With digital marketing accounting for more and more market share in the advertising industry, it’s no wonder understanding the digital advertising platforms has become so important. According to eMarketer, digital ad spend will account for roughly half of the global ad spend in 2019. Google and Facebook are the largest digital ad sellers, followed by Alibaba and Amazon.

With so many options on the market how do you know where to reach your brand’s ideal audience?

According to surveys done by the Pew Research Group, 68% of Americans say they currently use Facebook, with nearly three quarters saying they use Youtube. While these two platforms are used by a wide range of demographic groups, other platforms are used by subsets of the population. Knowing where your ideal audience exist on the internet is crucial in determining when and where to reach them.

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Why do we use each one of these platforms?

Knowing when and where to reach your customers is only part of the equation. Understanding how to reach them plays a significant role in a brand’s success. Each of these platforms create unique opportunities for reaching intended customers. While most conversation on the internet compares these platforms in a competitive manner, we believe these platforms work best as teammates in your digital marketing mix. Understanding how each of these platforms works and who your customers are, is how you determine which platforms to include in that mix.

We have broken down the various platforms and why you should consider them in your digital marketing mix.

What are the channels best for?

Facebook Ads

  • Facebook is best for reaching a wide range of demographic groups. Touting a robust platform with numerous targeting capabilities and ad-placement options, and including capabilities to run placements on Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook’s audience network, Facebook is a global leader as a digital ad seller. Utilizing the Facebook Pixel is an absolute must in running ads on Facebook and will open the possibilities of tracking important user events on your website. These events include signing up for newsletters, downloading gated content, and making purchases. When the Facebook Pixel is setup properly it will inform Facebook’s system for optimizing your campaigns to ensure your ads are delivered to people who will take the desired actions you have specified.
  • Targeting capacities:
    • Demographics
    • Location
    • Interests and hobbies
    • Education
    • Website behavior
    • Device usage
    • Facebook page engagement and connections
    • Contact lists
    • Lookalike audiences based on most of any of these targeting parameters

Instagram Ads

  • Instagram is run through Facebook’s Ads Manager and gives you all the same features you already get from Facebook. According to the Pew Research Group, nearly half of Facebook’s users are using instagram and they tend to skew younger in age. This can be helpful in determining how your younger audience segments interact with brands.
  • Targeting capacities (Same as Facebook):
    • demographics
    • Location
    • Interests and hobbies
    • Website behavior
    • Device usage
    • Facebook page engagement and connections
    • Contact lists
    • Lookalike audiences based on most of any of these targeting parameters

Google Ads

  • Google is the largest ad seller in the digital advertising industry, with several ad-placement products, including Search, Display, Shopping and Video through Youtube. Like other SEM platforms, Google is very intent based. Finding users in the market for various products or services is typically easy to do. However, cost for these placements tend to be high. Utilizing the other platforms for reach and impressions can be highly useful when those users begin seeking your brand out on Google. Google has also taken steps to create more targeting options.
  • Targeting capacities:
    • Demographics
    • Location
    • In-market
    • Custom intent
    • Similar audiences
    • Remarketing lists
    • Content keywords
    • Topics
    • Placement

Quora Ads

  • Quora is a uniquely situated question-and-answer digital forum. It relies on user engagement to move answers to the top of the page. Quora features ad placements on question pages, in the answer feed and on topic feeds. Quora is relatively new to digital advertising space, with only about three years of ad platform experience.
  • Targeting capacities:
    • Topic
    • Location
    • Device usage
    • Keyword
    • Question
    • Website behavior
    • Contact list
    • Lookalike audiences
    • Interests
    • Question history
    • Broad targeting

Twitter Ads

  • Twitter is a very conversation-centric social platform. This can be a great avenue for reaching individuals when they are discussing specific topics related to your product or service. Twitter offers ad placements as promoted tweets and promoted accounts.
  • Targeting capacities:
    • Demographics
    • Location
    • Device usage
    • Movie and tv show engagement
    • Keyword
    • Behavior
    • Interests
    • Follower-lookalikes
    • Tweet engagement
    • Website behavior
    • Contact lists
    • Event targeting

Pinterest Ads

  • Pinterest is a social platform where individuals pin digital boards with interest and hobbies. Many users come to Pinterest for inspiration, making it an ideal place to reach an audience. Ad placements consist of promoted pins in a users feed or in search results. We have used Pinterest to bring in new traffic and introduce them to a brand, then retarget them on another platform like Facebook.
  • Targeting capacities:
    • Interests
    • Keywords
    • Website behavior
    • Contact lists
    • Brand engagement
    • Actalike audiences

Amazon Ads

  • This platform is ideal for ecommerce brands that also sell products on Amazon. Amazon Ads most benefits brands trying to expand their market share within Amazon. Placements include sponsored products and sponsored brands. These benefits are best tailored with Amazon’s Stores feature, which allows a brand to house a digital showcase of its products on Amazon.
  • Targeting capacities:
    • Keywords
    • Products
    • Brands
    • Categories
    • Features.

Microsoft Ads

  • Microsoft Ads (formerly Bing Ads), has many similar capacities to Google ads. However, Microsoft search holds a much smaller market share, hovering around 2.6%. Don’t let that number discourage the use of Microsoft ads as a viable ad platform, though. We have seen great returns for little work on the platform. Keep in mind that scaling in Bing is difficult due to user volume.
  • Targeting capacities:
    • Demographics
    • Location
    • Device usage
    • Time
    • Keywords
    • In-market
    • Website behavior
    • Remarketing lists
    • LinkedIn profile targeting

LinkedIn Ads

  • This platform is extremely useful in segmenting campaigns by job titles, company names, industries and job seniority. LinkedIn boasts its user base as having 2x the purchasing power of the average web audience, with 4 out 5 users driving business decisions. LinkedIn is the premier social platform for B2B marketers, hosting several ad placements, including promoted content, in-mail, text ads, and dynamic rail ads. We have found great success retargeting users from LinkedIn back to Facebook at a much cheaper cost per acquisition. This is easiest done through UTMs.
  • Targeting capacities:
    • Demographics
    • Location
    • Job experience
    • Company
    • Education
    • Interests and groups
    • Skills
    • Audience expansions
    • Lookalike audiences
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