What Is E-commerce Advertisement & Its Types?

By Muhammad Hanzla Ijaz

Posted on: June 14, 2022 9:20 AM

E-commerce advertisements display paid messages on online channels to influence users to purchase a product or service. Furthermore, it also creates brand awareness.

On the other hand, advertisers bid for ad space to generate clicks, impressions, or awareness. So, if an advertiser succeeds in winning the ad space, their ad will appear when triggered by a keyword or any other way.

There are many e-commerce advertisements ranging from video advertising to carousel advertising. That proves there is a perfect advert available for any business regardless of their goal. Nonetheless, suppose you have the best bid. In that case, there’s still intense competition for every ad space because the ad shown is decided by a platform’s algorithm that uses multiple factors beyond the bid amount to determine what ad gets the space.

Platforms determine which ad should be displayed based on the advertisement quality, including quality score, relevancy, past ad performance, and the landing page. The quality score suggests advertisers focus on more than just their bids. That is where we should go for the best routines for eCommerce advertising.

What are the different types of E-commerce advertisements?

Most people probably think of PPC or Facebook ads when we say advertisement. The truth is that many other types of paid advertising can be just as profitable and help raise your e-commerce brand.

So, after finding success with one type of advertising, you might want to test expanding to other kinds of advertising if you’ve been successful with one type. You can go for rich keyword & audience data from your existing campaigns on other platforms.

The following are types of E-commerce Advertisements:

Display Advertising

Display Advertisement is a process of placing banner ads for products or services on a publisher’s website or app. These ads exist in text form, images, video, and even audio files. Users can click the banner and visit the destination URL. Display advertisement can be done through the Google Ads platform or manually via collaborations.

Suggested Read: How to Reduce CPC in Google and Facebook Ads?

Display ads encourage the user to come and click on certain ads. The more compelling the display ad is, the more it will attract traffic and visitors to your websites while turning those potential customers into buyers.

Paid Search Advertising

Paid search advertising is also known as (PPC) pay-per-click. These ads appear at the top of search results on search engines like Google and Bing, which increases the chance that users will engage with them. A paid search ad is a text ad that explicitly includes a headline, summary, and destination link. Contrary to display ads, it has a higher click-through rate and produces more conversions. Another sort of paid search advertising is, Google Shopping ads.

Google shopping ads

Shopping ads are the best ads to use if you’re an eCommerce brand because they are visible and appear on top of the search results page. All you require is to upload a product feed to your Google Merchant Center, and all your products will run live. It uses a variety of factors to rank and determine whether to show your ads or not. These factors include Customer reviews, Delivery speeds, Customer satisfaction, product attributes, and Price.

Bing shopping ads

Bing shopping advertisements are similar to Google shopping ads. Overall, both platforms have a great reach for your business. These ads appear while visitors are searching for products. All a user is required to upload a product feed or a catalog to Bing merchant center and all your products will be displayed. Direct-to-consumer businesses and brands are the primary users of Bing Shopping Ads.

Retargeting/Remarketing

Also known as remarketing ads, retargeting ads focuses on users who have interacted with your website before. It uses browser cookies to recognize users who have already visited your website. You can serve ads for your brand to make them interested and draw them back and make a purchase. It’s a great way of converting potential customers into buyers.

For example, A user came to a clothing website to buy a specific product. He added a product of his interest, but later, he abandoned the shopping cart without purchasing the product. That’s where remarketing ads come in by displaying those ads of that particular product to specific users yet again. As a result, that might make that person rethink or want to consider buying that product.

Mobile Advertising

As we all know, people spend more and more time on their cell phones as time passes by. Therefore, mobile advertising is the perfect platform for selling any product and services to mobile users. Mobile advertisement includes text ads via SMS or banner advertisements embedded on a mobile website. They can also be found through mobile games, including downloaded apps. Example,

Instagram story ads pop-up between your stories, text, or image ads on Facebook.

Video Advertising

Video ads are a form of display advertisement which can be used to promote a campaign, product service, or brand. It’s a proven fact that it’s one of the most successful forms of advertising. Why? The reason is that it’s human nature if we see any graphical representation which can be in the form of moving images and telling a story. It will leave a mark in our minds which will cause us to recall those events. Video advertisements appear at the start or middle of video streaming content on platforms like YouTube.

Native Advertising

So, a user is searching for a particular topic of their interest. Let’s suppose an essay. They open a page and are entirely focused, and “out of nowhere,” there comes an annoying and irrelevant advertisement or segment that is unwanted. Which automatically makes the user exit that site or avoid going back to that page.

Now that’s where native advertising comes into play. These ads are displayed according to the user search topic and use of keywords. At the same time, giving them that same feel and functionality, the appearance of the media format they are displayed. Rather than pop-up and banner ads, native ads consist of recommendation posts or appear in social media feeds.

Social Media Advertising

Paid advertising done on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn Ads to promote any product, brand, or service is known as social media advertising. It is a process of creating and deploying clickable ads to reach target audiences.

Brands use social advertising campaigns to build brand awareness, generate leads, or capture sales revenue. Social advertising is particularly effective at driving engagement and conversions. The prime reason brands and companies go for social media advertising is that it helps you target leads more precisely.

Social Media Ads for eCommerce,

Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads are one of the most popular and basic forms of advertising. It is done by boosting organic posts and revealing your existing posts to a broader audience. Here are some types of ads you can run: Image ads, video ads, and carousel ads. You can either create a catalog that contains information related to your product or service by using tools like Commerce manager.

Also Read: 5 Amazing Facebook Ads Strategies You Should Go For

What is a Commerce manager?

It’s a tool that allows you to control all online selling activity across Facebook and Instagram. You can manage your product catalogs, set up a shop, view sales activity, and enable checkout if your business is eligible.

What is a catalog?

It’s a container that contains information about the items you want to advertise or sell across Facebook and Instagram. You can create catalogs for different types of inventory, such as products, hotels, flights, or vehicles.

After you’re done creating a catalog you can add and manage details related to products like title, product description, create sets or collections, you can even assign permission so another person or partnered brand can work on your catalog.

What are shops?

A shop is an online storefront where people can browse, explore and purchase your products directly on Facebook and Instagram. Here Instagram lets you tag products from your catalog in your posts and stories with Instagram shopping.

Instagram Ads

Instagram ads are similar to Facebook as ads appear across the app, including users’ stories, feed, exploration, and more. These ads look identical to usual posts but mostly contain a “sponsored” label to specify that they are an ad. They often have more features than a standard post, such as links, Call-to-action buttons, and product catalogs.

Snapchat Ads

Snapchat usually consists of users from a younger generation compared to Facebook. It offers two different types of commercial ads: Standard and extended play. Standard commercial ads are 3-6 non-skippable seconds, while extended play ads are 3-180 seconds, with the first 6 seconds being non-skippable.

Pinterest Ads

Pinterest ads allow brands and businesses to promote their offerings on the platform. These ads are also known as promoted pins. Pinterest shows promoted pins based on their users’ past activity, interests, and website actions as part of retargeting ads.

TikTok Ads

TikTok is currently one of the most popular social media platforms around the globe. Video ads are available for TikTok itself, with a running duration of 5-60 second full-screen videos. Each ad includes a video, an ad display image, brand or app name, and ad text. A brand can even create a hashtag campaign and run ads that lead to a particular landing page. The page includes the brand’s logo, a link to the website, a brief description of the challenge, and a list of the most popular videos with that hashtag. As a result, it’s a tool for marketers to promote their user-generated content.

Podcast Advertising

Podcast advertising refers to audio-related advertising, a new advertising medium compared to display advertising. Audio ads are available on online radio and music streamed apps or podcast channels in such advertising. Usually, in podcast advertising, the host or influencer will shout out your brand or product in between or at the beginning of the live session. These ads can be related to using our coupon or promo code to avail of discounts or offers.

How can you practice E-commerce advertising?

You can start by optimizing your images, which can result in conversions.
Use the right keywords while optimizing your ad copy.
Try to make your call to action clear and catchy.
Develop trust between you and your customers through social proofing and your ads campaign or websites.
Engage with the audience by replying to them, and make posts that users can easily respond to.
Try using different ad types that suit your situation and platforms best.

Final Thoughts

Finally, the goal of e-commerce advertisement is to get your brand or product noticed. There are different types of eCommerce advertising that you can choose, and it’s not an all-out list. Keep on testing and experimenting with various messaging, targeting options, budgets, and networks to determine the best for your business. By following these methods, you can ensure that you find your target audience with the most compelling advertising content.

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