Digital Marketing Breakdown: Part 3 - Search and Display Advertising

Whether or not you're familiar with my next topic, I can assure you that you're probably exposed to it on a daily basis.  In Part 3 of my Digital Marketing Breakdown series I'll be informing you about search and display advertising...better known as the text ads that pop up first in your Google search results, and the pretty ads displayed on the perimeter of your favorite websites.  Advertisers use each type of ad for different reasons, though an effective digital marketing strategy combines both to create one seamlessly structured ad campaign.  Let's talk about how each of these work.

Search Advertising

Also known as Search Engine Marketing (SEM), search advertising involves creating text advertisements and purchasing the right to display the ad when users search for specific keywords in a search engine.  Having the ability to select which specific keywords to market to, along with a barrage of other targeting tactics based on location, demographics, and time of day, search advertising provides start-ups and large corporations alike with an extremely effective method for placing their content in front of their target customers.

There are different search marketing platforms created specifically for different search engines, like Yahoo! Search Ads, Bing Ads, and Google AdWords. It's definitely beneficial for aspiring digital marketers to familiarize themselves with each one.  In the context of this article, I'll be referring to AdWords because I'm most familiar with it.

Possibly the most important aspect of effective search advertising is what AdWords calls quality score.  AdWords ranks each ad from 1 to 10 (10 being the highest) based on factors like how relevant the ad is to the keyword or the page the ad points to.  This quality score will directly affect your ad's rank among other similar ads, so relevancy is crucial when creating a search advertisement.

Display Advertising

Rather than appearing on search engine results pages, display ads appear on websites.  The websites you target for your display ads should be ones that are relevant (does that word sound familiar?) to what you're trying to promote.  These ads can be made up of text, images, videos, and even interactive messages called rich media.

Both search and display ads provide extremely effective methods of marketing for modern-day businesses.  Not only are targeting options conveniently provided to digital marketers making it simple to reach (and avoid) certain types of consumers, digital advertising platforms make it easy to track the performance of ads as well.  Want to know your the number of times users click on your ad out of all the times your ad is viewed (called Click Through Rate)? You can do that.  Want to know how relevant your ad is? Look at its quality score.  Search and display advertising is gaining popularity because of these targeting and tracking methods, and it doesn't seem that trend will stop any time soon.

At U of M - Dearborn, you can learn all about search and display advertising in the Digital Consumer Search and Marketing class.  I can assure you that there are no digital marketing degrees in Michigan that are more RELEVANT than the degree that UMD provides its students.  You can view more about the program here.  My only question for you is...why go anywhere else?