Marketing a product or service is a complex task that requires a deep understanding of your target audience as well as knowledge about the many different types of marketing available to you. Among the more commonly used forms of marketing is paid advertising, which involves any form of advertising that you are required to pay for. When using this type of advertising, you will be tasked with making payments for ad space to the owner of the space.

With most forms of paid advertising, ad pricing is based on a bidding process between owners of the ad space and marketers. This bidding process can be intense if the space is highly sought after. The two additional types of marketing available to you include owned advertising and earned advertising. Owned advertising involves sending out ads via websites, email services, or blogs that you own. Earned advertising can be gained through online reviews by customers, company mentions in professional blogs, coverage on the news, and posts by customers on social media platforms.

When you implement a paid advertising campaign, you will invariably be paying more than earned or owned advertising. However, paid ads have proven to be very effective at reaching a wide audience. If you’re currently looking into paid advertising, this guide provides you with everything you should know about paid advertisements and the benefits that come with using them.

Key Takeaways:

• Paid advertising is any form of advertising you are willing to pay for to market a product or service.
• There are five types of paid advertising you should understand if you are looking into this unique marketing technique.

Top 5 Types of Paid Advertising Today

There are five separate types of paid advertising that you can include in a paid advertising campaign, which extend to:

• Social media advertising – This type of marketing occurs specifically on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram
  
• Search engine marketing and optimization – This paid marketing can either focus on paid ads on Google/Bing or on optimization through the use of keywords and phrases that must be paid for
  
• Pay per click – When implementing these ads on different websites, you will pay whenever someone clicks on the ad
  
• Display advertising – These are graphical ads that can use logos, videos, animations, text, or photographs to convey some kind of commercial message
  
• Video advertising – These ads can be streamed over the internet and are a form of display advertising
  

1. Social Media Advertising

Social media advertising involves placing paid advertisements on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Before you start using social media advertising, keep in mind that each social media platform has a slightly different audience. Make sure that your target audience aligns with the platform that you would like to advertise on. To understand how important social media advertising is, keep in mind that there are upwards of 1.65 billion active social accounts on mobile devices across the world.

There are two separate types of social media advertising that you should be aware of, which include organic advertising and paid advertising. Organic advertising typically involves making posts and responding to customers on various social media platforms. On the other hand, paid advertising can include sponsored stories, standard ads on social media pages, or promoted posts.

Because of the large number of users across all demographics and age groups who have accounts on social media platforms, social media advertising is more important than ever and is among the best methods for reaching new audiences and growing your brand. Keep in mind that social media ads can be used with B2B and B2C marketing alike. However, these ads should be used differently depending on whether you’re marketing to consumers or other businesses.

2. Search Engine Marketing and Optimization (SEM & SEO)

Search engine marketing and optimization are two forms of online marketing that allow you to enhance visibility and promote your content. Search engine marketing involves paying for ads on search engines like Google and Bing whenever someone clicks on your ad. This ad will take them to your website.

As for search engine optimization, this technique uses meta descriptions, the creation of premium content, paid keywords, and linking to increase rankings on Google and other search engines. SEO is an organic form of marketing, while SEM is a paid advertising method. Both marketing techniques are useful for businesses and new brands that want to grow their audience and reach a wider base.

3. Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay per click is a simple yet effective form of paid advertising that allows marketers to only pay when someone clicks on the ad, which means that you can avoid paying for the ad itself. In the event that the ad isn’t popular, you won’t lose too much money. Most PPC ads are displayed through text that can be accompanied by a small image. To understand how effective PPC ads can be, nearly 65 percent of internet users will click a Google ad when they are thinking about purchasing an item.

Around 80 percent of all marketers believe that PPC ads have been highly beneficial for their business. PPC ads are a great way to reach your target audience at a relatively low cost. The only way that you spend a significant sum of your marketing budget is if the ad is successful at bringing visitors to your website, which minimizes the risk of creating ads.

4. Display Advertising

Display advertising is a kind of paid advertising that uses images and text to convey some sort of message. The types of display ads that are commonly used by marketers include popups, landing pages, and banners. However, logos, animations, and photographs can also be used. Display ads are different from many other types of paid ads in that they aren’t displayed in search results.

These ads are typically placed on blog posts and websites for the purpose of taking the user’s attention and focus to the company’s service or product. Display ads can be highly effective when combined with a retargeting campaign, which means that you will use display ads with people who have already visited your website. It’s been found that using display ads with a retargeting campaign makes visitors around 70 percent more likely to end up converting into return customers.

5. Video Advertising

Video advertising is an aspect of display advertising that’s becoming increasing popular. The reason for this boon in popularity is largely the result of younger consumers. It’s been found that these consumers become more engaged with content when it’s provided to them in video form. Keep in mind that video ads can be anywhere from 10 seconds to over a minute.

BI Intelligence is a premier research service that performs data analysis of all kinds of business information. With this information, they are able to obtain statistics about the efficacy of various forms of marketing. They found that digital video reached around $5 billion in total ad revenues and that this type of marketing has the highest click-through rate of all digital formats.

Around 43 percent of consumers say that they would like to see more of this type of content. YouTube continues to be the most popular place to go for video advertisements since these ads can be placed at the beginning of other videos. You can also use the PPC technique with YouTube, which means that you will only need to pay when a user engages with your ad.

Finding the Best Fit for Your Advertising Needs

While you can certainly use all of the five types of paid advertising, it’s recommended that you start with one or two techniques until you better understand how they work. If you don’t want to use any of your marketing budget at the moment for paid ads, consider starting with SEO marketing or organic social media marketing. With search engine optimization, placing premium content on your website and making sure that the website loads quickly can help you rank highly. When you combine great content and performance with the right keywords, you may be able to position your website towards the top of relevant search results, which should significantly increase your visibility.

As for organic social media marketing, making posts on Facebook and interacting with your customers can go a long way towards keeping customers engaged and bolstering your brand image. If you believe that you’re currently ready to spend money on paid advertisements, the various types of marketing at your disposal include retargeting, display ads, PPC marketing, paid ads on social media platforms, SEM, and video ads. Choose one of these marketing types to start with. To keep costs low, you might want to try PPC marketing.

Overall, paid advertising provides marketers with numerous benefits. For instance, this form of advertising delivers immediate results that can be measured quickly. On the other hand, search engine optimization may not show results for weeks or even months. Paid advertising is also simple to measure. You can track performance indicators to determine what works and what might need improvement. In fact, Google AdWords allows you to see which keywords performed well and increase their usage in your marketing materials. Paid advertising is also considered to be cost effective when compared to offline marketing, which means that your marketing budget can be put to better use.