At first glance, online advertising can appear to be daunting, but I believe the benefits of this medium, including tailored audience targeting and metrics, make it a must for companies who are already spending ad dollars. Online advertising is available in many forms, including social media ads such as Facebook, and websites for daily newspapers and business journals. Online advertising offers customized features that are often not available with traditional advertising, including:

Refined Audience Targeting
Online advertising enables you to filter the audience profile to match that of your customer base. If your average customer is aged 35-65, male and college educated; many social media and online ads allow you to target with these specific qualifiers. Geotargeting, which selects specific cities or zip codes for ad display, are helpful when advertising for outlets that serve large geographic areas. It allows you to keep costs lower by only targeting the cities applicable to your business.

Metrics and Capturing your Audience
Metrics for online ads allow you to track both the number of times your ad is shown (impressions) and the number of times your ad is clicked on. Many online ads feature a clickable link to a specific landing page, where users get more information about the service or product mentioned in the ad. This landing page can encourage the user to sign-up for more information and help capture potential customers information.

Refine the message
Online advertising allows you to test and refine the message until you find the combination that best resonates with your target audience. You may begin your campaign by running 10 similar ads, all with a slight variation in copy and image. By monitoring the performance of the campaign, you can narrow in on which ads resonate with your target audience, thereby maximizing the impact of your campaign and saving ad dollars on campaigns that may not be reaching your target audience.

Research shows more and more readers are going online for their primary news source. I believe we will see this trend increase significantly in the coming years, and it’s vital that companies engage in the online advertising space sooner rather than later.