After we've talked about how to make display Ads achieve your goals, we can now look at advertising networks, where you want your ads to appear, but how do you find websites with available ad space for sale? How do you communicate with it?
Here comes the role of display advertising networks, which are more like an intermediary between advertising businesses and sites that have advertising space for sale.
Where do you want your ads to appear?
How can these networks help your business find and advertise on the right sites for you? Going back to the movie review podcast example, let's say you've found a specific website where you want to advertise your podcast.
In this case, you have different options:
First, you can contact the site directly to find out the details, but with so many sites that offer advertising networks opportunities, you can imagine how much time this may consume!
Second, use of advertising networks, this is where display ad networks come into play because they manage the buying and selling of display ads, and connect businesses with sites that want to sell ad space.
This network can be likened to a market that brings together businesses and websites, and helps manage deals.
How do you find advertising networks space available for sale?
There are quite a few such networks like the Google Display Network or Bing in advertising networks, and they all offer different features, but there are a few things that all display ad networks have in common.
In the first place, they all provide advertising space on the websites of businesses that want to advertise, and the sites that provide those advertising spaces can become part of those networks.
And they can control the minimum prices that you expect in return for displaying ads.
Your business can then bid for the space you want on all the websites on that network, decide how much you'd like to bid.
So buyers and sellers are collected every time pages load, and winning ads are shown in the ad space.
Of course each network has its own rules, features, processes and bidding systems, but the key is that they all connect buyers with sellers to fill available advertising space.
It can also help you target specific audiences in two primary ways:
- The topics of the web pages on which advertisements appear.
- General information about the people who view the content.
While the exact criteria you can use to find your audience, or the way you run your campaign, vary from network to network, targeting is key to getting your ads to the right audience.
How advertising networks and businesses networks communicate
Another thing that networks do is manage the money involved; Buying and selling ads happen every second of every day.
And networks collect money from businesses and pay sites that display ads.
The last, and perhaps most important, thing is that advertising networks collect and share data with businesses. It can tell you:
- How many times your ads are shown?
- How many times they are clicked?
- How much does it cost you?
- Where did it appear?
- How does this vary between each site and the audiences you target?
- How many networks even allow you to add tracking to your web pages?
You can also see if the ads lead to conversions for your website or not.
Summary
If you want to use display ads to promote your business online, advertising networks are a great place to start.
It will connect you to sites that want to sell you ad space, and allow you to choose where and who will see your ads.
It will also manage funds for all the parties involved, and it will also provide you with the data you need to know how well your campaign is going.