenting data and stories of successes and failures. But ultimately, I assume you are aware of the importance of advertising, or else you wouldn’t be here on our website. So, what do I want to talk about? Digital advertising, a significant and crucial niche in the advertising industry. Anything related to website design, website promotion for businesses, social media marketing, SEO articles, content services, and more.
The internet is one of the most important business arenas. It is geographically limitless, with a vast market in terms of the number of participants, including both B2C and B2B companies, and much more. Every customer uses the internet as a tool for decision-making and actions, so it’s clear that you want to be present there. The versatility of the internet makes it a powerful advertising tool, the dream of every advertising agency – both perfect filtering capabilities and the ability to convey advertising messages visually. I’ve already convinced myself – digital advertising on the internet is something you shouldn’t overlook.
Digital Marketing Tools from a Historical Perspective
Advertising is not a new concept; it has always existed, only the way advertising is done has undergone many changes. For example, one of the well-known advertising platforms is newspapers; these could be daily newspapers, weekend supplements, and common ones. These platforms have significant exposure, making them suitable for advertising. For example, among newspaper readers, you can find a young couple from Tel Aviv, a widow from Dimona, and a kibbutz soldier in regular service. Hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions, are exposed to newspapers in Israel every day, including advertising.
In those days, print media was also considered effective in terms of targeting; different magazines provided access to niche audiences and were common for geographic filtering.
However, print media is limited in terms of message delivery capabilities. When technologies like cinema and later home television arrived, they immediately attracted attention and became advertising platforms. Similar to print media, they also provided us with significant exposure, but with an additional value – the ability to convey messages through video. This form of advertising proved to be more efficient, and over time, we also learned to achieve better audience targeting based on television programming and broadcast hours.
Of course, these are not the only marketing channels. There is also the use of advertising billboards and street signs displayed at points of sale or in public places, as is still done in major transportation routes and football stadiums, for example.
Every advertising tool allows us to reach different audiences and convey messages in different ways. No tool is inherently good or bad; each tool has its unique capabilities, and advertisers may make use of all of them.
Then Came Digital Advertising
Entering the digital age has changed the advertising landscape end-to-end and continues to do so as the field develops rapidly, with new technologies emerging every day. Digital advertising, as we know it now, includes numerous platforms that can be used for advertising – websites, forums, social networks, instant messaging apps, landing pages, navigation apps, and various types of applications. But digital advertising is not just another marketing channel; it has special tools that provide advertisers with advantages that were considered unimaginable just a few years ago.
Digital advertising allows us more than anything to target our audience precisely, unlike any other tool. Existing technologies collect data about their users, selling their preferences, consumer behavior, interests, geographical location, family status, and countless other characteristics that allow us to perform very precise filtering and thus generate warm leads.
It is important to know our customers and approach them with the right marketing messages, and digital allows us to do so efficiently and uniquely. For example, if we offer a personal fitness trainer service designed for single parents with a career and high income, we can create campaigns that precisely identify this audience. If we want to promote it in a specific geographic area, we can use Google Maps… All that remains is to choose the media company that can build a campaign targeting them with the marketing messages.
And We Learned Over the Years…
Digital advertising does not only reflect technological changes but also everything we have learned over the years about consumer behavior and decision-making. It can be said that digital advertising was even part of our learning process, as it allowed us to collect information efficiently. Digital advertising reflects in the best possible way our understanding of consumer motivations and the ability to influence their decision-making. The digital scene offers marketing options that no business can afford to ignore. You just need to know who to entrust with them; the complexity of digital advertising goes beyond imagination. Not everyone is even aware of the variety of options available in digital media.