Digital Media News

Before 2011, it was thought that the problem of online advertising fraud was more or less contained. Pay-per-click advertising was still experiencing huge growth, but much of the fraud activity and many of the practices had been seen and countered.

Google themselves have long since acknowledged the need to clamp down on fraud. Google is a business like any other; people need to trust them. For instance, they knew that if they failed to detect click-through fraud, then advertisers would lose faith in their brand. There’s nothing quite like a potential drop in profits to kick-start a company into taking action.

Bots, click farms and the like were treated as a priority for the company. And for good reason. Google used experts like Professor Alexander Tuzhilin to draw up best practices for preventing click fraud and things seemed to be working.

Online advertising is a broad term. Sometimes unhelpfully so. But it encompasses a lot of different factors. And it’s crucial to understand the different types of online advertising out there, because what works for some businesses often doesn’t work for others.

A lot of businesses waste money on their advertising campaigns because they effectively throw lots of different ads out, hoping something sticks. In reality, brands need to accept the current landscape – the sheer amount of content out there has flooded customers’ brains.

Take Google Ads for instance. Search ads have helped Google become the richest advertising company in history, yet research tells us that most people don’t click on sponsored ads. As humans, we place a huge emphasis on trust and the fact is, we don’t feel entirely comfortable with the paid-for spots on a Google search results. We vastly prefer an organic result.

More transparent than print, more potential to go viral than banners and non-disruptive to users, "native advertising" is a term every marketers knows. But do they all understand? them?

Broadly speaking, native advertising is a form of online advertising. More specifically, it’s advertising that seeks to provide content in the context of the user’s experience. For example, a sponsored Tweet on Twitter, a suggested post on Facebook or one of those full-page ads between Flipboard pages.

Native advertising as a technique is great because the quality and scalability of it means that it’s filling the gap between brand publishing and banner adverts. We now live and operate in a content-heavy world, so native advertising offers advertisers a degree of flexibility.

Do you want better results from your ad campaigns? Well last year, Oracle bought BlueKai as an investment, because it wanted to remain the world’s largest marketing cloud. So, what is BlueKai? Well, BlueKai is essentially a data management platform that provides third-party data to companies so that they can advertise online more intelligently.

But that doesn’t do BlueKai justice really. We’re actually talking about a data solution that can draw on a huge resource of customer data quickly and easily, allowing for effective and laser-targeted online ad campaigns. Expect a high ROI and a real transformation to your bottom line.

Let’s drilldown into the details. BlueKai’s big data platform allows companies to personalize online, offline and mobile advertising campaigns. And we all know how important bespoke, personalized marketing is in today’s world, don’t we?

Business is tough in almost every industry these days, but if online advertising is your thing, help is at hand. We think there are 5 online advertising tools that you must take advantage of if you are to leap ahead of your rivals and super-charge your profits.

1. The ExactDrive Advertising Platform

Your first priority is to use the ExactDrive ad platform. Okay, so we’re blowing our own trumpet somewhat, but it’s a pretty powerful service.

Put simply, we built a simple and transparent real-time media buying platform that makes Internet advertising easier for small to medium-sized ad agencies (note: we love helping large ad agencies and brands as well). From selecting your specific demographics and choosing the ideal website inventory to target, through to actually scheduling your ads, the ExactDrive ad platform is an intuitive tool that will automate all your campaigns and help you regain control over your business.

According to the National Office of Statistics, in 2014, 38 million adults (76%) in Great Britain accessed the Internet every day (21 million more than in 2006, when directly comparable records began). So making a splash online and advertising in the digital arena is a business no-brainer.

Unlike traditional advertising channels, online advertising is less expensive, far faster to market and easy to measure. But without the right tools, it can be a minefield and tricky to keep a lid on your budget. So if you want the best return for your advertising budget you need to utilize some of the online tools that cangauge how effective and wide-reaching your online advertising is.

In no particular order, here’s what ExactDrive recommendstoensurethat your business, products and/or services are seen by the right people:

In today’s digital world, we’ve all become publishers. Content might be king, but it seems that everyone’s got something to say. The difficulty becomes separating the wheat from the chaff. In particular, there are loads of online advertising blogs. Far too many, in fact. But there are a few must-reads.

We’ve highlighted the top 5 online advertising blogs that you can’t afford to overlook.

1. Seth Godin’s blog

Prolific blogger and author Seth Godin is, quite simply, the go-to man for all things marketing and advertising. Sometimes succinct to the point of bluntness, Godin doesn’t waste words, so you won’t waste any time. Everything he publishes has value. With sharp, incisive comments, he’s probably the most famous living marketing consultant around.

Advertising is the lifeblood of the internet. It funds a lot of the great content that we enjoy on a daily basis, and provides brands with the means to innovate; inspire and entertain. And withcontinual advancements in programmatic advertising technology, online advertising has never been easier, cheaper or more efficient.

You can see for yourself, by test-driving ourmarket-leading self-serve advertising platform, which delivers online advertising solutions that make it faster and easier for you to reach your target audience and generate that all important ROI.

Well-oiled machine

Our ad platform is constantly being refined, but it is true to say that it wouldn’t be the slick, well-oiled machine it is today without the support of our data partners, including Proximic.com, Bluekai.com (Now part of Oracle) Grapeshot, and our ever-growing number of integrated media partners — such as AppNexus.com, who we will focus on in this blog post.

What does AppNexus do?

Online advertising has come a long way from the tacky, blinking banner ads of the 1990s. Today, sophisticated, highly targeted online ads are delivered through a plethora of digital channels, from search engines to mobile apps - and a growing number of marketers are reaping the benefits.

With the right strategy, savvy tools, and smart resource allocation, even the smallest of businesses can take on the giants of the online advertising world.

Here are a few small changes you can make to improve your online advertising and make your digital dollar stretch a little further: