Digital advertising is the practice of promoting a brand, product, or service through online channels such as websites, search engines, social media, and streaming platforms. These promotions can take many forms—including text, image, audio, and video—and are often delivered to highly specific audiences based on their interests and online activities.
At its core, digital advertising is a multi-faceted process built on several key pillars. These components work together to create effective campaigns that reach the right people with the right message. Understanding them is crucial for any successful online promotion.
The most significant trend is the ongoing shift from traditional advertising to digital channels. As consumers spend more time on computers, smartphones, and streaming devices, brands are following them online. This move allows for greater precision in targeting and real-time campaign adjustments, making advertising more accessible for businesses of all sizes.
New technologies are also shaping the landscape. Generative AI is being used to create more dynamic ad content, while interactive formats like audio and streaming video ads are becoming more common. This focus on data-driven targeting and engaging formats helps brands connect with audiences in more relevant ways.
While often used interchangeably, digital advertising and online marketing have distinct scopes and strategic applications.
While digital advertising offers immense opportunity, navigating its landscape comes with significant hurdles. The same features that make it powerful, like vast options and data, also create major challenges for advertisers.
The future of digital advertising is increasingly automated and personalized. Technologies like generative AI will create dynamic, interactive ads for platforms like streaming TV and smart devices. This shift allows for hyper-targeted campaigns that adapt in real-time, delivering more relevant and immersive experiences to consumers as online engagement continues to grow.
Is digital advertising effective for B2B companies?
Yes, it's highly effective. B2B campaigns leverage platforms like LinkedIn and account-based marketing (ABM) to target specific job titles and industries. This precision allows companies to reach key decision-makers directly, generating high-quality leads and driving significant business growth.
How is the end of third-party cookies affecting digital advertising?
It's shifting the focus to first-party data and contextual advertising. Brands are now building direct relationships with customers to collect data ethically. Ads are increasingly targeted based on the content of a page rather than individual user history, prioritizing privacy while maintaining relevance.
With the rise of ad blockers, is display advertising dead?
Not at all. While ad blockers are a challenge, advertisers are adapting with native ads, sponsored content, and video formats that integrate more naturally into the user experience. The emphasis is on creating less intrusive, value-driven ads that audiences are more willing to engage with.
Warm outbound is a sales strategy for contacting prospects who've shown interest in your brand through prior engagement, like website visits.
HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform with tools for marketing, sales, and service, all aimed at helping businesses grow.
Outbound sales is when reps proactively contact potential customers through cold calls or emails to generate leads and build a sales pipeline.
Logo retention is a key B2B metric that measures a company's ability to retain its customers, or 'logos,' over a specific period.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) is a web security vulnerability that allows attackers to inject malicious scripts into trusted websites.
Customer buying signals are the actions, behaviors, or statements a prospect makes that indicate they are moving towards a purchase decision.
Ramp-up time is the period a new hire takes to get fully up to speed and become a productive member of your go-to-market team.
Firmographics are descriptive attributes of organizations, used to segment companies by characteristics like industry, size, and location.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a premium tool helping sales teams find and engage with the right leads and accounts on the LinkedIn network.
GDPR compliance means following the EU's strict data protection laws to ensure the secure and lawful handling of personal data.
Product recommendations are a marketing strategy that uses customer data to suggest relevant products, boosting sales and customer engagement.
Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is the percentage of recurring revenue kept from existing customers, including upsells, downgrades, and churn.
Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) is the predictable income a company expects to receive from its customers over a one-year period.
Application Performance Management (APM) monitors and manages an application's performance, availability, and the experience of its end-users.
Learn about buyer intent data, including sourcing and interpreting buyer intent data, & key metrics in buyer intent analysis.
Sales prospecting software automates the process of finding, contacting, and tracking potential customers to help sales teams build their pipeline.
Sales operations analytics is the practice of analyzing sales data to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire sales process.
Data appending is the process of adding new data fields to your existing database records to enrich and complete your information.
De-duping, or data deduplication, is the process of eliminating duplicate copies of data within a dataset to improve accuracy and save space.
A Customer Data Platform (CDP) centralizes customer data from all sources to create a complete, unified profile for each individual customer.
A sales dashboard is a visual tool that centralizes and displays key sales data, metrics, and KPIs to help teams track performance and goals.
Email verification is the process of confirming that an email address is valid and deliverable, which helps improve campaign performance.
An account is a company or organization that you're targeting for sales. It can be a prospective, current, or even a past customer.
Dynamic pricing is a strategy where businesses set flexible prices for products or services based on current market demands and other factors.
Learn about buyer intent, including understanding buyer intent signals, strategies to capture buyer intent, & buyer intent vs. customer interest.
A sales demo is a presentation where a sales rep shows a prospect how a product or service works and solves their specific problems.
Demand is the economic principle describing a consumer's desire and willingness to purchase a specific good or service at a particular price.
Objection handling is the process of responding to a prospect's concerns or hesitations about a product or service to move a deal forward.
Enrichment is the process of adding third-party data to your existing customer profiles to get a more complete picture of your leads.
A Salesforce Administrator is a certified professional who manages and customizes the Salesforce platform to meet a company's specific business needs.
Cold emailing is sending unsolicited emails to potential customers you haven't contacted before, aiming to start a business conversation.
Load testing is a type of performance testing that determines how a system behaves under both normal and anticipated peak load conditions.
A buying committee is a group of stakeholders within an organization who are jointly responsible for making major purchasing decisions.
Contact discovery is the process of finding accurate contact details for potential leads, including names, emails, phone numbers, and job titles.
A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a prospect who has shown interest based on marketing efforts but isn't yet ready for a sales conversation.
An enterprise is a large-scale organization, often a corporation, defined by its complex structure and substantial number of employees.
Learn about B2B data enrichment, including benefits of B2B data enrichment, implementing B2B data enrichment strategies, B2B data enrichment vs. data cleaning.
An AI sales script generator is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to create personalized sales scripts for any outreach scenario.
A Target Account List (TAL) is a focused list of high-value companies that a business specifically aims to convert into customers.
Learn about B2B data erosion, including causes of B2B data decay, strategies to combat data erosion, & measuring the impact of data erosion.
The FAB technique is a sales framework connecting product features to advantages and then to the specific benefits for the customer.
Content Rights Management involves controlling the use and distribution of copyrighted digital media to protect intellectual property.
Channel partners are third-party firms that help market and sell a company's products or services, acting as an indirect sales force.
A Representational State Transfer (REST) API is a web service that uses a simple, stateless architecture for systems to communicate online.
Account-Based Sales (ABS) is a focused B2B strategy where sales and marketing teams treat high-value accounts as individual markets of one.
Order management is the end-to-end process of tracking customer orders from placement to fulfillment, ensuring a seamless customer experience.
Learn about buyer, including identifying your ideal buyer, understanding buyer's journey, & evaluating buyer decision processes.
Total Addressable Market (TAM) represents the maximum revenue a company can earn by selling its product or service in a specific market.
Average Revenue per User (ARPU) is a key performance indicator that calculates the average revenue generated from each user or subscriber.
Cross-selling is a sales tactic of encouraging customers to purchase products or services that are related to what they're already buying.
A persona map visually outlines a target customer, detailing their goals, behaviors, and pain points to help your team build genuine empathy.
Objection handling in sales is the process of responding to a prospect's concerns about a product or service to move the deal forward.
Learn about business development representative, including skills and qualifications for BDRs, & roles and responsibilities of a BDR.
A sales call is a real-time conversation between a salesperson and a prospect, aiming to persuade them to purchase a product or service.
Marketo is a marketing automation platform used by B2B marketers to manage lead generation, nurturing, email marketing, and analytics.
Intent-based leads are potential customers whose online actions—like searches or content engagement—signal a clear interest in buying a solution.
Site retargeting is a marketing strategy that shows ads to people who have previously visited your website but left without converting.
Customer relationship marketing is a strategy for building lasting connections with customers to foster long-term loyalty and engagement.
Scrum is an agile framework that helps teams structure and manage their work through a set of values, principles, and practices.
Buying criteria are the specific requirements and standards a customer uses to evaluate products or services before making a decision.
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation.
A marketing attribution model is a framework for assigning credit to the marketing touchpoints that lead a customer to convert.
Rollback procedures are a set of steps to restore a system to a previous, stable version after a failed update, ensuring minimal disruption.
Lead nurturing is the process of developing and reinforcing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel.
Sales partnerships are strategic alliances where two companies co-sell products to expand their reach, generate new leads, and increase revenue.
A commission is a service charge paid to an agent for a transaction. It's typically a percentage of the sale, rewarding performance directly.
Learn about B2B intent data, including how B2B intent data enhances sales strategies, sources of B2B intent data, leveraging B2B intent data for competitiveness.
AI data enrichment uses artificial intelligence to automatically enhance and update raw data, making it more complete, accurate, and valuable.
Consultative selling is an approach where salespeople act as expert advisors, diagnosing customer needs to provide the most suitable solutions.
A Marketing Qualified Opportunity (MQO) is a lead vetted by marketing as a genuine sales opportunity, ready for direct sales follow-up.
Demand generation is the process of creating awareness and interest in your products to build a pipeline of qualified leads for your sales team.
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based model where affiliates earn a commission for promoting another company’s products or services.
Revenue forecasting is the process of estimating a company's future revenue, using historical data and market trends to guide strategic planning.
Learn about B2B data, including sources and types of B2B data, leveraging B2B data for sales success, & ensuring the accuracy of B2B data.
Inside sales is a remote sales process where reps sell products or services via phone, email, and other digital tools instead of in person.
Microservices is an architecture where apps are built as a collection of small, independent services that communicate with each other over APIs.
An elevator pitch is a short, memorable summary of what you do, designed to be delivered in the time it takes to ride an elevator.
Chatbots are AI-powered programs that simulate human conversation. They interact with users via text or voice, typically for customer support.
A performance plan is a formal document outlining an employee's goals, expectations, and metrics for success over a specific period.
Lead enrichment tools are platforms that automatically add missing data to your leads, like contact info, firmographics, and buying signals.
A User Interface (UI) is the point where humans and computers interact. It encompasses all visual elements like screens, icons, and buttons.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a system of integrated software that businesses use to manage and automate their core day-to-day processes.
Programmatic display campaigns use automation to buy and sell digital ad space in real-time, targeting specific audiences across the web.
Lead scoring is the process of assigning points to leads based on their attributes and actions to determine their sales-readiness.
Responsive design is an approach where a website's layout adapts to the user's screen size, providing an optimal experience on any device.
Mid-market companies are businesses larger than small businesses but smaller than large enterprises, often defined by revenue or employee size.
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a software application that manages your entire hiring and recruitment process from a single dashboard.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search results.
Stress testing is a type of software testing that determines a system's robustness by pushing it beyond its normal operational capacity.
Closed Won is a CRM status for a sales deal that has been successfully concluded, resulting in a signed contract and a new customer.
Learn about B2B marketing attribution, including challenges in B2B marketing attribution, & key metrics for effective attribution.
A Request for Information (RFI) is a formal process for gathering information from potential suppliers before issuing a more detailed proposal.
Sales Engineers blend deep technical knowledge with sales acumen, demonstrating a product's value and solving customer problems to drive revenue.
A sales funnel is a model illustrating the customer's journey from initial awareness to the final purchase, narrowing down leads at each stage.
Net new business is revenue from customers who have never purchased from your company before. It’s a crucial indicator of sustainable growth.
Closed Lost is a sales term for a deal that didn't go through. The prospect decided not to buy, or the sales team disqualified them.
A RESTful API is a web service interface that uses HTTP requests to access and use data, adhering to the constraints of REST architecture.
Predictive lead generation uses data and AI to find prospects most likely to buy, helping teams focus their efforts on high-value leads.
Learn about bounce rate, including understanding bounce rate implications, key factors affecting bounce rate, & reducing your bounce rate effectively.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are websites that look and feel like native mobile apps, offering features like offline access and push notifications.