MARKETING PART II OF III: DIGITAL ADVERTISING
PICK YOUR PLATFORMS Where do you want your digital audience to see your ads? BY GREGG BLANCHARD, INNTOPIA In the last decade, digital advertising has gone from an exclusive channel reserved only for the biggest brands to a long list of self-service platforms available to any advertiser of any size. But advertising isn’t a yes or no question, it’s a skill. You can’t just do advertising—you have to do it right. We started this series by analyzing the first building block of any campaign: the audience. In part II, we’ll dig into the ad platforms that are available and discuss how effective each is at reaching different segments of the audience. We’ll then share tips and advice from digital advertising experts on how adventure parks should get started creating and going live with their ads. PLATFORMS
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While there are dozens of ad platforms available, we’re going to focus on those that are best matched to adventure parks, with an emphasis on social media advertising. Keep in mind, you can’t create an audience based on age or location if the ad platform doesn’t know the age or location of the people in its network. The more data a platform has, the more powerful its targeting can be. Facebook + Instagram When it comes to data, Facebook—and its 2.4 billion active users—is king. Combined with a self-serve interface, many ad-format options, good support, and the ability to target Instagram’s one billion users as well, it’s little wonder why Facebook is one of the most popular ad platforms in the world.
Google + YouTube Google’s main value comes through two ad types. First, Google’s paid search results allow advertisers to bid on keywords and show ads alongside organic search results. Second is Google’s expansive display network, which consists of millions of websites that display ads alongside their content. When advertisers pay Google to show their ads on websites in the network, the websites receive a cut. Just like Facebook owns Instagram and offers both through a single ad platform, Google does the same with YouTube. The pair lacks the user data of Facebook and Instagram, but YouTube
can be a very strong platform simply because of how effective and affordable video advertising can be. Twitter Twitter does feature a simple, self-serve advertising platform, but lacks in both number of users and data about each user. LinkedIn While LinkedIn may not have as much data about its users or as many users as Facebook, it does have unique data that other networks do not. The LinkedIn ad platform is fairly easy to use and allows a level of targeting for industries and work titles other platforms can’t achieve.
