Are you confused about whether to use display ads or native ads to promote your e-commerce website?

You have come to the right place.

Online advertising can be especially beneficial for creating brand awareness. And with the number of mobile users increasing day by day, if you optimize your ads for mobile, your advertising efforts will be more effective.

Statistics have it that by appearing in mobile search ads results, a company’s brand awareness can be increased by 46%.

In this article, we will be discussing native ads and display ads, their pros and cons, and when to use them. It will give you a clearer understanding of the two ads and help you decide which one to use to promote your e-commerce website.

What are Display Ads?

Display ads, also known as banner ads are ads that attract and compel the audience of a website, social media platform, or other digital mediums to click-through to a landing page and take a specific action.

Display ads can be text-based, images, or even videos. Most display ads are charged on a cost per click (CPC) basis. It means, every time the user clicks on your ad, you’ll have to pay a certain amount based on how you have made your bid.

What’s more, display ads come in all sizes.

Here’s a display ad from Adobe:

Note that display ads are more effective on the desktop.

What are Native Ads?

Native ads are like paid content that appears in a media and match the look, feels and function of its format. You will find native ads mostly in social media feeds, or on a website page as recommended content.

“Unlike display ads, native ads don’t look like ads. Instead, they blend into the editorial flow of the page. Hence, native ads are non-disruptive,” explains Devesh Sharma of Design Bombs.

No wonder consumers look at native ads more frequently than display ads.

Take this native ad, for instance:

Naturally, the look and feel of Native ads make them more effective on mobile.

Pros of display ads

• It is visually appealing – Since display ads are graphic content, you can design and style them. You can use graphics, audio, video, etc., to stand out and attract their attention.
• It can create brand awareness – Its visual element can benefit your business by facilitating brand awareness. Very often, display ads are branded and styled with an offer. Thus, users can gather your brand’s information by merely seeing your display ad. They don’t even have to click on the ad to get the ad’s overall look and feel.
• It makes targeting and retargeting possible – You can target people most relevant to your business by creating specific parameters for your ads. You can also use it for retargeting by putting your ad in front of customers who have visited your site before. 
• It provides data – With the data provided by display ads, you can measure your marketing activities right away.
• Diversity – Display ads come in varied shapes and sizes and can be presented in different formats. You can pick a style and format depending on your goals.
• Measurable – You can measure clicks, impressions, and conversions using Google Ads and Analytics. 
• Reach – You can access countless sites from your Google Ads account.

Cons of display ads

• Lower click-through rate.
• Lower conversions.
• People usually avoid or block display ads.

Pros of native ads

• You can create branded content – As per a study, 2 in 3 GenZ, Millennials and GenX customers trust custom or branded content more than traditional ads. 
• It can engage the customers – Since the content is created by understanding the audience, they can engage with it more. Plus, when you know how, when, where, and why the content should be placed, it can create an emotional connection with the readers.
• It receives higher click-through rates – As per a study, the CTR of native ads is 8.8 times higher.
• It is less disruptive – As they are included within the content, they are less disruptive.

Cons of native ads

• It is challenging to measure metrics, such as ROI and effectiveness.
• It is costly and time-consuming.
• It has the potential to be too discrete.

When to use display ads and native ads?

As you can see, both display ads and native ads have their own advantages and disadvantages. To use them should depend on your business goals.

Use display ads for:

• Creating brand awareness.
• Targeting and retargeting campaigns.
• Attracting users to click-through to a landing page and take a specific action.

Use native ads for:

• Increasing click-through rates.
• Creating brand awareness.
• Engaging the audience.
• Providing information about your business or services to users.
• Driving traffic to your site.

Split test your ads

You can also conduct A/B testing/split testing to see which version of your ad is performing better. Here are some key features you can test and optimize to increase your click-through rates.

• Headline: Check the length, tone of voice, and play around with color, font size, contrast, etc.
• Image: Consider the background image color, number of images used, and whether you are using products or people.
• Call to Action: Test the color of the button, language, contrast, style of the button, etc.
• Copy: Are you using long-form or short-form? Does it resonate with the audience?
• Landing pages forms: Test the form length, design, and the number of fields.

Wrapping-Up

Many e-commerce businesses use marketing ads to create brand awareness, drive traffic to their website, engage users, target customers, and also for retargeting.

Launching your business on mobile-optimized platforms like Shopify Plus will make your marketing efforts easier. It can easily enable you to reach your audience and promote your products from the platform. Plus, it has high-volume traffic capacity.

Since you now know when to use display ads and native ads, you can choose the right type of ad for your business, depending on your business goals.

Display ads are mainly used for branding and targeting and retargeting customers. Native ads, on the other hand, can be used for shelling out information about your business, increasing click-through rates, and also driving users to your site.

What comes to your mind when you hear digital marketing? Search engines? Social media? Mobile apps? Email? Or websites? These are the high-level digital channels out there via which marketers endorse their brands, goods, and services.

If you take a look at the stats, in 2019, mobile devices, excluding tablets, created about half of all website traffic worldwide.

It is also said that 63.57% of the companies are actively investing their time in SEO.

There are more than 80 million small businesses that use Facebook’s free business tools. And most of the content that marketers create is for different social media channels and company websites.

It is well understood that a company needs to take the digital marketing path to remain in the competition and to succeed in this day and age.

But since a lot of questions are still asked about digital marketing – this article will answer who, why, and how of digital marketing.

Who is a digital marketer?

A digital marketer is someone who implements marketing strategies using an electronic device or the internet. Digital marketers use digital channels, including search engines, email, social media, and other websites to connect with existing and prospective customers.

Who can use digital marketing?

Any business, big or small, should adopt some aspects of digital marketing in order to stay competitive. In fact, so many businesses out there are using digital marketing.

The worldwide digital marketing spend was estimated to be $290–310 billion in 2019, and it is anticipated to reach around $330–340 billion in 2020.

Since there are so many options out there, you can experiment with different marketing strategies on a budget and implement those that best suit your business.

For instance, a business-to-business (B2B) needs to attract and convert quality leads through your business site and digital channels. Thus, B2B digital marketing will mainly focus on online lead generation for the salespeople. Business-focused social channels such as LinkedIn are best suited for B2Bs.

Business-to-consumer (B2C) companies, on the other hand, will need to attract people via their digital marketing efforts to their website and convert them into customers without having to speak to a salesperson.

Thus, their focus will be on making the customer’s journey as fast and great as possible, from the moment a buyer lands on their site to the moment that they buy a product or service. B2C companies have to use stronger calls-to-action (CTAs).

Social channels like Instagram and Pinterest are more suitable for B2C companies.

Why should you implement digital marketing?

If your business doesn’t have an online presence in this digital world, it will be hard for you to compete and grow your business. 

Here are some crucial reasons why you should implement digital marketing:

• Global reach: If you have a website, you will be able to find new markets and trade internationally without having to invest much.
• Lower cost: Digital marketing will incur lower costs than traditional marketing, provided you have proper planning and have a well-targeted campaign to reach the right audience.
• Track and measure results: By using web analytics and other online metric tools, businesses can analyze their marketing efforts. Having detailed information about how customers engage with your site or responding to your ads will help you breach any loopholes in your strategies.
• Personalization: People feel frustrated when they receive irrelevant emails or read irrelevant website content. They engage better with personalized content. 91% of customers say they are more likely to buy from brands that deliver offers and recommendations relevant to them. Linking your customer database to your site can help you to offer targeted offers.
• Improved conversion rates: Since digital marketing can be seamless and instantaneous, unlike traditional marketing, you will see enhanced conversion rates.

How to create a digital marketing strategy?

From personas to selecting the right tools, there are several things that can determine your digital marketing strategy’s success. Here’s the initial work you need to do to ensure your digital marketing strategy is successful:

• Create customer personas: Buyer personas can be created by surveying and contacting your pre-defined target group. Online tools such as MakeMyPersona can help you with it.
• Define your goals: Without defined goals, your digital marketing strategy won’t work. Also, make sure that those goals are suitable and measurable.
• Focus on blogging: Creating high-quality content is crucial for any digital marketing strategy. And blogging is an excellent way to create high-quality content. It will help you bring more traffic to your website, reinforce social media presence, give a competitive edge, and rank you high on search engines. Outsource your work to an SEO agency for the best results.
• Automate marketing: The leading marketing automation platforms can take your digital marketing strategy to the next level. They will make it easier to automate activities such as email marketing, content marketing, lead generation, and so on. 
• Focus on building a mobile-optimized site: With the number of mobile phone users increasing daily, there is no reason why you should not be building a mobile-optimized site. Focus on page speed, site design, and various other SEO practices to offer the best experience to your site visitors. Also, ensure to review your mobile responsive design and email templates. You have to implement only the latest methods and deliver only relevant and latest data.
• Make yourself easily accessible to customers: If you connect the right way with your audience, your business will automatically grow. To ensure that your customers are not making an effort to communicate with you, avoid asking for irrelevant data on your landing pages and making call-to-actions clearly visible on the website.

Wrapping-Up

Digital marketing is something your business cannot avoid in this digital era. Thus, you need to be aware of the latest trends and strategies of digital marketing and how to implement them.

You can always refer to this article to eliminate any doubt about who, why, and how of digital marketing. Also, make sure that you are incorporating some digital marketing strategies so that you can gain a competitive edge and grow your business.