The Internet is constantly changing and evolving, and with it the advertising sector is transformed day by day. The bannerswhich used to be the only option, years ago gave way to new online advertising formats that coexist and fight among themselves to be the favorites of brands when it comes to investing their advertising budgets. Faced with this panorama of multiple possibilities, we often find ourselves at a true crossroads because we do not know how to distribute advertising investment, or which online advertising formats to use among all the existing ones. Added to this is the widespread belief that “social networks are free”, something that will make us find clients who refuse to have a minimum advertising budget.
Faced with all these setbacks, the only solution is to keep up to date with the latest developments in terms of online advertising formats and try all the possible options, comparing results and drawing our own conclusions. For this, at Academia de Consultores we offer you a space where you will find all this updated training with examples and success stories that you can take as a reference.
That being said, today we are going to take a complete tour of the main online advertising formats that every marketing consultant should know, and for which you can find detailed training on our platform.
Google Adwords (now called Google Ads)
Within the Google Adwords platform we will find several formats: search network, display, video, shopping and mobile applications. Let’s now see one by one what these online advertising formats that you should know about consist of.
Advertising on the search network
They are the text ads that appear at the top of the Google search engine. The key is to choose the right keywords.
display advertising
Image, text, video and rich media ads on Google websites and partners.
shopping advertising
Product tab ads with image and text in the shopping area of the Google search engine.
video ads
Video ads on YouTube and on the web with two possible formats (trueview in-displaywhich appears to the right of the video as a playback suggestion and trueview in-stream that are activated before watching a video).
universal app campaign
It allows you to promote applications through search, display and Youtube. Just provide a few lines of text, a starting bid, and your budget, and Google makes a variety of formats to display on Google Search, Google Play, Search Partners, the Google Display Network, and AdMob.
Social Media Advertising
Social networks do not live on air, but on the advertising that brands want to carry out on them to reach more users and potential customers. Each social network offers us its own online advertising formats and different dynamics to advertise, so below we show you all the possibilities that you can find.
Facebook Advertising
The first thing that Facebook asks us when configuring an advertising campaign is our aimbeing able to choose between three main ones and several subcategories:
- Recognition: brand recognition or reach.
- Prestige: traffic, engagement, app downloads, video views, lead generation, and messaging.
- Conversion: conversions, sale of the product catalog or visits to the business.
Next, we will define the public, the locations, the budget and the calendar. We will establish the public we want to reach based on a segmentation that we can carry out taking into account all the information that Facebook has about the users. Then, in terms of locations, we can allow Facebook to make the combinations (between Facebook news sections -mobile and computer-, Facebook right column, Instagram, Audience Network, instant articles and in-stream videos) that it deems convenient to achieve the best results, or, we can restrict the type of location that we want. Likewise, we will establish budget and times.
Finally, we will arrive at the step that interests us the most, the online advertising formats offered by Facebookand what are they:
- Sequence Ad: It is an ad with two or more videos or images that includes a main text of the publication, and a title, description and link for each item uploaded. You can also add a call to action button. It works very well to promote a set of products/services focused on the same audience.
- single image: It is an ad where you can combine a text with up to 6 different images and where you can include, if you want, a link to a website.
- single video: It is an ad with a video and text to which you can add, if you want, a link to the web.
- Presentation: ad with a presentation of images and/or videos plus a text, and if desired, a link to the web.
- Collection: allows you to use the product catalog to create ads.
For more information, I recommend the post How to make a good advertising campaign on Facebook Ads by Vilma Nunez.
Advertising on Instagram
As you well know, Instagram belongs to Facebook, and therefore, advertising for this social network is done directly through its ad creation tool. Therefore, its creation is very similar to that of Facebook ads, only differing by the format they present, since in this case ads will be created very similar to the publications that any user can make on Instagram except for some format variations. and the identifier that it is advertising.
Among the online advertising formats of Instagram we can mention:
- With Images individual in square, horizontal or vertical format.
- with videos in square or horizontal format.
- With sequence format It will have a square shape and will allow you to upload several images that users can scroll back and forth with the arrows on the right and left.
Advertising on Twitter
In the case of Twitter, we are offered different types of campaigns depending on the objective:
- app download
- followers
- Tweet interactions
- View Promoted Videos
- Website clicks or conversions
- App iterations
- In-stream video display (pre-roll)
- Recognition
Regarding the online advertising formats of this social network, we can choose between the following:
- Plain text tweet
- image website card
- Image App card
- promoted video
- Single image tweets and GIF files
- Tweets with multiple images
- Video App Card
- video website card
- Conversational Ads
- Direct Message Card
For more information on the size of images and texts in these formats, you can consult the website business.twitter.com
Advertising on LinkedIn
In the professional social network par excellence, we are also offered the possibility of carrying out promotions in different formats of online advertising:
- Sponsored Content
- Sponsored InMail
- Text Ads
- Dynamic Ads
- Programmatic Display Ads
- carousel ads
Native advertising, sponsored post and advertorial
He native advertising or native advertising It is a growing advertising trend that consists of sharing promoted content on a website, blog or any other digital platform, maintaining the format and style of its editorial content. That is why in this context we can talk about the sponsored post, advertorial and other formats such as sponsored Facebook or Twitter posts.
It is important to note that, in order for this advertising not to be considered covert (and therefore contrary to the law), it is essential to identify it as such. To do this, it would be enough to include a text or image indicator indicating that it is advertising. For example, in sponsored posts we can include the text “sponsored post” in some visible place and in sponsored tweets or Facebook posts the hashtag #ad.
For more information on its use, I recommend the IAB Legal Guide on Native Advertising with interesting recommendations and implications to consider when launching a campaign with this type of online advertising format.
Other online advertising formats standardized by IAB
One of the IAB’s missions is to standardize advertising formats worldwide in order to make the relationship between advertiser and support much more cordial and easy. Here are some of the major standardized digital ad formats used by large ad agencies, advertisers, and media outlets.
Display Advertising
- Universal Ad Package (UAP):
- Medium Rectangle Banner: It has a size of 300×250 px and a maximum weight of 200 kb.
- Banner Rectangle: It has a size of 180×150 px and a maximum weight of 80 kb.
- Wide Skyscraper Banner: It has a size of 160×600 px and a maximum weight of 200 kb.
- Banner Leaderboard: It has a size of 728×90 px and a maximum weight of 200 kb.
- Rising Stars:
- Billboard: panel that occupies the entire width of a page with a size of 970×250 px and an initial maximum weight of 200 kb.
- Push down: panel that takes up the full width of the page at the start and then expands down with user interaction. It has a size: 970×90 px and an initial maximum weight of 200 kb.
- Portrait: vertical panel that reproduces content with a size of 300×1050 px and an initial maximum weight of 200 kb.
- Filmstrip: vertical panel in which a video is played in a 300×600 px window, its size being: 300×3000 px and an initial maximum weight of 200 kb.
- Sidekick: expandable vertical format that pushes the content of the page to the left and is available in different sizes (300×250, 300×600 and 970×250 px) with its initial maximum weight of 200 kb.
- Slider: formatting at the bottom of the page that expands to fill the entire screen so that it spans the entire width of the page and 90px. high being its initial maximum weight of 200 kb.
- Others:
- Super Leaderboard: with a size of 970×90 px (although some publishers offer the 970×66 px format) and an initial maximum weight of 200 kb.
- Half Page: with a size of 300×600 px and an initial maximum weight of 200 kb.
- Button 2: with a size of 120×60 px and an initial maximum weight of 80 kb.
- Micro Bar: with a size of 88×31 and a maximum initial weight of 80 kb.
- Rich Media:
- In-Banner Video: with various size possibilities (300×250, 180×150, 160×600, 728×90 and 300×600), a minimum of 24 fps per video and a maximum initial weight of 200 kb.
- Expandable/ Retractable: video format with expansion and multiple size possibilities (from 300×250 to 600×250, from 180×150 to 600×150, from 160×600 to 600×600, from 300×600 to 600×600 and from 728× 90 at 728×315), a minimum of 24 fps per video and a maximum initial weight of 200 kb.
- Pop Up: with various size possibilities (300×250 and 550×480), a minimum of 24 fps per video and a maximum initial weight of 200 kb.
- floating: with variable dimensions, a minimum of 24 fps per video and a maximum initial weight of 200 kb.
- Between-the-Page (aka…