Everything you need to know

Millions of companies worldwide invest billions in paid advertisements every year to face as many people as possible. And they do it because online advertising, if it is done correctly, provides outstanding results.

On the other hand, it can feel like you are not careful how to rinse your money into the digital drain.

To help you, we have put together this comprehensive online advertising book for companies.

Table of contents

What is online advertising?

Online advertising promotes your brand, your product or service via various digital channels. It is a roof term that covers social media, advertisements, paid and organic search as well as local advertising. And it should definitely be part of your marketing strategy.

How online advertising works

Regardless of whether you are looking for the best Indian restaurant in your neighborhood or looking for a certain SaAS tool, you will probably contact a search engine to find what you need.

The same applies to your audience.

With search engines such as Google, confusion and many others, which are a central component of the daily routines, carrying out paid ads can attract the attention of their audience on these platforms.

And we don’t overlook how much time people spend on social media – an average of two hours and 23 minutes a day, so loud Statista (Although some of us – cough – press these average values ​​higher and higher). In most cases, social media advertising should be part of your entire marketing plan.

There are many ways to strategically advertise your business. First think about who you are trying to reach.

Ask questions like:

• Which target group do I advertise?
• How can I place my product or service offer with my goal?

The answer can be seen where your target group spends most of the time online. Explore your most frequented social media channels and the keywords that you look up the most.

If you want to carry out Pay-per-Click ads (PPC) on social media, it is important to note that most social media platforms offer business sites to pay a fee for the promotion of posts/ads within the interface.

Or if you want to advertise on a search engine for targeted keywords. Show Google or Sixads can lead it through the payment process and the execution.

To learn more about the increase in social media posts, read How to increase a contribution on social media (Instagram, Facebook and Twitter).

If you are curious about SEO against PPC, try our article about When to optimize and when the traffic should pay.

Advantages of online advertising

There are three important ways to help you improve the performance of your organic marketing efforts.

With digital ads, the organic performance of:

1. An increase in brand awareness By displaying your content within and outside of your networks.
2. A better understanding of your audience By using the targeting and analysis of the ADS platforms.
3. The creation of higher content If you understand what ad content your business goals will reach you and what are not.

The goal of an advertising strategy should be to achieve a positive return of their investment, which is due to whether they achieve more income from the advertising campaign than the costs they use.

Try to get help with the quick creation of high -quality marketing campaigns Drift Kings Medias campaign assistant – It can help you to generate copies for target pages, advertisements and e -mails so that you can spend more time for the strategy.

Types of online advertising

Let us immerse yourself directly in the different types of online advertising.

Social -Media advertising

Every month there are over 3 billion active users Facebook2 billion on Instagramand 586 million X worldwide.

Due to the mere number of active users on these platforms, the advertising editions in social media channels are on an all-time high. The global digital advertising expenditure should surpass 344 billion US dollars until 2027.

When Drift Kings Media asked marketing experts which social media platforms were best suited for the commitment, we found that Instagram and Facebook take the top slots -but YouTube was not too far behind.

Advertising on social media is associated with many advantages. You can:

• Achieve a very specific target audience With the help of targeting functions and different audiences on all social media platforms.
• Use a variety of ad formats Advertising in a way that matches its business goals.
• Invest in the specific advertising efforts These drive pipes and sales for your company.

Let’s take a look at eight popular social media networks, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, Pinterest, YouTube, Snapchat and Tiktok. We will cover the audience and the display types, each of which is available for each.

In Drift Kings Media Original Research from 2025, we asked marketing experts which social media platforms used their companies. YouTube and Instagram were far the most popular because Facebook, X, TikTok and LinkedIn also create the list.

This does not mean that you should only concentrate on one or more of the top 6. Depending on your company and your target group, you may find other platforms as well as – or even more – useful.

For example, the digital marketer Jenna Kutcher is a great supporter of Pinterest, of whom she said And Her most lucrative channel: “The average entrepreneur spends 20 hours a week for marketing and eight hours on social media,” said Kutcher.

“In comparison to this, Pinterest takes me under an hour a week and gives my content a longer durability. The average service life on Instagram is at best 24 hours. The average lifespan of a PIN on Pinterest is four months.”

To find out more about paid social media marketing, read Paid social media: worth investing?

1. Facebook

According to Drift Kings Medias Report from Drift Kings Media 2025 Social Media Trends, almost 60% of the marketers indicate that their companies use Facebook.

One of the most powerful features of advertising on Facebook is Target group Targeting. Targeting functions on Facebook are unsurpassed by any other social media network. The advanced targeting of Facebook can address your ads to the most relevant target group – and even use new target groups that you would otherwise never reach with organic content.

Personally, my preferred way of advertising on Facebook is Leading index Because they give them the best of both worlds: generate visual content and generate leads at the same time. With Facebook -Lead ads you can record LEAD information without guiding people from the Facebook platform.

With Lead ads, they offer helpful content that encourages the audience to register for a newsletter, to receive a price estimate or to request additional business information. In return, the company receives a new tour when the viewer fills out the form.

Here is an example that Facebook offers in its Lead ad overview:

source

Facebook suggests using three or less questions, e.g.

2. Instagram

You can also advertise on Instagram via the Facebook ad Manager. Instagram has over 2 billion monthly users The vast majority of the world are between the Age of 18 and 34 years.

There are Three ways that you can advertise on Instagram:

• Create and promote contributions, stories and roles Directly from your Instagram professional account.
• Create ads from your Facebook page And apply them both on Facebook and Instagram.
• Create advertising campaigns in Facebook ads Manager Access to complete target functions.

I recommend taking the third option and creating custom campaigns for your audience on Instagram.

Ads that appear when scrolling your feed are called up In-feed ads. The ads you see in the “Explore” section while examining your interests and discovering new content creators are Explore ads.

In this example Provided by MetaYou can see that the Explore display is a 1×1 tile with a “sponsored” label:

source

Ads in Instagram Explore are a great opportunity to present your brand in front of people who are looking for new creators or content.

To learn more, read The advantages and disadvantages of Instagram Marketing.

3 .. LinkedIn

LinkedIn has over 900 million monthly active users worldwide.

Users on the platform are mostly working specialists, which makes LinkedIn a great place for B2B advertising (business-to-business).

The advantage of advertising on LinkedIn is its unique Targeting skills. On LinkedIn you have access to unique target criteria that are not available on other platforms.

Perhaps you would only like to advertise potential customers at directory levels who work in customer service within the recruitment industry. Linkedin’s target functions enable.

With the option, Lead gene forms in your LinkedIn displays, LinkedIn can be a lead generation machine. In this way you can reach a very specific audience and drive leads without leading them outside the LinkedIn platform.

In this PDF on Best PracticesLinkedIn offers the following example of JP Morgan with Linkedin’s discussion ads:

source

4. X (formerly Twitter)

Digital advertising is less common on X, since the organic reach is still an important driver for the performance of a brand on X.

This is very unique for X – but still, depending on your goals, advertisements can still deliver strong results. X has over 586 million monthly users global.

If you are curious about X, read our contribution. Markte Market on X: Tips and data of a marketer.

5. Pinterest

Some say that Pinterest is the only platform on which users actually want to see advertisements from brands they love because Pinterest is all about visuals.

Pinterest has 537 million users which are very committed and mostly female.

Here you can find out how you can do on Pinterest in advertising Four steps:

• Choose a pen. Apply your best pens so that you will appear in the most relevant places.
• Decide who sees it. Set up targeting so that the right people see their ads.
• Pay for the results. Choose to pay for commitment or visits to your website.
• Follow what works. As soon as your campaign begins, see how it works and make adjustments as needed.

Under Pinterest case studies Is this success story of Kroger:

source

Pinterest says in the case study: “Kroger’s efforts have been in great ways. Premiere in the search has achieved a remarkable buoyancy of 11.6% in consciousness.1 They also saw a 5.4-point lift in the brand associated and positioned kroger as a trustworthy partner in the meal planning.”

6. YouTube

Views on YouTube appear before and during other YouTube videos or as an independent video that is displayed after carrying out a search.

Since you can address demographic information and interests, you can operate your videos to certain, relevant target groups that already see videos of similar brands or related topics.

Find out more about YouTube advertising with our article YouTube ads for beginners: How to start and optimize a YouTube video advertising campaign.

7. Snapchat

Snapchat offers some types of advertising, including Story ads and augmented reality (AR) lenses -quite similar to the advertising options on Instagram.

What makes Snapchat unique are the expanded reality lenses. AR lenses are sponsored by a company to create interactive moments that users can use with their friends.

For more information, see our article Should you advertise on Snapchat?

8. Tikok

With the advertising for TikK videos, brands can raise awareness of a young target group. Most of the contributions you will see in Tikok aim to get laugh.

From a brand perspective, you would like to create funny videos that match other content on the platform and quickly use moving trends-think about dance challenges and memes. This type of content is most effective.

Drift Kings Mediater Caroline Forsey spoke to TikK’s global director of product partnerships and you have the scoop on How to use TikTok for Lead Gen.

Paid search advertising

People looking online are looking for something specific and click on the first result that they believe that they will be the most helpful for you.

You may think: “I already appear in organic results in search engines. Why should I also pay for advertising?”

Well, there are three main reasons:

• Google estimates that a company for 1 US dollars for Google advertisements will make a profit of 8 US dollars. (You can read from Google’s methodology from page 56 This PDF report.))
• Advertising for search engines protects you from the competition, which may advertise your brand conditions.
• Search ads are first displayed on the search engines (SERPS) via the organic results.

With paid search advertising, advertisers can attract the attention of their target group in a more targeted manner than with organic search alone.

With search ads you can predict the wishes, needs and wishes of your potential customers and serve ads for you that are very context -related.

Over time, the analysis of your search ads can help you analyze and improve these ads in order to achieve even more people.

But how does Google know how to deliver the right display to the right person? Keywords come into play here.

Keywords

Keyword research is just as important for paid ads as for organic searches.

This is because Google is based on your advertisement with search queries based on the keywords you have selected.

Every advertising group that you create in your campaign is aimed at a small series of keywords, and Google shows your ad, based on these selections.

Let’s assume that Mary moves to another house and searches for a home. So she goes into Google and taps “who are the best creators”.

By searching for “Best Movers”, she will see the results for advertisers who aimed at keywords such as “Moving Companies” and “Top-Rated Mover”.

Search engines also take your intention into account when choosing the display varieties.

How do you choose your keywords?

Keywords usually fall under two categories: Brand and non-fire.

A brand keyword is a word or a phrase that contains the name or variations of a brand name. For example, some of the brand words of Drift Kings Medias include branded words Lifting spotPresent Drift Kings Media Free CRMAnd Drift Kings Media Marketing Hub.

These are all variations of the Drift Kings Media brand and the tools we offer.

Non-brand keywords are all other relevant keywords that do not contain the name or variations of a brand name.

Contain some of the non-brand keywords from HubSpot “Inbound marketing“” “Sales software,” And “Customer relationship management. “

These keywords are not part of the Drift Kings Media brand name, they are relevant terms that enable Drift Kings Media to reach the audience that is interested in making a purchase.

Brand and non-brand keywords play a role in their digital advertising strategy. Brands keywords will help you protect your brand from displaying your competitor.

If you do not carry out any advertising campaigns for brand keywords, let your company susceptible to the loss of website data traffic to the competition that offers on your brand keywords.

Non-brand keywords also have a role to play. With keywords with non-brands you can reach a new audience that is not familiar with your brand.

Match type

When it comes to displaying your ad, you not only want to select a certain group of keywords and the display are only displayed if these keywords are entered in the search engine.

Here the type of agreement comes into play. Since there are an infinite number of possibilities of how people can actually search for a term, Google offers you three types of match: Exact agreement, phrase match and width match.

You can even use a wide match modifier and exclude negative keywords to optimize where your ads are delivered.

Let’s take a look at every type of match:

• Precise agreement: A keyword defined on a precise type of match only indicates your ad if the search term contains the exact key word or a very tight variation. Exact match words are surrounded in (brackets).
• Phrase match: A key word specified on the phrase match shows your ad when the search term contains the same order of the words, but can also contain additional words. The expression -match keywords are surrounded by “quotations”.
• Broad match: A key word specified on the broad agreement shows your ad when the search term contains one or a combination or variations of the words in your keyword in every order. Broad Match keywords contain no symbols.
• Wide match modifier: With the wide match modifier you can select keywords that must be displayed in the search query for your advertisement. Keywords with a wide match modifier use a +plus sign.
• Negative keywords: Excluding your ads from the search queries with this term are displayed. Negative keywords contain a -minus sign.

Google vs. Bing against Yahoo

There are some advertising platforms for the search, including Google, Bing and Yahoo. But Google is by far the most frequently used search engine out there.

Google processes some 15 million searches every month. With Google leads the search engine market and takes into account 70% of the global market share for search engines – 75% in the USA – It makes sense for companies to carry out Google ad campaigns.

However, this does not mean that you should exclude advertising on these other platforms.

In some cases, you can achieve impressive results with smaller advertising expenses for Bing and Yahoo than on Google, as there are fewer competition from advertisers.

My recommendation is to dig into your organic traffic to determine whether Bing or Yahoo make a significant data traffic for certain keywords or topics.

This could indicate that advertising for these key words on Bing or Yahoo could be profitable.

Regardless of where you advertise, the good news is that advertising on all these platforms looks more or less work and the same. So if you know how to do on an advertisement, advertising for others is facilitated.

Local advertising

Native advertising or sponsored content fits into the content of the publisher, regardless of whether it wrote in writing or a video (although there should always be a kind of day that identifies it as paid content).

Here is An example of AdweekPublish the regular pieces in cooperation with brands (note the “Sponsored Content” day on the far left in the piece).

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If you pay for the native advertising services of a publisher, you can achieve your editorial expertise and the audience to tell your brand a larger and better viewer.

In this way, even though your contribution is technically commissioned, he will not disturb your audience’s browsing experience. You will enjoy reading your contribution and don’t feel as if you or the publisher will advertise you – and to suspend your work of a committed number of spectators.

And as in the example above, local advertising offers you the opportunity to authentically show your audience and give you information that is really useful for you.

To find the optimal native advertising options for your brand, try use it Stack adapt or Native.

Show advertising

Advertisements are a controversial topic among digital marketers.

Some advertisers have misused them by making Internet users to click misleading ads, and malicious ads have even spread computer viruses.

It is easy to see why people use advertising blockers: Display ads have the reputation of being intrusive, distracting and irrelevant.

On the other hand, the display advertising technology has progressed so far that advertisements can use data and machine learning to offer advertisers more effective target strategies and consumers more relevant ads.

Advertisements like Google Display network And Metas audience network are the leaders of the Banner -AD -Renaissance.

You can put your ads on the right target group in the right place and the right time.

And if you want more control over your advertising, you can decide where to place your ads. In the following we will cover the functions and target functions of each advertising network.

1. Google display network

If you use Google’s advertisement network, you can design visually appealing ads and place on over 2 million websites and apps, YouTube and Mail Mail.

You can also create new target groups by addressing people who are most likely to be interested in your product or service, and re-marketing website visitors by importing a list of your contact information.

If you do not build your ideal audience manually or have to do with bidding, you can do Google ads for you. The automated targeting and bid functions can identify your highest target group for the best return on investment.

2.

With Metas audience networkBrands can expand your Facebook ads and use the same target data you use on the platform to advertise on a huge collection of websites and apps.

Brands can display native ads, banner ads, full-screen ads, in-stream video ads and rewarded video displays (e.g.

If you want to continue your advertising training, read the free course of the Drift Kings Media Academy under the Digital advertising training course.

First steps

In today’s digital work, the right online advertising strategy is of essential importance for every company.

After you are informed about all available digital display types, the next step is to find out how you can use the right advertisements for your company to achieve your goals.

Start building a strategy today so that you can increase your sales tomorrow.

Note from the publisher: This post was originally published in August 2018 and was updated for completeness.