Besides Google and Facebook, brands and advertisers can also consider online publishers as part of their digital marketing initiatives.

While the two giants offer basically search and display advertising, brands can get creative by working with suitable digital publishers to deliver marketing messages.

Let’s take a look at the 5 digital advertising solutions offered by online publishers.

Website Article

Also known as advertorial, sponsored story, or branded content, this is the most common advertising solution offered by digital publishers.

Most online publishers will also bundle the website article to be shared via their social media platforms, so brands need to evaluate the website traffic and social media reach of the publishers.

In order to maximize the effectiveness of the campaign, it will be best for the brands to curate an interesting story with the publishers.

Social Media Post

Some digital publishers might not have a high-traffic website, or without a website at all. In this case, social media posting will be their key advertising offering.

This is especially true for many food content publishers, where they leverage mainly on Facebook to distribute their food reviews, etc.

While any type of content would work on Facebook in general, Instagram is more visual-based, and you need to factor in video production costs for YouTube (or even TikTok).

Website Banner

The website banner advertising (a.k.a. display ads) only makes sense for big websites with high traffic, at least a few hundred thousand monthly visits.

It is best to go vertical on this approach depending on the brand’s industry. For example, it makes sense for a car brand to advertise on an automotive website.

In order to get maximum impressions, brands need to understand a few display ads terms too especially on ad placements, such as Run of Site (ROS), Share of Voice (SOV), and so on.

Email Marketing

There are not many online publishers who are sending regular emails to their subscribers so only a handful of them offer email marketing solutions to the brands.

If they do, it will be either dedicated email blasts for the brands (tips: it doesn’t have to be a dull email) or insertion (banner, content) within their regular emails.

Brands need to consider the size of the email subscribers, and probably ask the publishers for their average open rates and click rates too.

Photography / Videography

Quite a couple of publishers are also acting as digital or creative agencies, for example, managing clients’ digital advertising campaigns, developing creative assets, etc.

Vertical publishers (focusing on certain categories) are certainly experienced in their domain so it makes sense for brands to engage their photography or videography expertise.

Besides distributing the creative content via the publisher’s platforms, brands can also make a deal with the publishers to use the content elsewhere.

Conclusion

Besides those mentioned above, brands can always explore with the online publishers as most of them offer customized advertising solutions.

Some digital publishers offer packaged solutions combining more than one service above, while big media groups are able to offer packages across the publishers under their umbrella.