How Digital Advertising Works: The Basics
opens IMAGE file Most people experience digital ads all day long, but most don’t give much thought to how digital advertising works and what is actually happening behind the scenes. At Data-Dynamix, we understand that there’s actually a lot that goes into creating relevant and effective ad content; while it may feel very natural to the end user, there’s actually a lot of strategy that needs to be put in place. Digital advertising has become a very sophisticated marketing strategy, that can be precise and focused.
Historically, digital advertising was focused on getting in front of many eyeballs and hoping that some of them were the right ones. Eventually, we used cookies to help track traffic and be able to target our digital ads to more qualified people. But, much of that was still the proverbial “throwing spaghetti on the walls” tactics where people didn’t know what was driving exact results. But today, there’s a much better way to reach your customers and prospective customers and it can drive you better results.
So how DOES digital advertising work today?
Digital advertising today is based around a few core factors:
- Personalization– Today’s advertising realities are founded upon personalizing the ad experience. We might do some research on a trip to Disney World, and then be bombarded with pop up ads, social media ads and other digital ads for deals for Disney. This isn’t by coincidence; it’s done because the ads are based around your own interests and activity and are hopefully helpful to you. We all want effective ads and that only happens if the ad provides you some value or help in some way.
- Data – Digital advertising today is based on the power of Big Data. This is the understanding that there is so much data being collected each second and in most cases, it’s too much to make sense of. Big data helps combine data sets to help make sense of the immense power of data. We do this daily with basic demographic filters applied to variable data sets, but we also combine them with identifiers like personal usage on IP addresses, connecting that with physical addresses and geo-locations, and even mobile devices. We don’t throw any spaghetti at walls or guess what will work. When we send digital ads, we KNOW we’re targeting the right people based on hard evidence established via deterministic data sourcing.
- Geography –Digital advertising today is focused heavily on geography. This is one of the main targeting criteria sets considered when people source data on the open market, or aggregate data for themselves. However, we can now take geography to a new level with the power of mobile devices and the identification numbers associated with each device. Did you realize that each device has a unique identification number, and when we can connect that information, we can send ads based on specific locations and target people when it’s most appropriate. Location data signals that are collated with specific M.A.I.D.s (mobile authentication identifiers) and IP addresses can enhance the geographic targeting effectiveness of a digital ad campaign.
Connection – When digital advertising came on the scene, there was one main device for consumption of digital ads that advertisers focused on: the computer. However, today, people are using mobile devices, tablets, watches, and more to interact with content digitally. There are new devices being developed every day. Digital advertising can actually connect the dots between all of these different devices so that advertising is targeting specific individuals who use that specific device. Mobile device ID’s can now be traced back to specific IP addresses, thereby allowing advertisers the ability to make connections and send ads to specific individuals. The connections in data are extremely powerful!