13 Best Online Advertising Strategies To Use In 2026

At its core, an online advertising strategy goes beyond placing ads — it’s about building a data-driven plan that connects you with the right audience at the right time. The best online advertising strategies combine creativity and analytics to craft campaigns that attract clicks, generate leads, and boost revenue.

That’s why on this guide, we’ll be going over 13 of the best advertising strategies available.

P.S. Want to know how your ad campaigns are performing? Try our free ROAS calculator to measure results and get personalized tips for improving performance across platforms like Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, and Facebook Ads.

13 best online advertising strategies

The best online advertising strategies include:

1. Geofencing advertising
2. Amazon advertising
3. Influencer advertising
4. Social media advertising
5. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
6. Remarketing
7. Podcast advertising
8. Programmatic advertising
9. Email advertising
10. CTV advertising
11. Google Local Services Ads
12. Affiliate marketing
13. Video advertising

1. Geofencing advertising

Geofencing advertising is one of the best online advertising methods for companies looking to target:

• Competitors
• Top talent
• High-value leads
• Local shoppers
• Qualified service areas
• And more

With geofencing, your business creates a virtual fence around a specific area, like a college campus, competitor location, or conference center. When someone enters this fence, they get added to a remarketing audience.

Your company can then remarket to these users, which can help increase brand awareness, guide their next shopping trip, or influence who their company requests quotes or proposals from next quarter.

This Internet advertising strategy offers your business a new, innovative, and effective way to reach your target audience. That’s why it’s worth checking out — because it could help your company secure that next lead, move those customers away from competitors, or hire that passive candidate.

2. Amazon advertising

For ecommerce companies, Amazon is one of the best ways to advertise online — it’s also the third most popular ad platform, behind Google and Facebook. With Amazon Advertising, your business can promote your products and brand in Amazon search results, product pages, and more.

Even if your business doesn’t operate in the ecommerce sector, you can still take advantage of Amazon ads. You can advertise on Amazon and Amazon-owned sites, like IMDb, to build brand awareness.

With more than 50% of product searches starting on Amazon (instead of Google), it’s worth considering the potential positive impact of this Internet advertising strategy on your business, its brand awareness, and its bottom line.

Need help getting started? WebFX is a trusted ad agency for Amazon.

3. Influencer advertising

Better known as influencer marketing, influencer advertising is another effective advertising strategy.

In fact, influencer marketing offers an average ROI of $6.50 for every $1 invested. Companies of all sizes, from big brands to small startups, use influencer marketing to create brand awareness, build user trust, and generate sales.

In addition to partnering with an influencer and having them promote your brand, products, or services on their dedicated channels, you can also integrate influencers into your advertising campaigns. Your ads, for example, can feature an influencer who agrees to work with you.

Brands like The Hershey Company have used this strategy with success.

The Hershey Company partnered with several influencers to promote its Hot Cocoa Kisses on YouTube. In addition to the influencers promoting the product on their channels, The Hershey Company also launched a paid ad campaign on YouTube, which advertised the influencers’ Hot Cocoa Kisses content.

The campaign was a massive success, generating the following results:

• 12% increase in purchase intent
• 551% increase in searches
• $9+ million in retail sales

Results like these are why influencer marketing is quickly becoming one of the best digital advertising strategies. Get ahead of the curve and start experimenting with influencer marketing and advertising in your business.

4.  Social media advertising

Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram present huge opportunities to reach and connect with your target audience. That’s why these sites are quickly becoming some of the best ways to advertise online.

More than 80% of American adults have a social media profile — meaning the chances are high that your audience is active on social media. With advanced targeting options, like location, interests, and interactions, it’s easy to reach your target market via social media ads.

For example, if you operate a garage door company, you may use social media to target users within your service area. Your garage door advertising campaign may go even further, focusing on the demographics of your target audience, like marital status, age, and gender, to build a better ad.

5. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

Next on our list of advertising channels and strategies is pay-per-click.

PPC is an online advertising model that allows you to place ads in search engine results for specific keywords. Unlike SEO — a marketing strategy that focuses on earning rankings through content and optimizations — PPC lets you pay for placement for your target keywords.

PPC works on a bidding system in which you select target keywords, then compete with other advertisers to place ads in the search results for those keywords. If your bid is among the highest, you’ll earn placement above organic search results — and if someone clicks, you’ll pay your bid amount.

One of the biggest advantages of PPC is that (as the name implies), you only pay when users click on your advertisement. This means you don’t have to worry about wasting your budget on people who aren’t interested in your business or ignore your ads.

PPC is also an effective advertising strategy because it can generate results the minute you launch a campaign. Unlike organic marketing strategies, which take time to work, PPC can create sales and conversions immediately.

As an online advertising strategy example, an HVAC marketing strategy that uses PPC could start generating phone calls immediately for maintenance requests, emergency services, and more. That’s immediate revenue for that business!

PPC also works well in combination with SEO, because combining the two gives your business multiple opportunities to appear in search results. When people search for keywords related to your products or services, you want them to see your company in search results.

And if you’re wondering if PPC ads are an effective way to generate traffic and conversions, the answer is yes. Out of all the results on the page, the top three paid spots receive 46% of the clicks, which means almost half of searchers will click on Google advertisements.

Overall, Google is an effective channel for online advertising that can work within any budget and increase your online visibility. And if you partner with an experienced Google campaign manager, it can be exactly what you need to grow your business and increase your revenue. For example, if you’re owna garage door company, you can invest in garage door PPC services from an experienced agency to help with your strategy.

6. Remarketing

With its targeting capabilities, remarketing is easily one of the best ways to advertise online.

Remarketing allows your business to advertise itself to users who previously engaged with you, like by:

• Visiting your site
• Joining your email newsletter
• Adding your product to their shopping cart
• Completing your quote form
• Following your social media profile
• And more

This digital advertising strategy is extremely effective. Compared to traditional display ads, remarketing campaigns perform 10 times better! They can also increase conversion rates by more than 160%, which benefits your bottom line in big ways.

🎥Video: Get started with Google Ads remarketing

If you want to get started with remarketing, you can launch remarketing campaigns on places like:

• Google
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Bing
• And more

In most cases, you’ll need to install a tracking pixel on your website. This tracking pixel powers your remarketing campaigns because it references users’ actions on your site, like visiting a URL, adding a product to their shopping cart, and more.

7. Podcast advertising

Now more than ever, businesses can use podcast advertising to:

• Build brand awareness
• Drive consideration
• Secure conversions

With podcast advertising, your company can promote its products, services, or offers via:

• Baked-in ads, which the podcast host(s) reads to all listeners
• Dynamic ads, which get dynamically added to the podcast based on the listener’s data

Podcast advertising requires more research than some of the best online advertising strategies. For example, if you’re considering baked-in ads, you’ll want to research (and listen to) the different podcasts to see if they fit your brand and target market.

8.  Programmatic advertising

Programmatic advertising is another effective online advertising strategy.

🎥Video: What is programmatic advertising

With programmatic advertising, you use the power of artificial intelligence to automate ad buying. By supplying your audience targeting information, like location, time of day, interests, and more, programmatic advertising networks can purchase the best ad space for your company’s offer.

Companies like Google, Kellogg’s, and the Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG) have already seen success with this digital advertising strategy. Don’t let these examples fool you, though. You don’t have to be a large, well-known company to use (or afford) programmatic advertising.

Businesses of all sizes can use programmatic ads, which is why they’re one of the best online advertising strategies.

9. Email advertising

Email advertising is another effective way to advertise online.

With email advertising, you promote your business through third-party email newsletters. Like influencer marketing, the publisher will highlight your brand, products, or services. Depending on their level of transparency, they might disclose your company’s sponsorship.

Similar to podcast advertising, email advertising requires more research since you need to:

• Research potential newsletters
• Reach out to potential candidates
• Provide any necessary documentation or offers

When it comes to email advertising, you don’t need a newsletter with a significant subscriber list.

People respond well to micro-influencers because they seem real and relatable, especially when compared to macro-influencers like celebrities and professional athletes. So, if a newsletter has great engagement, that’s a great sign it could help your business achieve its advertising goals.

10. CTV advertising

Another one of the best ways to advertise online is through connected TV (CTV) ads.

With CTV advertising, your business can reach its target audience as they watch their favorite movies and shows on streaming networks like Hulu, Facebook Watch, YouTube, and so on. Plus, you can access your favorite targeting filters, like age, interest, location, purchase history, and more.

Connected TV ads focus on the following:

• Building brand awareness
• Maintaining brand interest

While these goals might seem far from your bottom line, they’re actually quite close. Why? Buyer journeys, whether business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C), take several touchpoints to convert — especially for companies with sales cycles that last months.

With CTV ads, you can keep your business top-of-mind at critical moments, like when:

• Researching other providers
• Working through contract reviews
• Waiting for feedback from other parties, like a spouse or C-Suite team member

So, if you’re looking to improve close rates and even conversion rates, try CTV ads!

11. Google Local Services Ads

For businesses that operate locally and provide services like plumbing, construction, or HVAC, Google Local Services Ads (LSAs) are a fantastic option for getting your brand in front of warm (or even hot) leads in your area.

With LSAs, your business earns a top spot in relevant local Google search results that displays your:

• Ratings
• Service area
• Hours
• Phone number

Unlike traditional PPC ads, which take users to a dedicated landing page upon clicking, LSAs expand to show more information about your company, like its reviews, biography, licenses, and more. Without having to visit your site, users can decide if they want to hire your team.

If you want to get started with LSAs, you can do so through Google Ads!

12. Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a form of advertising that involves showing ads on third-party websites. The owners of those websites are called affiliates, and in return for showing your ads, they get a commission for each conversion they help you generate.

You can start an affiliate marketing campaign by going through an affiliate network like Amazon. These networks allow you to find affiliate partners that are relevant to your industry, which is important for reaching the right audience. Then you can partner with the sites of your choice to run your ads.

What makes affiliate marketing one of the most effective Internet advertising strategies is that affiliates have an incentive to help you drive sales, since their commission is based on your success. So, most affiliates will make a point to display your ads frequently and prominently on their websites, driving more traffic to your business and earning you more leads and revenue.

13. Video advertising

Video has always been a successful online format, and today, that’s truer than ever. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram Reels, and plenty of other platforms are based entirely on video content. That’s why one of the best Internet advertising strategies today is video advertising.

Many video platforms offer advertising options. YouTube lets you run ads before, during, or after regular videos that people watch. TikTok inserts video ads right into people’s feeds. And even many non-video-specific social media platforms, like Facebook, have some video marketing options.

Video ads allow for different opportunities than other types of advertising. They engage people who might not be interested in text-based ads, and they tend to be very eye-catching. In fact, 93% of marketers say that video marketing has generated a positive ROI.

Blend the best online advertising strategies with the best digital advertising team

Grow your ROAS with WebFX’s digital advertising services, which include our award-winning team and tech. From PPC to CTV, we offer full-service solutions that make it seamless to advertise your business online. Even better, our clients see a 25% increase (on average) in ROI.

See what blending the best online advertising strategies with the best digital advertising agency can do for your business by contacting us online today to receive your custom proposal, which will include a strategy, flight plan, and pricing!