Social media platforms have become the biggest entry point for digital advertising due to the large number of users, the huge amounts of data social channels pull in and the sophisticated audience targeting tools now available. The declining power of organic social posts has also led to the use of social ads and sponsored posts to make social media efforts reach larger portions of your community.

Hudson Collective has created and executed hundreds of successful social ad campaigns, using every manner of social ad, on the most popular platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Tik Tok, LinkedIn, SnapChat, Pinterest and others.. Due to the nature of the social platforms, many of these social ads mirror the different types of digital marketing seen elsewhere, including display, native, retargeted, geofenced, IP targeted, and video ads.

Native advertising is similar to display ads; however, they’re more strategic and intentional when it comes to placement and audience targeting. They are sponsored listings that are integrated and camouflaged into the feed. There are four subtypes of native advertising: in-feed (as seen above), search ads, recommendation widgets, and promoted listings. Native advertising is based on audience online habits and history, and will show ads that may be relevant to them, that feel more like regular content on the site.

Here are a couple potential paths that lead to your audience receiving native ads:

• They liked you or your content on Facebook. This is an easy way for advertisers to target an audience member because they opted in to see posts from your page and the ads won’t appear any differently on their newsfeed.
• Their search history and cookies show that they are interested in your brand or your content. This is the same reason why blogs and websites show “Things You Might Like Based On…”, “Items Similar to…”, or “People also read…” when on a specific site.

Native advertising is the least obtrusive to users because what they see is most likely relevant to them. Users often find native ads helpful because of their relevance. Native ads will be labeled as sponsored by the website or platform.

Video ads can show up as pre-roll or in-program videos while watching video content on YouTube, Facebook, Hulu or other video platforms. They can be integrated as native ads or more traditional commercials. Examples include a smartphone ad before watching a YouTube video and a native video ad on Facebook.

Videos are used to emotionally connect, tell a story, demonstrate a product or idea and quickly communicate complex messages to your audience in a simple way. We do this while remembering that audiences connect with videos in different ways. Some listen to audio, others don’t or can’t due to time and/or place. 

Creating video ads takes more time, effort, and expense than other types of ads but they have the potential for greater impact. To be effective, videos should be both visually compelling and emotionally enticing. The visuals, music and audio all need to blend perfectly to create an interesting and memorable video while considering the limitations of the viewer. Despite the time and effort, it is proven to be one of the most effective forms of digital advertising. Viewers can absorb the content and learn more about the brand without a lot of effort and advertisers have an easier time catching their audience’s attention.

When you think about retargeting, you likely think of the process of using user data to show relevant ads after an individual has shown interest in a brand or product. Retargeting uses ads created to target users who have interacted with your site or other platforms in certain ways. When a visitor to your website or social channels clicks on something specific that has been designated for retargeting, a cookie is set in their browser which allows you to retarget them with an ad based on their actions. Retargeting is sometimes called remarketing. However, remarketing usually refers to emailing and re-engaging people who didn’t complete a certain action on your website or social channels. Messaging is designed to get them to go back and complete the desired action.

Retargeting can be done with print media and direct mail. Using digital data, we can retarget your audiences with a direct mail piece that’s timely and relevant. This can be done instead of the traditional digital retargeting or the two can be combined, connecting with your audience on two fronts, increasing the likelihood of moving them to perform your desired action.

Search is key to every online user’s life. We search for products and services, we search for causes and read about things that matter to us most. SEM is advertising triggered by the keywords people use to search for something online using search engines like Google or Bing, appearing in the search results, along with the organic results.

We develop both Pay Per Click (PPC) and Cost Per Thousand (CPM) campaigns for clients on an individual recommended basis taking into consideration available resources and campaign relevance. 

Search is key to every online user’s life. We search for products and services, we search for causes and read about things that matter to us most. SEM is advertising triggered by the keywords people use to search for something online using search engines like Google or Bing, appearing in the search results, along with the organic results.

We develop both Pay Per Click (PPC) and Cost Per Thousand (CPM) campaigns for clients on an individual recommended basis taking into consideration available resources and campaign relevance.