When we talk about online advertising at the New Marketing Institute, which exists to educate and empower the next generation of digital marketing professionals, we often talk about the different ways marketers can use technology to execute online campaigns. This kind of thinking usually divides the ecosystem into different channels of mobile, social, native, video, and display, among others. It is easy to silo these into independent categories. In fact, we often present it broken out like this in order to make it easier for students in our Digital Marketing 101 class. Yet many times an attendee will bring up a great question like, “But can’t you run a video campaign on mobile devices?” or “Couldn’t a social advertisement also be considered native?”
The answer to both questions is “yes.” The industry is constantly evolving to create new, improved ways to market to customers. With these advances comes new ways to think about marketing. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be a marketer, but if you’re just starting out, you may be confused about ad type nomenclature.
Segmenting these different channels into siloes is flawed. Instead, it would be better to think about these channels in two broader categories: formats (such as display, rich media, social/native, video) and screens (such as desktop and mobile). In this post we will go over the different formats and screens that we talk about when we discuss online marketing.
Formats
When we talk about different formats, we’re talking about how the actual code (i.e. formatting) is used to display the ad to the end user.
Display: Display ads are banner advertisements that appear as static images. Typically speaking, there is only one interaction: clicking through to the advertiser’s website.
Rich Media: Rich media units include added functionality, such as expanding or taking over the web page on which it appears. Rich media units can include added functionality and a number of interactions for the user.
Video: Video advertisements began as videos within banner ads, but have evolved over time to be integrated with streamed video content. Video ads appear before, during, or after other video content, which are referred to as pre-roll, mid-roll or post-roll advertisements.
Social/Native: Native advertising appears similar in appearance to the other content on the page on which it appears. Examples of native advertising include sponsored content on a publisher’s site or a social media ad on Twitter or Facebook that has file code and parameters unique to the hosting website. Sometimes people refer to paid search engine marketing (SEM) as a form of native advertising since it takes on the form and function of search results.
Screens
When we talk about screens in online advertising, we are referring to the hardware that is being used to access the Internet. Typically speaking, this refers to four different types: desktop, mobile phones/tablets, and connected TVs.
Desktop: This can refer to any advertising that is being served via traditional methods using a personal computer. Although it is generally referred to as “desktop,” this platform also includes laptop computers.
Mobile: Mobile refers to any advertising that is being served on a mobile device, such as a smart phone or a tablet.
Connected TV: A connected TV is essentially just a television that is connected to the Internet. A television that connects to the Internet through its proprietary programs is called a smart TV. Connected TV also refers to programming that is accessed via an over-the-top device such as Apple TV and Roku.
Interested in learning more about the advertising technology industry? Register for the New Marketing Institute’s one-day dual track digital marketing Boot Camp, taking place next week.