One of the most frequently asked questions by our clients is “how do I promote my business/product/service to potential customers?”. This question typically comes in the context of noticing that they have received ads that match their interest.

“How did they know that I was looking for boots/apartments/cars/etc. and how can I do the same thing to find people interested in buying my product?”

It’s not magic, Karen. It’s just ones and zeros.
So we thought it might be useful to explain how it all works in (hopefully) simple, straightforward words.

How are customers identified?

If you see an ad that shows you something you were thinking about buying, chances are that you were targeted by that brand (called advertiser in the industry lingo), because they found out your digital profile matched that of people who typically buy that item.
Here’s how that happens.
When we go online, either on our PCs or on our mobile devices, we typically leave behind a digital trail that is captured, stored and categorized by those who have published the content we are looking at. This digital trail can be in the form of cookies, IP addresses, device IDs, login information, social media likes, and other, ever-evolving bits of code.
Short side note: another question we get often is “what is a cookie”. In this case it is not a sweet treat your mom wouldn’t let you eat before dinner. It is actually a small snippet of code that is left on your browser when you visit a website and which is recognized by that same website when you return at a later time/date. Kind of like a secret handshake but with code.

Your digital trail is then translated into a digital profile which, based on a number of data points, gets you categorized as a person who is looking for furniture, for instance, and your anonymous profile will be added to a pool of other, similar profiles, waiting patiently for someone who is selling furniture to buy the right to show you an ad. In other words, based on what you look at online, you get put into various “buyer” categories and when an advertiser has products or services that fall into that bucket, you become a potential target for ads in that category. That is why this process is called “targeting”.

How is advertising sold?

Who are the people who sell these ads online? How does that work?
The people who sell the ads are called publishers. In the old days that meant that they published content they created such as articles or movies, which attracted readers, and in exchange for the right to consume said content, publishers would make their visitors look at ads. Then, they would turn around and charge brands based on how many people they showed the ads to.
Today, given that some of the largest suppliers of digital ad space publish content their users actually created, that term might be a bit misleading. We call Facebook a platform, not a publisher, for instance. But the same principle applies: a company that wants to make lots of people aware of what they sell, buys the right to show their stuff, mixed in with the content people actually came to see.

Every time a user visits a page on a website, the digital trail records that as a “page view” and it represents an opportunity for the publisher to mix in some ads, along with the content. A page can have no ads or multiple ads and each publisher has to find that fine line between gently letting people know about Marmite or eye shadow or tire irons and completely alienating people by distracting them with ads.

Every time an ad is displayed on the page, the ad server counts that as an impression. Impressions are the main unit of measurement for ads and in order to make money, a publisher has to generate a lot of impressions. TV ads are priced per 30 seconds. Online ads are priced per one thousand impressions. If you ever see the term CPM, it means cost per mille and it represents how much an advertiser would pay to have their ad shown to one thousand people.

And, yes, industry veterans: you can buy ads based on performance. For instance CPC (cost per click) or CPV (cost per view) but we’re trying to keep things basic here.

So, how do you actually buy online ads?

So now that we know how potential customers are identified and who helps sell ads to them, how can you buy ads online?
You can go directly to the publishers or you can go to one of the companies that aggregate many, many publishers.
If your product is one that appeals to a very specific audience – let’s say that you sell fishing rods – it may make sense to go directly to the publishers you know to be specializing in all things fishing, and ask what their advertising rates are. You will typically find their contact information at the bottom of the page under “advertise with us”, or a similar link. That is also where you should find the ad specifications, which tell you the size, format and other technical details your ad creative needs to observe.
If you’re not that particular about which websites should carry your ads, or if there are way too many websites or apps on which you think you would want to show your ads, you can shop around for a demand-side platform or an ad agency with a trading desk. A trading desk is a fancy name for the team within an agency, whose job is to buy ad space for clients.
Demand-side platforms are aggregators of multiple online properties, which is helpful if you want a one-stop shop for your ads.

What is an “ad creative”?

Oh, that’s right, you will also have to think about what people will see when the ad is put in front of them. Otherwise known as your ad creative. That can be an image, abstract image, logo, text or all the above. It’s an art and a science and it can range from the super simple like an outline of a person (I’m looking at you, dancing men ad: the most horrible creative ever) to full-blown videos with a compelling story.
We will discuss that in a different post because it is one of the most important aspects of your marketing campaign.

So where should I start?

By now you should be thoroughly confused, right? Don’t feel bad. The digital ads ecosystem sometimes confuses the most hardened veterans of the industry. You’re probably thinking of some old, decrepit person, but in reality the industry is young enough that it’s very likely the first ad trafficker ever hasn’t yet retired.
Where you should start depends on what you’re trying to do and how much money you want to spend.
If you’re a young business, trying to promote your services, you may want to start very simply with geo-targeted Google ad words. The best part about this format is that you don’t need to have the ad creative – you can just have your information displayed whenever someone searches for the thing your business does. You can start with very little money,(like $5 per day, for instance) and limit your spend to whatever amount you’re comfortable with.

If you are selling products and have kickass pictures of those products, you may want to advertise on Facebook, Amazon or Instagram, depending on who you think your buyers might be.

If you’re selling something more complicated than that, like a software application that takes more than 30 seconds to explain to someone – contact us to find out what the best avenue to promote your business might be. We created this basic guide mostly for entrepreneurs who don’t know what html is, and think that java is what you get from a coffee place.

Happy advertising!