Grigoriy MisilyukHere is classic marketing research on the best advertising platforms in 2024. Together with the TeqBlaze team, we have prepared a list of advertising platforms to consider. Each section contains objective data and expert insights delivered in an unparalleled manner that values your time.
This article is designed for companies embracing advertisers' status in the market. It is intended to help you increase your sales efforts by running diverse ads using online advertising platforms. The second target is to unobtrusively educate you on the ad tech market because "love grows from knowledge." We'll tell you everything we know and do our best to provide more explicit examples.
Making the first steps: what is advertising platform?
Advertising platform — a server-based application developed by a specific company that offers large audiences for advertising. This company maintains infrastructure for running ad campaigns of various types and takes care of everything related to targeting relevant audiences. Advertisers use advertising platforms to promote their products and services. In other words, digital advertising platforms are fenced environments available for advertisers.
Image explaining how the advertising platform works
As happens all the time, different goals require different means. This accounts for the high diversity of market offers. Thanks to the popularity of digital platforms for advertising, the market continues to grow and will not stop. Companies with less than 1% market share can be called big in their niche. It is often about more than the quantity, but the quality of the audience they offer.
It is also worth noting that there are only paid advertising platforms. Certain companies can offer discounts or bonuses for cooperation, but this still does not mean there are free advertising platforms. It's all about commerce.
Ad platform, ad network, and DSP: what's the difference?
We have already mentioned that an advertising platform is a fenced environment where advertisers promote their products and services. For example, YouTube: the company's owner has the exclusive right to display ads to video resource users.
Ad networks are similar to advertising platforms, but they differ in audience formed by the voluntary integration of new publishers into them. An ad network has no exclusive right to show ads to a connected audience. These publishers, with the audience, join and leave the ad network infrastructure independently and voluntarily. While the core audience of advertising networks often remains unchanged, the audience supply changes during the year and sometimes shifts unpredictably. It is also worth highlighting that to advertise your goods and services through an advertising network, you need to sign a contract with it. This means that this process is not standardized.
DSPs (demand-side platforms) are slightly different from the previous products. A DSP is similar to an ad platform built for advertisers. Still, the connection and management of audiences come entirely from the DSP provider. In other words, a particular website chain can partner with a DSP to provide its audience for ad targeting, but this process is customized and negotiated individually. At the same time, ad networks offer a standardized way for publishers to connect their audiences to networks. However, the opposite is true for advertisers: it is as easy to start working with a DSP as with an ad platform. Register, create an account, set up campaigns, and launch them.
By and large, self-served DSPs might also be called advertising platforms because the sense of a service they provide is the same for advertisers.
However, people tend to call ad platforms only those that are massive and have many users to target with their own trading rules.
While DSPs are about focused efforts and programmatic ad serving globally, demand platforms are usually small businesses compared to well-known market giants.
I hope this statement did not confuse you but clarified the issue. I'm trying to explain that the point is in the details, which are rarely easy to arrange.
There are also white-label DSPs. Here, the concept is simple to understand. A regular DSP is an offer from a specific company that has connected supply audiences to it. A white-label DSP is when you get a fully ready-to-use DSP without any connected audience providers. This allows you, for example, to sign unique contracts and connect numerous premium car websites to the platform. Thus, bring your own DSP to the market, which is an ideal choice for advertisers in the premium automotive segment.
Please note that using DSP means using someone else's product. And using a white-label DSP means running your own programmatic business. Business to satisfy your advertising needs and, at the same time, business available to the customers you attract. This is precisely what the TeqBlaze team will offer: privacy-centric AI-powered white-label DSP. But we will talk about it later, at the end of the article. Now, we have to consider the best online advertising platforms.
Five best advertising platforms: ad partners you can't avoid
This section contains the top advertising platforms based on the number of users and audience diversity. Although these are entirely objective criteria for assessment, they are not exhaustive. First, a little intro for those who don't understand how to find out what are the best advertising platforms for their business.
A good advertising platform should solve your business tasks as efficiently as possible, spending advertising dollars. The more atypical your business is, the more likely you will need a custom (niche or self-raised) ad platform to achieve your goals. However, the five products listed below are used by the majority of advertisers in the world with stable degrees of success. And experience with these ad platforms is vital and fundamental to understanding how digital advertising works.
1. Google Ads
Google Ads ad format types
Google is a monopolist in the search business, with a market share of over 90%. It is not a buzzword but a definition from the August 5 memorandum opinion. This is the first time a Big Tech company has been recognized as monopolistic. We can say that the psychological barrier is broken, and more will follow. But let's get back to our earthly affairs.
All Google users can become an audience for targeting your ads. And Google Ads will gladly help you with that. After all, it is one of the best digital advertising platforms in the world.
The platform's capabilities are, without exaggeration, limitless in terms of the scale of the audience that can be reached. However, such popularity has a downside: you will compete with other advertisers for this audience. Although Google Ads is the advertising platform that all young advertisers start with, as their needs and budgets increase, they often change their ad partners. This is the perfect choice if your company's advertising needs are limited. Even after the court sentences, it is unlikely that Google's dominance will undergo significant changes in the coming years.
2. Microsoft Advertising
Microsoft Advertising ad format types
The second tool on the list of the best online advertising platforms for small businesses. Here's the good news: if you've tried Google Ads and have already set up perfect advertising campaigns that reach the right audience, transfer them to Microsoft Advertising. It also works the other way around, as the two platforms are synchronized to transfer campaign settings. It's so lovely when giant companies help small advertisers grow their businesses. So nice of them.
While it's almost impossible to talk about Google's huge audiences, Microsoft's users are traditionally considered older than Google's users. The audience's geography is also centered around the United States and Canada because this is Microsoft's traditional demographic.
Thanks to Microsoft Advertising, you can broadcast ads on such resources as Bing, Yahoo, MSN, DuckDuckGo, and some others. If your target audience uses these services, bingo! Fish where the fish are. As you may have already figured, it's worth trying both platforms. Especially since Microsoft is cheaper in many segments, you can save money on testing before scaling your campaigns to larger budgets.
3. YouTube Ads
YouTube Ads ad format types
There is no article in which you won't find YouTube among the advertising platforms examples. YouTube is the largest and most effective video advertising platform in the world. Who would have thought Google also owned it!
Among other features, this advertising platform has gained a place in the list of the best because of the many supporting tools. For example, Insights Finder helps users with little experience to improve their skills in setting up targeted ads. Also, you'll be comfortable with YouTube Ads regarding tracking results, troubleshooting, and training. It has a lot in common with Google Ads, and yes, these promotion channels are easily synchronized to run parallel campaigns. Here is the third advertising platform on the list that you should try if you have experience with at least one of the previous two.
A tip from the TeqBlaze experts: even if you don't like YouTube Ads, don't make a wrong judgment about all video advertising at once. Video content is the future, and it is a vital asset. It should be a significant part of your portfolio.
4. Amazon Ads
Amazon Ads ad format types
Amazon is another global giant that owns and gladly offers one of the best advertising platforms. This platform is perfect for companies that sell physical goods in the low- and mid-price segments.
The abundance of advertising formats and settings is awe-inspiring. While other advertising platforms have focused on a few primary formats, Amazon Ads is pleasing with its diversity. On the one hand, it's harder to master this diversity than it is to work with a limited number of ad formats. On the other hand, this is an advanced level for advertisers.
Amazon's audience demographics are prevalent: the company delivers goods to almost all countries. Nevertheless, checking Amazon's popularity in the country you are targeting is always a good idea. If another marketplace is in the first place, why not try to run ads there?
5. Apple Search Ads
Apple Search Ads ad format types
So, we've come to the product that ranks at the top of online advertising platforms for mobile app advertising. As the name suggests, it's for advertising apps developed on the iOS operating system.
You can advertise apps using the same Google Ads. Still, the results of promoting iOS apps will be worse compared to a focused platform. It's an elementary rule: if an ad platform is designed to promote a specific type of product, it will be more effective than another platform that offers a more comprehensive number of products simultaneously.
If it were acceptable, this article would be ten times longer than it is now. To give as many examples as necessary of ad platforms created to reach specific audiences. However, human attention resources are limited. So let's talk here just about Apple Search Ads. Nevertheless, if you dig further, you will find other ad platforms to meet specific business needs.
This ad platform allows the following ad placements: the "Today" tab, search tab, search results, and product pages while browsing. The settings are conveniently divided into Basic and Advanced levels. You can work with a simplified setup, take on more responsibility, and invest more time in fine-tuning.
What other digital platforms should you consider?
The TeqBlaze experts also advise you to carefully consider ad platforms that allow you to target social media audiences:
This completes the list of the best advertising platforms known and used worldwide. But besides the named and unnamed ad platforms, there is a whole world of more specific tools, ad networks, and DSPs. We'll talk about them a bit soon.
2024 Trends and future projections
In the world of ad tech, engineers are aware of three elephants that hold the modern digital world up:
Artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLM). Integrating custom or open-source products can solve many typical tasks, from setting the best targeting criteria to creating more engaging alternatives to advertising creatives for A/B testing.
Machine learning (ML). These optimization models work with large amounts of data and adjust the applied rules dynamically. For instance, ML-based traffic shaping, an algorithm developed by the TeqBlaze engineers for the supply platform: after detecting certain adverse conditions in the trade of advertising inventory, the platform will reduce the amount of traffic for such partners by 80%. At the same time, the platform will check this rule every set period to adjust it to the moment when trading starts to be profitable again. This way, publishers will save their server resources without the risk of losing profit from a particular partner.
Cookie-free targeting approach. This approach includes contextual targeting, identity solutions, SDA, first-party data, Google Privacy Sandbox (in the future), and combined approaches based on the previous ones.
Naturally, all of these trends concern developers, as they are engaged in targeting issues and product development. Advertisers are in the best position. They only have to trust the chosen advertising partners and fine-tune their campaigns; the rest is a matter of technology.
Revolutionize your ad business with the TeqBlaze
With all due modesty, we've saved our offer for the last section. And we won't be overly long. We propose that you become the owner of a white-label DSP platform. This is the way for experienced advertisers who want to turn their needs and efforts into a separate programmatic business.
Do you like Google Ads? You can create your alternative to Google Ads and get the following:
Self-choice of advertising partners
Transparent settings of all financial parameters
Best optimization practices from breakthrough engineers
Any custom development to adjust trading algorithms to your business
An independent way to promote your DSP on the market
In the language of imagery, we offer you everything you need to fish, even our dedicated expert to help you fish. Still, you must take the boat to sea and choose the prey yourself.
We know this choice should not be made quickly, so we invite you to contact our experts for consultation and details. Top-notch technology that requires years of development and hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment is at your fingertips. And the TeqBlaze team has already extended its hand to shake and start a prosperous partnership.
We wish you success with digital advertising platforms. When you feel the time has come, come back to us!
