Online advertising has been around for a long time. Would you believe that the first banner ad was displayed  more than 20 years ago?! And the use of online advertising is still gathering pace, with more and more organisations realising its huge potential for their business.

With a record 57% of marketers and agencies allocating 20% or more of their budgets to digital ads, online advertising is expected to grow at more than three times the rest of the advertising industry in 2016. The three biggest areas for digital ad spend are social media advertising, paid search and online video. But why are businesses turning to these digital methods of putting their message across? Well, just in case you’re yet to be convinced, here are the 5 main benefits:

It’s fast

Online ads can be launched quickly, reaching your target market faster than any other form of advertising and bringing qualified leads and targeted traffic to your website.

It’s highly targeted

Unlike traditional forms of advertising, with online advertising there is no waste. By specifying your target audience by location, interest, age, gender etc., you will only reach those people you are interested in. Ad copy can therefore be tailored to that particular audience and scheduled to run during the best sales periods for your industry.

It’s low risk

Testing the potential success of a campaign is easy with Pay-Per-Click (PPC). You can test keywords as part of a smaller campaign, then based on the results of that, you can decide what keyword tweaks you need to make and whether to roll it out as a larger campaign, e.g. on a wider geographical scale or to more sectors. It is also great for testing which landing pages convert at the highest rate by A/B testing with two or more links going to different landing pages on your website.

It ranks you higher in the search engines

PPC is one of the fastest ways to get your business to show up in the top results of the three main search engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing).

It’s trackable

The online reporting tools are extensive and accurate. You can track conversions, manage costs and determine your ROI, helping you to make informed decisions about future campaigns.

With this list of benefits, it is no surprise that, according to media investment group, 31% of worldwide advertising budgets will go to online advertising in 2016, and that the global spend on digital advertising is predicted by Statista to exceed $250 billion by 2018.

Want to look at paid online advertising for your business but don’t know where to start? Perhaps you’ve already started down the digital road with a few tentative ads, but don’t have the time or resources to fully capitalise on the massive opportunities it presents. The world of digital advertising can be confusing, and it is evolving quickly. At andyharrison.org, we help clients get the best results possible from their online advertising. For further information, contact us here.