As online advertising is changing and constantly evolving, each year all web & marketing agencies need to draw the line and make conclusions of what went good, what went wrong and how to improve their performance in the new year. 

Here at Mobiteam, we do the same – brainstorming about projects and ideas is what we do on a daily basis, and even though the conclusions change and are different from different perspectives there is one thing we always agree on, at least from the digital marketing perspective: We always have to follow the trends, use new technologies, anticipate predictions and adjust both our techniques to the trends but also to integrate the trends into our system and style. 

Speaking about online advertising, we have always checked where does it come from and where the trends lead to. Either it’s about visual ads or text advertising, in the past years both methods suffered specific changes, which we call them adjustments to the trends. Now, let’s see what exactly changed

#1 Latest Trends in Online Advertising

The online advertising industry is constantly growing and evolving – as previously mentioned. The evolution itself assumes changes. Some changes have a bigger impact on the overall result, and others are so minimal but at the same time very necessary. 

The latest trends in online advertising can be split into two big parts we are talking in this article: Visual Ads & Text Advertising. 

For visual ads, the changes were brought not only by taste but as well by web design trends. The unique mix of web design trends, technologies, and taste released several unexpected booms that gained huge popularity over time due to their features. To name just a few: 

• Dynamic Creativity Usage has grown wild, and ads such as dynamic infographics and short presentation ads that assume numbers and prove the efficiency of the marketed product or service gave users the chance to assimilate more relevant information that drives higher engagement.
• AR ads, or Interactive Content – buyers tend to perform more actions on visual ads, which engages them, so if there is an AR ad, where they can change, look, explore further than a simple image – they will probably do it. It gives a fake impression of power. Change the angle of how the ad is displayed, manipulate smart objects inside the visual ad, or make it like a small simulation of a game. It’s catchy, it’s tricky, and you can 100% tell from the very beginning if you will like it or not.  
• Predictive & Augmented Analytics is another trending option in digital marketing, as it provides personalized and individually adjusted marketing campaigns. Based on a series of factors such as topics you like extracted from your history navigation, the AA can calculate the exact type of product you search for and introduce it to you in a variety of ways, shapes in different periods. Of course, this is used more in visual advertising as it has a bigger impact. 

For text advertising, the trends in the past years weren’t so different from what they’ve been before, but still, due to Google indexing and SEO updates, small adjustments have been made. 

• Informative articles have changed their consistency and keyword density as well as their style once with Google Penguin Update in 2012. The following updates since 2012 only moved the crossline for informative articles to higher levels. This means that content containing non-informative relevance and as well as website registries and catalogs will not benefit from the same preferential treatment from Search Engines like content informative and relevant articles for specific topics and queries. So now, if you want to rank high enough on Google, you must ensure that the content you release is at least useful, has a good keyword density and people will read it, like it and most of all share it. 

The text advertisement is strongly bound to SEO practices and algorithm updates but still remains to be the most efficient way to promote a business, as most of the information is contained in text format.  

#2 Which One And Where Performs Better

Overall there is a dominance of visual ads over text ads due to social media, and tech development in the last 10 years. However, there are industries where text advertising dominates the market. Also, there are places when it’s best to combine text advertisements with visual ones and acquire the best result. 

Most of the businesses that provide products, would probably prefer visual ads, as they can showcase their goods and reveal it’s entire potential. You don’t meet too often blogs or articles about cars not containing any images, though a text description is relevant and totally motivated. 

For the visual-only advertisement, social media is the right place where you can get the best results, but of course not all social media. Instagram is for showcasing, Facebook is for combined advertising and Twitter is more text-oriented, so again you have to choose wisely. 

Businesses that provide services are great consumers of both types of ads. As services are different and industries as well, there is always a ~60/40% ratio that favors either visual ads or text advertisements.  

The last but not least important consumer of ads are scientifically oriented businesses and centers. These ones would rather choose a text-based advertisement, either article that can describe a process and at the same time recommend a service that is good for the process they are describing. 

Of course, within these mega segments, as we are calling them, there are smaller parts and markets which may be a part of an entire mega segment or partially combine two or more segments. It is important to understand that still, each market has its specialty. 

#3 Options and Choices: How To Choose The Perfect Marketing Solution For Your Business

There are several ways to choose the best marketing solutions for your business in 2020 if we take into consideration these two global options: visual or text advertisement. 

First of all, you could try both of them, at the same time or one after another, and analyze which one performs better. However, you may want to try them for at least one year in order to have the full picture and drag conclusions. Sometimes it’s necessary to pay attention to other aspects like period of time, season, holidays and other indicators that impact your business. 

Another option is to analyze from the very beginning how each of these ad types could help your business grow. Also, how you would promote more efficient your business, services/products and again when to do that. It still does very much depend on your business specialty, competition, location, and of course budget. But, speaking of the budget – if you run out of money and can’t afford to test these both, you can try hard to grow with text ads as they are proved to be 55% more efficient than visual ads in the long run. 

#4 Conclusion

To close the topic, we chose to give several suggestions on which one to choose in 2020: 

• When creating a business plan, pay attention to marketing at least as much as to quality – if you will not let everyone know how cool your products/services are, you will have no one to recommend you, and the competition will take advantage of this. 
• Stick to the plan only if everything works great. Otherwise, change the plan, adapt to new realities and anticipate solutions for challenges that are yet to come. Anticipation can help you save money, time and a lot of nerves. Three things that you could invest in productivity. 
• Follow the trends, but don’t implement them brutally into your business plan. Always adjust and improve what’s already on the market. If you like banners – go further and choose interactive infographics. You like how your neighbor reached the newspaper?! Start creating a scientific article about your business features and explain helpful things there. 
• Plan your marketing campaign together with somebody – any idea should be welcomed. But of course, the opinion of a marketing specialist or of a team of marketers, like Mobiteam would make the difference. 

Still, the most important thing on this topic is to make sure you take the best decision, and for this our marketing crew from Mobiteam is always to help you.