The decision as to where you place your ads today depends heavily on your product, your target group and other individual factors. On this page you will find a summary of the difference between the two advertising channels and where online campaigns offer advantages for you.
Why should you place ads online?
Nowadays, digitalization encompasses almost all areas of everyday life. More and more processes are taking place online: from shopping for clothes online to buying food in the digital supermarket. Your life no longer just takes place in the real world, but also in the virtual world. This raises questions about how you as an advertiser can best reach potential target groups.
Development of advertising: From analog to digital ad placement
If we look at the developments that have changed advertising strategies in recent years and decades, a radical change becomes clear. From posters on advertising pillars, which reached pretty much every target group, to specialized online ads that are precisely tailored to a specific target group.
Digitalization and technological advances in particular offer fascinating new opportunities. However, it goes without saying that there are both advantages and disadvantages to the various forms of advertising that play a role in the battle for visitor and sales figures.
What do we mean by ...
- Newspaper advertisements
- Flyer
- Posters
- Household advertising
- Leaflets, catalogs, brochures
- Social networks (such as Facebook, Instagram & Co.)
- Own website
- Online advertisements (e.g. placing online advertising banners with Google Ads)
- E-mail marketing (e.g. newsletter or automatic sales service)
- Content marketing (preparation of search engine optimized content)
- Search engine marketing (e.g. Google Ads)
Is it still worth placing ads in the newspaper if you place them online?
This is indeed a good question, which in turn needs to be linked to other questions: Who do you want to reach with your ad? What do you want to achieve?
A clear and well-structured concept for advertising strategies in general is essential. The Internet – but also the big cities – is like an “advertising jungle” – a seeming overabundance of information. You should therefore systematically work out a strategy in advance and clarify the most important questions in relation to marketing (e.g. target group and objectives), the campaign and ad content and the corresponding advertising channel.
Do you still read the newspaper or print media in general? Let’s be honest, print is not completely dead. According to the latest figures from ZMG, 57% of all Germans (aged 14 and over) read the printed version of a newspaper every day.
For advertising purposes, the traditional placement of advertisements in newspapers and other print media is only relevant if it actually reaches the desired target group.
If we are talking about a regional newspaper such as the Main-Post, for example, whose readership is largely aged 50 and over, the newspaper is a good place to place advertisements or implement an advertising campaign over a longer period of time. Another advantage is the tactile nature of print advertising: people often remember things better when they hold them in their hands, they seem more tangible to them.
The reputation of the newspaper in question is of great importance. A renowned newspaper is trusted, which means that advertisements also gain in seriousness. The statement “I read this in the Main-Post” sounds far more reliable than “I read this on the Internet”. However, advertising in print media is comparatively unspecific, usually has greater scatter loss and is therefore less efficient than online advertising in many cases.
Advantages of online marketing: Big impact with a smaller budget
Thanks to the wide range of technical possibilities, it is becoming increasingly easy to identify a specific group of people whose interests correspond to a product and then display targeted advertisements to these groups.
Such targeted distribution means that less advertising budget is “wasted” as the target group that is potentially interested in the advertised product is explicitly addressed.
Advertising strategies on social platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter, offer optimal use: they achieve a big impact with a small budget. By sharing and liking ads or posts, they gain attention within the target group at low cost.
However, one of the key arguments in favor of online advertising is certainly the measurability of effectiveness using various tools. This offers the opportunity to precisely analyze strategies, successes and failures and thus optimize processes. Access figures, click rates and conversion rates are just two of the numerous analysis options that enable the targeted design of advertising campaigns.
Precise analyses enable exact planning of marketing strategies and therefore efficient use of the available budget.
Another advantage of online marketing is the lower hurdle to the actual action. If I already have my smartphone in my hand or am working on my laptop, I can directly access the links, telephone numbers or email addresses provided. One click is enough and I am redirected, whereas with an analog ad I still have to enter and access the corresponding website on a mobile device.
It is sometimes a matter of offering the most direct and barrier-free route to the product in order to make it as uncomplicated as possible for the potential customer.
Google Ads: The supreme discipline of online advertising
As competition on the Internet is fierce and every effort is aimed at reaching as many people as possible in the desired target group, a number of online marketing tools have emerged. One of these is a service offered by Google: Google Ads(or previously known as “Google AdWords”).
You create an online ad and define a specific search term (keyword) to which this ad matches. This ad then appears at the top or bottom of the Google search when the search term is entered. The price of such an ad is calculated according to the number of clicks, “CPC” (cost per click). How much a click costs depends on how many ads are placed by other providers for the same search term. The higher you set the budget for the ad, the higher the probability that your ad will be preferred to those of your competitors.
The whole thing works like an auction house: advertisers bid for search terms and the top positions for their desired search terms, thereby setting the prices. The advertiser who is willing to pay the most per click is assigned the better position by Google (assuming the same ad quality). Of course, this can mean that popular search terms are expensive, which is why an appropriate keyword and a well thought-out strategy are required.
The huge advantage of Google Ads is that it targets precisely these specific search terms. If someone googles “pizza delivery service Würzburg”, the ad optimized for these keywords will be displayed exactly then. In other words, the ad reaches the user exactly when they are searching for it.
Traditional advertising aims to arouse a need or desire, Google Ads works the other way round: The desire is there and just one search term further, the interested party receives exactly the right offer.
In addition, settings can be made that allow online ads to be placed only at certain times (e.g. only during the opening hours of the pizza supplier) or only in certain regions.
In order to experience the maximum benefit, strategy and orientation and the careful development of a campaign are essential. This is where working with an agency comes in handy.
Google and the quality of online ads
In addition to the willingness to invest in the ads, the quality of the ads and the pages to which they link also play a role. This is because Google evaluates the ads very carefully when they are displayed. If an ad is rated by Google as being of high quality, it is considered relevant to a user’s search query: in other words, it is more likely to appear and more often.
Google wants to ensure that only ads with a certain minimum quality are displayed. But how is this quality determined? This question is not easy to answer, as various factors are taken into account here. What plays a role in any case – in addition to an ad text that matches the keyword – is the so-called “landing page”.
An ad should not simply link to the homepage of the website, but to a specific target page on which the search term originally entered in Google appears.
An example: If a prospective customer enters the terms “bathroom renovation” into Google, the Google ad of a sanitary provider should also link to a corresponding subpage where information on bathroom renovation can be found. The customer must be picked up here and ideally find exactly what they were looking for.
At this point, it’s all about relevance, usefulness and user-friendliness.
Conclusion: With online ads you will definitely improve the efficiency of your budget!
Both online and print advertising certainly have their advantages and disadvantages. In summary, however, it can be said that online ads allow for more precise tailoring to the desired target group and can also generate a global reach, if you will.
Depending on the target group(s), a sensible combination of print and online media is also conceivable and an option to combine the advantages of both forms.
