The Dot.com boom
“Between the years 1997 and 2000, the web was, for many, the site of the future of global commerce. New dotcom companies entered the market at an exponential rate and confidence in the ‘New Economy’ was at an unprecedented high. Although the epicenter of web activity was the US, like the growth of the web itself, the web industry boom was global. This was a period driven by massive excess, euphoria, youth, unfounded valuations of companies, losses, many losers and some big winners. It is out of this environment that Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Google, the online giants of today, emerged” — Andrew McStay, Digital Advertising, 2nd ed. 2016, p. 13.
Source: Unsplash
Standard Digital Advertising
Digital advertising are carried through three types of screens:
Online (Display, search and classified for desktops and laptops)
Mobile (Small screens)
Tablet (Display that has been optimized for the medium-sized screen)
Gogole AdWords targets by region and shows how many people notice an ad, the percentage that click through to visit the website.
Google AdSense allows websites to display behaviourally targeted ads.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is how you create a “Google-friendly” website by tweaking the code (HTML, content and page tags) you can optimize page rank, and the amount and quality of in-bound links a webpage.
Source: McStay, Digital Advertising, 2016, pp. 26-30.
Source: Unsplash
Non-Standard Digital Advertising
The first in-game advertising arrived in 1978
Dynamic in-game advertising changed the sector.
Historically advertising within games has presented advertisers and marketers with a problem because: (1) ads had to be embedded in the game that was being designed; (2) there could be long periods of time between deciding to place ads in games and actually seeing them on screen.
Dynamic in-game advertising, McStay writes, “has resulted in flexible, updatable and creative alternatives for advertisers looking to access multiple niche audiences” (p. 46).
Adventureland (1978) by Scott Adams
Different from in-game advertising; it requires an entire game built for a specific product or brand, blurring the line between entertainment and advertising.
Given the rise of gaming among a broader audience, smartphones, tablets, apps and social networking, all use some form of advergame.
“Whereas traditional advertising offers at best a minute or two of brand engagement, games can deliver significantly more depending on how sticky the game is” (McStay, p. 47).
Social Media companies allow marketers, analytics firms and audience researchers to use information about us to understand how brands are performing.
Source: McStay, Digital Advertising, 2016, pp. 45-50.
“Digital storytelling is translating your marketing message into narrative form. Digital storytelling, like fiction, has a beginning, middle and an end. It has a hero or heroine - perhaps you or your brand - and takes the reader on a journey. It touches upon our basic human need to hear and be heard, and it delivers content in a way that doesn't feel like marketing. In this world of pop-ups and flashy advertisements, a story stands out as an island of calm in a frantic electronic world.” – Matt Bowman, Forbes, May 24, 2018
I hope this primer on digital advertising is helpful to your understanding of the medium. This is of course just the tip of the iceberg but definitely something to research in more depth if you’re looking to launch a digital business or platform! Love to hear your comments on this one.