Display Advertising vs. Affiliate Marketing

But what are display advertising and affiliate marketing? And why does everyone constantly talk about them online?

Call 888-601-5359 to speak with a strategist about PPC campaign management services from WebFX, or keep reading to learn more about these online advertising channels.

Display advertising

Display advertising is the process of creating ads for your company and having them appear on other websites. You serve your ads through a display network, as you can do with Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

It’s important to choose the audience that you want to target with your ads so you can be sure you’re engaging the right users – allowing you to grow your customer base. The display network will then take your ads combined with Internet users’ cookies and browsing history to identify the most valuable potential customers.

The network shows ads to those customers through any of the websites that have ad space available. Visitors see the ads, click on them, and go to your website where they can convert into paying customers.

Your display ads should be visually stimulating to viewers and aim to hold their attention long enough to entice them to click to your website. Though it’s natural to want to share all the details about your product, you should be as simple as possible with your display ads so that viewers aren’t overwhelmed. If you include too much information right off the bat, viewers could stop reading or lose interest – simply because there’s too much to read. The ad should be simple and direct.

For display advertising, the flow of production looks like this:

All in all, display advertising provides you with a simple, affordable, and effective way to reach more customers from the comfort of your office chair. It earns you more sales or leads (depending on your business model) and spreads brand awareness by showing your company name on websites that your potential customers visit often.

With that in mind, display advertising is a great opportunity to attract new customers, and allows you to “cast a wide net.”

But you’re not just taking shots in the dark – you’re taking calculated risks and reaching out to the same kinds of customers in different places. That way, you can be sure you’re still getting the engaged, qualified traffic that your website needs to grow while steadily expanding your company’s ROI for display advertising and overall income.

On the whole, display advertising is a fantastic deal for any company that wants to reach new, qualified potential customers who will convert.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is similar to display advertising, but it approaches the situation from the other side of the table.

Websites that host ads from display networks and other companies are known as “affiliates.” These affiliates display other companies’ ads to their website’s traffic — like a billboard on the side of a highway — and take a commission for every sale or conversion that they help generate.

So as an affiliate marketer, you have to build a compelling website, attract traffic to that website, and retain a consistent audience in order to sell ads. Then, you join an affiliate network like Amazon or eBay, and they show ads on your site.

It’s important to note that affiliates don’t earn money by simply serving ads. Rather, they earn based on their ads’ performance.

Affiliates have to direct qualified traffic to a company’s site so that the company can earn more in sales. After a sale is closed, the affiliate earns a commission from the display network, and everyone is fully paid and up to speed.

For affiliate marketing, the production flow looks like this:

Affiliate marketing is a great idea for websites that don’t have a particular revenue source or sell a particular product. It’s also exceptionally smart for community-based websites like forums that offer something for free, but still need to earn an income to keep the lights on.

In that respect, affiliate marketing is designed for companies, organizations, or even individuals who simply want to make a little extra money. They don’t have a product or service that they can market, so they market the products and services of other companies instead.

While that may not sound like much, affiliate marketing can be surprisingly profitable for websites that have large, committed user bases that consistently return. After all, in affiliate marketing, every person you send to a company’s website is another chance to earn a commission. So it’s in your best interest to attract as many visitors to your site as possible so you can turn the biggest profit possible.

However, starting affiliate marketing isn’t a great idea for companies in a dedicated industry. They should stick to advertising their own products or services on their site. Otherwise, competitors could take out ads on your site and divert qualified traffic away from you, which would wind up hurting your company in the long run.

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WebFX can help with your display advertising campaign

At WebFX, we have a full team of Internet marketers and award-winning designers who know how to get the best results from any display advertising campaign. With them on your side, your company will grow with a surge in new customers and increased revenue.

Contact us today to create the perfect display advertising campaign for your business!