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Top 20+ Best Digital Advertising Platforms to Increase Brand Awareness in 2021

This article has been written and researched by our expert Avada through a precise methodology. Learn more about our methodology

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When online advertising becomes a marketing trend, many businesses choose to take advantage of this method to increase sales. They are willing to run ads to raise brand awareness also. However, few people know that choosing the right platform for the brand plays a vital part in running ads.

Most businesses often wonder how platforms to run online advertising; Which platform is useful, Which one is cost-effective, etc. and lots of issues surrounding the story of choosing the most suitable online advertising platform.

Therefore, AVADA provides you with a detailed article about Top 20 digital advertising platforms for promoting your business. Let figure it out.

What is an advertising platform?

New advertisement platforms have arisen in online and social media marketing to boost revenue for both the main search engines and new internet marketing firms. Search engine powerhouses such as Yahoo and Google, operating system platforms such as Microsoft, and advertising and email newsletter and digital marketing giant Vocus all hopped on the internet marketing and advertising ship.

Google provides several advertising technologies, including Page Authority and Site Authority rankings, which continue to revolutionize how internet users perform a search online and AdWords and AdSense advertisement platforms.

Yahoo’s advertising site, Panama, was developed to close the large gap with Google in the race for search advertising dollars. The platform offers dashboard features for users, where they can geographically monitor their marketing campaigns and check their effectiveness. They also provide reports on ad quality that help offer marketers insights into why some ads are successful.

Microsoft offers open-source frameworks that provide programmatic access to different advertising technologies, such as the Bing Ads API, allowing marketers to build and manage advertisement campaigns running over the Web. Along with the Atlas Media Console, users can develop and track marketing campaigns, collect data, and collect information about the advertisements, organizations, and promotions associated with an account.

Vocus Marketing Suite has grown to be one of the leading providers of integrated social media marketing and the Internet. They develop applications and features to continually search and provide a stream of social media. This helps them identify new customers and encourage media questions, distribute customer-generated newsletters and provide email newsletters. Thanks to this, brand awareness, advertising effectiveness, consumer loyalty, and sales are greatly improved.

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What you should know before choosing an advertising platform for your business

Analyze your business

There’s no doubt that you know a great deal about your business. Still, you have to go much deeper this time. From an objective standpoint, analyze your business. Answer the following questions:

  • What kind of business are you running?

  • Is it a local business, or a multinational company?

  • Do you offer services online, such as consultancy?

  • Do you sell items that can be purchased online and shipped to the destination?

  • Or perhaps you have a web-based app that provides services such as washing, taxi, or language courses?

  • Who are your targets? Does your product target men, women, teens, or children?

There will be an audience for any product or service, and there’s a platform for ads that can help you reach that group of potential customers. Your task is to align the needs of your company with what a platform has to bring.

Analyze your target

It’s time to analyze your audience after you’ve analyzed your market.

See who your current clients are, what their locations, ages, interests, and gender are

Look at the data on Google Analytics and get to know the people who come to your site and are interested in the products and services you provide.

Another method to get to know your clients is to run daily online customer feedback questionnaires and deliver incentives.

Or get your customer service team together and let them inform you about the people who buy your products. They talk to them on a regular basis via text, email, or calls; they have to be able to send you some typical customer characteristics, habits, and expectations.

See who your competitors’ customers are

You’d better understand them. There are several resources out there offering useful information on SEO research of rivals, including details such as comparison of rankings and the keywords they use.

But, on social media, I would encourage you simply to spy on them. Spying on your social media competitors is still acceptable and you can gain a whole bunch of information just by reading the views of the people in the comment section.

Define your potential customers

Upon reviewing your existing customers and customers of your rivals, it’s time to create a future customer profile. You should do it.

Digital advertisement helps you to meet individuals involved in particular events or products or services. All major online advertising platforms (Facebook Ads, Google Ads, Yahoo) allow you to build custom audiences, by selecting your favored demographic data such as age, interests, gender, location.

Define your objective and stage in the sales funnel

You have to identify your marketing goal right before you select your online advertising platform. Want to expose the brand to the world? Or do you have a well-established brand and want people to be led to your product pages? Define your goal.

Before you continue to upload and launch your video campaign, all popular services will ask you to pick a target. They’ll provide you with different resources to create your ad and post, depending on the target you want.

There is another viewpoint on marketing targets, too. Attempt to understand the sales funnel stage for your buyer and create video ads to match their particular level and expectations.

In general, a consumer would go through all stages of the decision process from when he first contacted an item before the order.

When you’re reaching a new group of people unfamiliar with your brand, you’d better start and take it slowly from the awareness level. Produce a video describing your company, its strengths, your contact information, and website.

For example, if you’re targeting your followers on Facebook, you need a different kind of approach. They recognize your product already, have probably purchased it before, and follow you on Facebook to keep up with your news and launches or promotions of products.

So you can go straight to the purchasing process and encourage your discounts and offers.

Top 20 digital advertising platforms for promoting your business

1. Google Ads

Founded in 1998, Google has risen to become the search engine used by more than 70% of online users. People can now search for everything they want, such as products, tips, videos, shops and addresses around their homes, etc. in seconds.

Today, Google processes more than 40,000 search queries per second, more than 3 billion per day, and more than one trillion per year. And this growth started strong and no sign of stopping since the beginning of 2000. Imagine how this has been, is, and will affect the advertising environment.

Also known as Google AdWords, Google Ads is the most popular pay-per-click advertising platform. Other search engines also use this technique for their advertising platforms. But because Google is so popular with customers, users immediately think of Google Ads when it comes to paid advertising. Google displays results close to the query, but it also produces results based on your location.

Pros:

  • Immediately reach potential customers.

  • 40% of customers will click on the first 4 results.

  • You can create advertising campaigns quickly.

  • Only when customers click on your ad, you have to pay Google.

  • Google Adwords allows you to track all activities related to your ads.

  • Google campaign management tool is very powerful and convenient.

Cons:

  • Fierce competition: Many businesses are doing the same industry, but only 4 results in the first position (this time will be the price competition).

  • Pay-per-click is increasing.

  • Must have a website to run ads: the website is usually the first channel that customers reach after the ad clicks.

  • Not effective with new types of products and services.

Which types of business should use Google Ads?

If you’re a new business and want to focus on increasing sales, a lead attraction campaign (potential audience) on Google will help you bring better profits.

Not requiring you to have a large advertising budget, Google focuses on improving the user experience. Google always wants to convey the best to its users, so the content you create should also be based on this principle. The quality of advertising and website content is a priority before the budget and an essential factor determining Google’s search rankings in the bidding war. To make sure the campaign is effective and beat your opponent, you should hire an experienced agency in Google advertising.

If you are a new business with a medium budget and simple goals, Google Ads will be the best choice.

2. Facebook Ads

If Google Ads is popular with paid search, then Facebook Ads are definitely pioneering paid social networks. Facebook has changed customers’ behavior and created a strong people-connecting platform, where we can speak out about our personal perspectives, experiences, and interactions, connecting with topics that we like.

Why is Facebook Ads so popular among advertisers and business owners? Owning a huge amount of user data, it is not surprising that it accounted for 25% of the world’s total online advertising budget last year.

Facebook collects more data than we can ever imagine. Pages you like, topics you interact with, friends, birthdays, current location, past vacation, etc. This data bank helps Facebook create values for advertisers to more efficiently target users than ever before.

Thus, Facebook Ads are popular with small business owners because they provide the ability to identify target customers and advertise only to those who can buy their products or services. A powerful function that not many advertising platforms can provide in such detail.

Pros:

  • Target the right customers.

  • Help you skyrocket sales revenue in a short period of time.

  • Cost savings.

  • You only pay for 100% real customers wishing to use when customers click on Facebook ads.

  • Diverse forms of advertising

  • Control over costs.

  • Advertising displays fast.

Cons:

  • Ads only show on Facebook pages, so the Facebook Ads ad network is second only to Google Ads (Ads can show on websites that are partners of the Google network).

  • Conversion rates may be low.

  • The continuous display of ads on the wall of Facebook users makes them feel dissatisfied and annoying.

  • Many customers believe that these ads are spam ads, causing boring for users.

Which types of businesses should use Facebook Ads?

For campaigns that emphasize social media branding, Facebook ads should be at the center of your marketing plan. Facebook ads help you have insight and insight into the insight of the target audience and help you nurture a community interested in the issues that your business is solving.

As everyone knows, word of mouth is the most important factor for business development. No advertising platform is more powerful than Facebook to create a community with a strong fan base for businesses.

Profits from Facebook have more than what is measured by money. We all know how powerful the channel is and how many people it has. That makes Facebook the top advertising platform that’s hard to beat today.

As mentioned from the beginning, each type of business is suitable for one type of advertising. The difference comes from the product and the target customer portrait of each person.

That explains why this works for the business owner, but not for the others. This is especially true when you measure efficiency with real profits.

3. Twitter Ads

If Facebook allows a company or an individual to create a fan page for them or their product/service, Twitter only allows users to upload photos, write and read the content of limited length (up to 140 characters). Other users follow these posts.

Although Twitter also offers users many customer positioning features, including shopping habits, languages, preferences, etc. However, the price of advertising on Twitter is much higher than Facebook’s. However, sometimes spending more will yield better results. Because the interaction rate of ads on Twitter is quite high, up to 1-3%, compared to the average CTR rate of Facebook is only 0.191%.

Twitter ads can help you get your message across to your product and brand’s most potential users. Twitter’s data shows that advertising pledges have increased by 69% over last year, with costs down by 28% per ad participation.

The ad formats on Twitter are extremely simple, and this is a great time to consider running your first Twitter ad.

Pros:

  • Activate customers who are following you to close sales.

  • Brand promotion.

  • The investment cost to reach the target market or potential customers is small or insignificant, and customers or audiences voluntarily want your information and track your activities.

  • The ability to spread information very quickly and strongly.

Cons:

  • Updating and managing accounts on social networks take a lot of time and effort.

  • Marketing people must present information in a new and appealing way to viewers or lose the people who are watching them and loyal customers.

  • The implementation of advertising on social media channels carries many risks, such as anti-fans’ negative actions, scandals quickly spread, and etc.

Which types of business should use Twitter Ads?

Twitter is a suitable place if the business owns short content that receives as expert advice or short news articles to share with viewers. However, it should be noted that Twitter owns a system of posts (here are Tweets) fast - compact with a maximum of 140 characters. This means that the number of Tweets of an account is a lot, and of course, old posts will quickly be “buried” by new Tweets. Therefore, Twitter is a good place for businesses to increase brand recognition. However, it is because of its “quick - compact” characteristic that will cause difficulties in maintaining the article’s interaction.

4. Microsoft Advertising

Microsoft Advertising (formerly Bing Ads) is an online advertising channel that allows you to reach potential customers through Yahoo or Bing Search Network and bring them back to your website. Bing ads allow you to create business ads online and show up whenever someone does a related search on Yahoo or Bing or visiting a site within that network.

Microsoft Advertising currently has 116 million daily users who can be your potential customers. In particular, up to 36.2% of the overall U.S. for desktop search.

Pros:

  • Less competitive and cheaper CPC than Google Ads.

  • Gives you more control at the campaign level

  • Allow you to adjust bids for both tablets and phones from 0% to 100%.

  • Provide more options when searching for partners.

  • Have more gender/age target settings

Cons:

  • Less traffic and a smaller market than Google. Therefore, if you focus too much on Microsoft Ads, you may lose many potential customers who do not use Bing and Yahoo.

Which types of business should use Microsoft Ads?

Most small and medium businesses see Bing Ads as the latter option, but they will need to change their minds now if they want to do business in the US online market.

5. Quora

Quora is an advertising platform that also known as a “Question and Answer” platform with a large number of users. This is a pay-per-click advertising channel that marketers easily overlook. In terms of cost, a business, costing $ 25 for a bid (CPA) on Google, for Quora, the CPA bid is only $ 1. Although businesses cannot reach as many users as on search engines, you will surely get high demand customers through Quora questions with Quora Ads.

Pros:

  • Bring great traffic to your landing and website page.

  • Low bidding costs and low CPC (cost per click) too.

  • A perfect way to get your leads pumped in.

Cons:

  • Like every other ad channel, this also leads to higher bounce rates.

  • Leads aren’t top quality. What I mean by that is that they usually lead via farm clicks and are not checked.

Which types of business should use Quora?

You will find your audience on Quora in short order, no matter what industry you are in or how niche your company is. In general, Quora Ads is a form of advertising that helps you connect with users most closely.

6. AdRoll

AdRoll’s platform monitors 1.2 billion buyer profiles with trillions of intent data points and makes over 80 billion AI predictions daily. It is built to hit prospective customers with the highest likelihood of converting.

You can also make use of AdRoll to create a powerful cross-platform experience for your market folks. To lead users on the customer journey, you can run online ads, web site promotions, and email marketing campaigns. You also get a benefit of balanced coverage that requires multi-touch attribution.

If you run an e-commerce store, AdRoll integrates with some of the most popular platforms, including WooCommerce, Shopify, and BigCommerce.

Pros:

  • Ads personalized to show what you want.

  • Flexible marketing with the budget setting.

  • Powerful analytics to see what is working and what is not.

  • An enormous number of ad templates.

Cons:

  • To beginners, certain parts of the interface are hard to use.

  • Postponed ad output notifications.

  • Support will take some time to get back to you.

  • Pricing is a challenging issue; there was no fixed price when using it. Fees are dependent upon ad and email interactions.

Which types of business should use AdRoll?

Business owners who want to optimize their scope through market-automation solutions should use the app. According to their company size, those who would like to maximize their online business visibility, demographic of customer and employee and industry type are the ones who would benefit most from AdRoll’s apps.

This platform especially helps companies distribute their ads through different devices and channels and evaluate their marketing campaigns through measurement services.

7. Amazon

A website with more than 2.2 billion monthly visitors, Amazon has a deep understanding of how shoppers are involved in discovering your products and brands, researching and purchasing online.

By using advertising services on Amazon, you will reach millions of customers while they shop. Amazon services help you reach your advertising goals and help customers find the products they are looking for.

If you are brand new to advertising on Amazon and are a registered seller or vendor selling products on Amazon, it’s highly recommended that you start with sponsored advertising. These advertising solutions are easy to set up and they are designed to work at different budget levels.

First, this type of advertising only pays when shoppers click on your ad. When you create a sponsored ad campaign, you choose your own budget and the amount you want to bid for a click. If you are interested in using an Amazon advertising service solely to run ads for products or services that you do not sell on Amazon, you will be provided with display advertising, video advertising, and custom advertising.

Pros:

  • Provide you with a variety of options suitable for advertising campaigns to sell effectively on Amazon.

  • This is a new way to reach potential buyers online.

  • Provide many creative ad formats and appropriate ad positions.

  • Advertising costs are customizable according to your budget condition.

  • Optimize a quick advertising campaign to help customers reach the right place at the right time.

  • Provide the ability to measure, optimize real-time.

  • Allow tracking results, see how ads work, and change campaigns to achieve your ads’ best results.

Cons:

  • You have to spend more time on Amazon Ads than other platforms to set up the ad campaigns.

  • Reporting campaigns are not granular or as effective as you are getting with other platforms.

Which types of business should use Amazon?

Amazon is the destination to be for companies that focus on the products. And if you’re selling online, it would be even better to choose Amazon Ads. Amazon will only send you another means for getting more eyes on your goods and likely more customers.

If you are hesitant, then take baby steps with an item you already know that sells online well. Develop your campaign after you start seeing an ROI. Another great reason to use Amazon Ads to increase and boost the rankings for organic Amazons!

8. Taboola

Taboola stands out from other advertising solutions, as it is a platform for native advertising. If you’re unfamiliar with native ads, it’s a chance for someone else to advertise content on their blog. The ad format appears as content on the hosting website.

Typically, some kind of disclaimer makes it obvious to careful audiences that the content is an advertisement. However, the disguise remains effective.

Recently, Taboola confirmed Outbrain with a merger and created a superpower of a digital ad tool that helps you reach the right people, achieve more visibility, and deliver reporting that will allow you to customize your strategy.

You can also use Taboola in a range of innovative ways, including visual, media, or web advertising. Also, there is a clever bidding widget so you can automate your strategy for optimization.

Pros:

  • A great value on clicks — all CPCs have guests!

  • So many vendors use worldwide reach and relatability - Taboola.

  • High quality — their policies ensure that content is only fun and modest.

Cons:

  • Account managers — a few of them neglect the effort to build the creatives and landing pages and recommend dumping them instead of helping to make them appropriate (with general guidance of a few words).

  • Strict rules on content and human preferences mixed. Inconsistency sneaks into the analysis process on occasion.

  • Deleting error-created campaigns — with even a bin widget! It would be awesome.

Which types of business should use Taboola?

  • The content contributors (advertisers) who want to boost traffic to their websites and are ready to pay in advertisers’ position for it.

  • The publishers (site owners/bloggers) put a Taboola button on their website and are paid for the link display.

  • The interface (Taboola) connecting contributors and publishers, and enabling marketplace working.

9. Reddit

Reddit allows users to post on interesting niche topics, like memes, events, politics, and popular culture. When users publish a post, these platforms allow other users to share them or add to the conversation with their comments.

Both blogging and community building platforms can help for those who want to encourage discussion around niche topics or topics. For example, on these platforms, you can see discussions about everything from alternative health to machine learning.

By blogging, you can write posts about your company’s industry topics and link them to your product or website. While many people have blogs on their websites, platforms like Reddit can be great to use if you haven’t set up this feature yet - or just want to see what others in your industry are blogging about.

With a discussion page like Reddit, you can share a link or a post about a specific topic on a discussion board related to your industry and see how users respond. You can also start your own board if a topic you are trying to encourage discussion about is not available.

The platform encourages explicitly web chatting and posting sharing from users interested in the same topic. It also allows users to follow you or subscribe to your blog or Reddit board so your content can show up on their feeds.

When someone publishes something on Reddit, other users can upvote or downvote. Upvote makes a post appear higher in Reddit feeds while downvote is the opposite.

Pros:

  • Allow you to share text posts, photos, and videos about your business, brand, or personal thoughts.

  • Let you start conversations on a topic.

  • Allow linking to external websites.

  • Super easy to use.

  • Not as focused on the headlines of mainstream news.

Cons:

  • Longer blog posts can take time to make or write.

  • Being downgraded on Reddit means your post may not be visible.

  • Your audience may be overly relevant or limited to people on the specific platform you use.

  • Typically unmoderated, therefore some titles may not be suitable for work.

Which types of business should use Reddit?

Reddit is one of the best social media platforms which is unique and powerful. Reddit is different from every other social media platform out there. While most platforms allow you to use your full name and date of birth to make a profile, Reddit is the absolute opposite. Anonymous users thrive on this web site.

You may wonder how successful marketing of your brand can be if nobody truly knows who you are. Despite not understanding who you are, by getting access to every single previous post you made, Redditors have a way to self-police that is transparent and useful to the group. People may not be able to identify who you are instantly, but by checking your comment and post history, they can evaluate how reliable you are and what kind of value you bring.

So if you are trying to expand your business (especially small business), Reddit is a good choice.

10. BuySellAds

BuySellAds is the best ad network for bloggers, and you may have heard of it. BuySellAds is a website advertising platform where ads are being sold and purchased for promotion and other purposes. Basically, it is a place where advertisers and publishers respond to each other and make an ad deal easily. For blogs, they can join the publisher’s account and start selling their Blog ads. BuySellAds can be a source of income for bloggers if they work with it with great interest.

You can target your customers with a range of ad format below:

  • Native ads

  • Podcast ads

  • Email ads

  • Content ads

  • Display ads

Pros:

  • You have the option of configuring automated and manual functions to accept ads.

  • A payment gateway is through the website; you do not need to worry about it.

  • Competitive ad rates allow you to understand the advertisement market and its secrets.

  • Flexible according to the amount and type of ad space.

  • Maximize earning capacity through the provision of various ad sizes, places, prices, and more.

Cons:

  • 25% commission is high as per many user reviews.

  • The cluttered publishing directory makes it difficult to find your blog.

  • If you don’t want to pay too much commission, then this isn’t your place.

  • Cluttered publishing directory also doesn’t help to stand out on the web or blog.

Which types of business should use BuySellAds?

Undoubtedly, for new and upcoming publishers and bloggers, this is an excellent earning platform. It happens to be one of the very few credible ad marketing channels that directly contact the advertiser.

Give it a try because it’s free to sign up and wait before an advertiser approaches you.

InfoLinks was launched in 2007, and since then they have helped thousands of publishers make more money from their websites. Most publishers are happy with InfoLinks text ads and are using it as a good choice after Google AdSense. Many publishers are switching to this network because they find it difficult to be approved in Google AdSense due to their strict TOS. Furthermore, we can use InfoLinks ads on websites in conjunction with other popular advertising networks like Google AdSense, etc.

This advertising platform uses several keywords from the website to introduce advertisers’ ads. The ads in this text will look like normal links to the site reader and when the user clicks and its publishers receive the money. The more clicks you get from visitors, the more you earn from InfoLinks.

Pros:

  • Allow you to display InfoLinks ads as regular links so that your visitors think they are internal links rather than advertising links.

  • The clickthrough rate (CTR) is still somewhat higher than most.

  • Their ads can be customized very easily.

  • Quick approval.

  • Their ads can be easily installed on any website or blog.

  • Reliable advertising platform

  • Quick payment process.

Cons:

  • If you do not receive a lot of traffic from the United States, your CPC will not receive a lot of money.

  • Using too many InfoLinks ads on your websites can ruin your user experience in the long run.

  • The minimum payment is $ 50.

Which types of businesses should use Infolinks?

InfoLinks ads are useful when your website is new when it starts to attract more visitors; you will make your customers unhappy when using InfoLinks ads. So if you are getting more traffic, you should consider affiliate marketing solutions or any other high-income sources paid for your websites.

12. LinkedIn

LinkedIn might have been the king of B2B networking tools, but try to turn it into a platform for ads has generated mixed results. The platform wasn’t a favorite among advertisers, but things have changed considerably since the big Microsoft acquisition in 2016.

Many of the early problems LinkedIn suffered from have been fixed in recent years, and this was rewarded last year with a record of $2 billion in ad sales. Things are starting to look for the B2B professional, and 2019 is the year marketers will rethink their advertising ad budget for LinkedIn.

Pros:

  • A business-oriented community of users: LinkedIn is a professional network where users go to do business. They ‘re much more responsive to advertising than your average user on Facebook.

  • Audience targeting: The targeting of LinkedIn helps you to find decision-makers in specific markets, in specific positions, in particular businesses – no matter how many niches you want to get.

  • High-value prospects: LinkedIn is the only advertising platform that helps you reach high-value B2B buyers.

Cons:

  • High CPCs: LinkedIn advertising’s by far the most common concern is that CPCs are higher than Facebook, Google Advertising, Twitter, etc.

  • Data roadblocks: Several repositories (e.g., Lead Gen Forms) are available and would be easier to reach and export to other applications.

  • Interface gripes: Reports and functionality are sometimes difficult to find.

Which types of businesses should use LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is where business professionals get into the network to talk about business topics.

Unlike Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites, on LinkedIn, people are in a business mindset, making it a perfect place to sell goods, business services, and apps.

Facebook may have more than 4x more active users than LinkedIn, but just 10% of those users live in America.

All this remains true for Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and other common social media sites. You can advertise B2B goods and services in these channels, but your target market may not be in the most open mindset.

LinkedIn Advertising seems like it should be a slam dunk for B2B companies — that’s why so many businesses were frustrated when the platform’s limitations prevented them from having good results.

13. Pinterest

Pinterest has grown from a small platform to over 70 million users over the past nearly seven years. While the CEO prefers to call it a “Catalog of Ideas” like most social networking platforms, you can install your Pinterest account to be a business account. But have you ever used it to advertise your business? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of using Pinterest to advertise your company.

According to Shareaholic reports, Pinterest is now the 2nd largest driver of traffic from social media platforms, only behind Facebook, and also exceeding Twitter.

As for the eCommerce websites, the average selling order for Pinterest is $50. That is higher than its market-placed competitors. And did you know that 93 percent of the more than 250 million active monthly users use Pinterest to plan their purchases? That is a good way to boost your income.

Pros:

  • Align your brand with striking photos.

  • Create boards that reflect various aspects of your business.

  • Provide different types of a pin for you to experience.

  • Although Pinterest is designed to mainly show you things that fall into a particular interest collection in your profile, you can look for anything and access it.

Cons:

  • Pinterest has a limited audience. Whereas a large portion of the community is still female, it’s changing, but what doesn’t seem to change at the moment is that users still seem to be less than 45 years old.

  • Closed system: No one would be able to see what’s on the network without an account.

  • Image requirements: You should have an image to pin something, and that picture needs to be nice. Not an easy deal to throw together either. Your image quality can also be a part of how well it would perform in Pinterest searches.

Which types of businesses should use Pinterest?

Any business can achieve success on Pinterest as long as it can relate its business to Pinterest’s most popular categories. So choose the most appropriate category on Pinterest for your company.

For instance, if your company is specialized in selling gym equipment, then Pinterest’s health and fitness category will work well for you. That group may be your go-to ideas for new pins. Pins can be created using diet plans, workout routines, etc.

14. Snapchat

Snapchat is an advertising platform that can be used to share information such as videos, images, the special thing about Snapchat is that it is only visible to those who are assigned to view that image or video, and after the person receive information on that image or video, immediately, the image information, that video will disappear from the recipient’s interface.

Snapchat does not have the special features of Facebook, nor does it have a great Instagram filter. The function and interface of Snapchat are relatively simple. However, according to statistics in the US in 2015, up to 41% of people who have been using Snapchat are aged between 18 and 34 years old.

The reason why one of the founders of Snapchat explained that “It’s not that we do it naturally, we do it to create the highest level of security for our users.” Users will not be stolen information because after reading the news, they will automatically disappear”. The security that Snapchat provides is a tremendous strength that makes Snapchat so powerful and popular.

Here are some pros and cons when you advertise on Snapchat:

Pros:

  • Help you connect with younger audiences.

  • Strike up a talk and interact with actual users.

  • Awesome way to show your company culture.

  • Ideal for influence marketing.

Cons:

  • Poor analytics.

  • Because content isn’t sticking around for very long, you’ll need a lot of stuff to remain active.

  • It will be difficult for your sporadic messages to get across to a customer unless you are consistent with your posting.

  • Snapchat isn’t a broadcast platform so that it won’t be continuouslycut by spamming adverts for your services or products.

Which types of businesses should use Snapchat?

Officially, Snapchat can be regarded as another platform that businesses and marketers can incorporate into their marketing line-up. Snapchat has proven that companies that have the market there and the right plans in place can be extremely successful.

15. TikTok

TikTok was originally a child of ByteDance, originally a video sharing application known as Douyin in China and TikTok in other parts of the world. However, in 2018, the company acquired the more famous app, Musical.ly, transferring world users to the new integrated TikTok platform. Meanwhile, Douyin is still operating as a separate application in the host country.

In short, TikTok is a social networking application that shares short videos. As of March 2019, there were 1.1 billion Tiktok installs making it the 3rd highest downloaded app in the world. 66% of users on this platform are under 30 years old, most concentrated in the age range of 13-24, and have a higher percentage of female users.

Because this is a relatively new platform, the predictions in the future are for sure. However, at present, signs of marketing potential on TikTok are very positive. In particular, it would be worth a try if your business:

  • Want to reach the younger generation.

  • Fancy creativity, challenge, innovation.

Pros:

  • New, innovative, attracts a large number of users.

  • Video is short, highly viral.

  • Having a particular user audience, brands can target Gen-Z extremely effectively.

  • Entertaining, bring laughter.

  • People see TikTok as a place to reveal their “true nature,” different from other social networks like Instagram or Facebook, where people only “show” what is best.

Cons:

  • Limited for mobile devices.

  • Must constantly create compelling content.

  • Getting involved in many “scandals” about disclosing harassed children on TikTok.

  • Uncommon with mature audiences, TikTok is considered a bit childish in the minds of many people.

Which types of businesses should use TikTok?

Many people think TikTok is only suitable for businesses with cheap products. However, even high-end brands like Dior, Michael Kors, or Adidas have tried it on TikTok. As a result, they have increased both brand awareness as well as popularity for the brand.

So it can be said that this is a channel that marketers should not ignore. TikTok can be considered a breakthrough phenomenon in social networks recently. Every activity on TikTok has always been somewhat “risky” and experimental. However, a lot of agile marketers succeeded unexpectedly by leveraging the power of TikTok. Do you want to try?

Explore: Can You Make Money On TikTok?

16. YouTube

Youtube advertising is all forms of advertising displayed on Youtube channel with two main forms: Banner advertising and Video advertising. YouTube has 1.3 billion users - nearly a third of the total number of Internet users - and users watch nearly five billion videos every day. These numbers are expected to continue to increase year by year.

You might be surprised to know that the average user spends 40 minutes per session on YouTube.

In these 40 minutes, users will see many ads on YouTube - where your business is introduced. More and more people turn to the Internet for news and TV shows. Instead of running ads on traditional advertising channels (radio, television, or print), running ads on YouTube allows you to connect with potential customers through a more targeted approach. Therefore, YouTube offers a great opportunity for your message to reach millions of people, all of whom are likely to become potential customers.

Pros:

  • The scope of influence is huge

  • Targeting is easy because YouTube Ads offer many targeting options for you to choose from

  • You have more time to reach potential customers: Compared to other social media channels, YouTube users tend to spend more time on this platform

  • Low cost

  • You can track video parameters and measure advertising effectiveness

Cons:

  • Difficult to target the right customers: Although you are trying to narrow the audience for your advertising, it can still be a little difficult to accomplish this perfectly. Why? Because YouTube users make their video categories.

  • Unable to select the ad’s context: One drawback of advertising on YouTube is that you must not choose the video for your promotional video to play before.

Which types of businesses should use Youtube?

The YouTube platform has grown, which means that the effectiveness of YouTube Advertising is not low. Therefore, YouTube advertising is only suitable for large businesses, potentially affording large advertising costs, but YouTube is also very suitable for small businesses that want to attract more attention.

Instead of using ads that appear on the YouTube homepage, which is very expensive, small businesses can take advantage of Display YouTube ads to save costs and gain opportunities to reach potential customers.

17. Propel Media

Through a website lightbox or a TextLink through Propel Media, you can meet people in your target market. This platform uses a “DeepIntent” algorithm aiming to detect real-time and high-value audiences.

How does this work? This integrates AI with natural language processing to explore the relation among 300 million people, locations, items, and events according to the company’s site. The targeting technologies will use lightboxes, TextLinks, and pre-roll video advertising to meet the next clients.

And here is another main feature: The business has formed a relationship with streaming brands Apple TV, Chromecast, and Roku. These sites provide you with access to users you can not find on traditional web ads.

Ultimately, Propel Media now provides national and international marketing opportunities for native ads.

Pros:

  • Allows users to advertise as an overlay image over the content they are watching or in a new window via their browsers.

  • Do have distinctive organizations buying media to grow the user base.

  • Provide users exposure that they can’t find on typical web ads.

Cons:

  • The analytics is pretty poor.

  • It would be a bit difficult to use.

Which types of businesses should use Propel Media?

Propel provides its ads mainly to the users that they acquired through a user-driven business model. Those users decided to see ads in exchange for the free content they offer. Through this model, Propel also provides advertisers by partners that also obtain users through return for the right to display advertisements to their customers, by providing a range of applications free of charge.

Also, Propel established a publisher-driven business model with a network system, direct publishers, and exchanges. Such supply networks extend our advertising capabilities. In this model, the advertisement units are provided by popular websites to consumers, and we deliver the ads in collaboration with the network, the distributor, or the exchange.

18. Revcontent

Revcontent is one of the online ecosystem’s most sought-after native ad networks, representing some of the significant names in the publishing arena such as NBC News, CBS, Forbes, and so on. The special thing about Revcontent compared with other native networks is that it includes a highly sensitive plugin, infinite scroll, gallery implementations, and unrestricted API configuration significantly affect the website traffic of their user’s website.

This native ad platform contains varying size features to integrate with company websites and blogs to boost traffic and sales from their pages. The widgets are extremely engaging, and publishers could select from a large list of features and do well in the preceding niches- entertainment, media, and technology. This supports publishers by adding a toolbar to help them receive extra revenue from the website at the end of the article, and often the revenue may be as high as Adsense. In general, Revcontent fits well with a strong amount of Tier One traffic on media and viral sites.

Pros:

  • Offer fully responsive widgets that without clutters can adjust to any screen size.

  • It gives its customers high RPMs in the $3 to $40 range.

  • With Revcontent, performance metrics can be measured in real-time based on computer type, website segment, and output of content.

  • Revcontent gives its advertisers a 50 percent return on Investments. It also increases the Website’s error rate and page load time.

  • Revcontent provides highly customizable widgets and offers users a strong native look of advertising so users don’t look like it’s an ad.

Cons:

  • Revcontent imposes a variety of limitations on its advertisers and publishers and excludes most of the standard applications.

  • Smaller blogs and websites are not usually licensed by the network and require high traffic to validate the site.

  • Some of its users feel a little disrespectful to its advertising.

Which types of business should use Revcontent?

If your business is in need of an advertising platform that helps you look for cheaper traffic that really converts, wants real-time data to optimize faster, or wants to target in more detail than platforms like Taboola, Facebook, etc, Revcontent is for you.

19. Spotify

If you’d like to engage people in your target market in such a way that your rivals may have missed, try going on Spotify ads with audio ads.

The cost of creating audio advertising can be marginally higher than conventional picture advertising, but the Spotify ad platform provides a feature for making your own audio ad, which provides a voiceover. It may not be costly at all, though.

Further than that, one should not underestimate the opportunity to hit your core audience. Millions of people are using Spotify to discover their favorite music and listen to their favorite podcasts.

Spotify ads also help you to reach potential customers at odd times, such as when they work out, drive to work, sleep, cook, or clean.

Pros:

  • Let you make your own audio ad and record it.

  • Help you reach free Spotify users.

  • Retarget people who have got involved with your advertising.

  • Track your campaign including cost and clicks.

Cons:

  • Spotify does not provide a feature that excludes certain people.

  • The ability to target is limited.

Which types of business should use Spotify?

Note that Spotify’s a social platform. Therefore, with the same way you do with your Twitter and Facebook pages, you will need to keep up with that. Follow the artists that fit your brand so everyone can know what you’re listening to. Networking by telling others what they are listening to.

If your business targets the audience who listens to music, then at some stage they are likely to be on Spotify. Take advantage of this powerful tool by socially utilizing it, making your own advertisements for it, or partnering with the advertising sales team at Spotify to dream up a plan that will attract listeners and maximize the exposure of your brand.

20. Pandora

Pandora is a rival to Spotify and the platform’s running ads have similar advantages. Pandora boasts 118 million audiences. Using first-party data from the website, as well as third-party data given by Pandora, you can target a subset of those people.

The first-party data contains segments like:

  • Listening times.

  • Music preferences.

  • Basic demographic info (age, gender, etc.).

  • Location.

Offline behaviors such as shopping activity and media preferences are included in third party data.

The first- and third-party data, when combined, offer you laser-like targeting capabilities so you can only reach people who are most likely to show interest in your business.

You get the option to run ad spots in 10-, 15-, or 30-seconds with Pandora. The platform also provides an Audio Everywhere service which will seamlessly combine your message with the listening experience of the user.

A campaign that blends your audio ad with a consistent visual aspect running across the web and mobile platforms can also be launched.

Pros:

  • Pandora offers premium and free service.

  • Available on different devices such as Mac, iPhone, PC, Android, etc.

  • Ability to target extremely well.

  • Provide you with a broader variety of advertising materials than terrestrial radio ads.

Cons:

  • Only available in the US, Australia, and New Zealand.

Which types of business should use Pandora?

As mentioned above, Pandora only available in the US, Australia, and New Zealand so businesses outside those areas should not advertise on this advertising platform. Also, if your business desires a good target platform, Pandora is for you.

Other forms of advertising for you to consider

Although we’re particularly concerned with showing digital advertising examples, a brief overview of other more popular - offline types of advertising is also worthwhile!

TV Ads

Television advertisements are a very costly but still well-considered form of advertising which is as old as TV itself.

Television ads are a type of outbound marketing, also referred to as disruption marketing, which focuses on interrupting viewers in an attempt to draw their attention. To prevent being received by audiences as offensive, many television advertisements are now making an attempt to appeal to the feelings of an audience through humor, a sense of hope, nostalgia, or even occasional frustration or sorrow. The key goal for many TV advertisements is to be emotionally potent and unforgettable.

Newspaper Ads

Some think that news ads are a thing of the past but they still provide value, particularly when reaching audiences who might not already be online. News advertising can create brand recognition although it is almost impossible to monitor the success of newspaper ads. On the opposite hand, Online ads provide options for targeting viewers, success assessment analytics, and a variety of other advantages compared with traditional news ads.

Radio Ads

Radio ads are closely related to television ads and newspaper ads in that they’re all a form of outbound marketing that wants attention by interrupting. Radio ads can be hard to measure and track just like other types of advertising that don’t operate online.

Urban Advertising

Urban ads are a form of advertising that happens in heavily populated cities at its most simple. Urban ads also make use of the environment to surprise audiences or to inspire awe. Urban advertising often occurs as an alternate means of advertisement, using unusual or special ways of distributing a message.

Further readings

Final words

Above is a transparent post about the best digital advertising platforms in 2021. Besides, there are advantages and disadvantages and the type of business suitable for each platform for you to consider carefully.

Digital era and Online platforms increasingly changing rapidly will cause many difficulties for businesses. It is super risky if the business continues to hold on to one or two certain platforms. There is no certainty about the stability of either Google or Facebook or other platforms. Users have also diversified their behaviors, interests, and ways of using online platforms. Chasing the entire journey of users is an extremely expensive game for any brand and requiring high expertise.

However, there is a way for small and medium enterprises to take advantage of and follow what the world has done for a long time, which is to actively create advocacy from the community and customers through the export of useful content methodically and strategically. Google, Facebook, or any other platform loves that, through the implementation of the Content Strategy seriously, businesses can own high rankings, the Fanpage with a 30-40% reach rate, even easy viral campaigns.


Sam Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Avada Commerce, an e-commerce solution provider headquartered in Singapore. He is an expert on the Shopify e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Sam loves talking about e-commerce and he aims to help over a million online businesses grow and thrive.