At Heart Internet we use a variety of marketing channels to drive traffic to our website. As an online business ourselves digital marketing plays a significant role, and we are active across a number of display advertising networks.

Here is my review of the networks we have experience of using that are suitable for advertisers with relatively limited budgets (i.e. £100 to £2,000 per month). These are Google AdWords, BuySellAds, Facebook, AdRoll and Twitter. Which online advertising network is right for you?

Google Display Network (GDN)

Website: https://adwords.google.com

The GDN is the world's biggest advertising network, with a huge reach in terms of websites and page impressions. It also has some of the most advanced targeting options of any self-serve advertising platform including remarketing, gender, age, location, keyword, website, interests, page topic and more.

The GDN has a very easy learning curve up to a point although the number of options can be bewildering for new starters. There is also huge scope to inadvertently spend a lot of money in the wrong places if your campaigns and budgets are not set up correctly.

Best for: Campaigns where you want both breadth and depth at a very affordable price.

Pros:

• Huge network of websites
• A lot of powerful targeting tools
• Low CPM and CPC
• Exceptionally well documented help guides

Cons:

• Can result in wasted budget if not set up carefully
• Risk of being overwhelmed by the number of options when getting started
• Next to no customer support

BuySellAds (BSA)

Website: www.buysellads.com

BuySellAds almost exclusively focuses on a digital creative audience. They have expanded their network in recent years but their core network of sites are primarily based around this topic.

Their reporting interface is attractive, but is quite basic in terms of the data it presents you with (impressions, clicks and click through rate). It does allow A/B testing of creative, so you can experiment with different banners, but it won't show the more successful banner more like Google does.

Unlike the GDN which works on a bidding and CPM/CPC basis, BSA mainly uses a flat fee per month model, although some websites do allow you to book a percentage of the inventory on a CPM basis.

Best for: Brand positioning amongst a creative audience.

Pros:

• Very easy to set up and manage
• Network of premium websites
• Excellent customer support

Cons:

• No geo-demographic targeting
• Very USA traffic focused
• Difficult to research the marketplace and identify new sites

Facebook

Website: https://www.facebook.com/advertising/

After a slow start Facebook has invested a huge amount of resources in to improving their advertising platform, and you may have seen the results with more and more advertisers appearing in your feed and on the right-hand side.

Facebook uses all the personal data they have on users to give advertisers some really powerful targeting options through geo-demographic and interest based profiling. The recent addition of conversion tracking allows advertisers to not only track impressions and clicks but also sales and revenue.

The CPC is currently very low and CTR% is actually quite high at present, although that may change over time as the competition increases and people become banner blind on Facebook. However, for now it is a very cost effective form of advertising.

Best for: Low cost campaigns aimed at driving traffic and/or likes.

Pros:

• Low CPC and high CTR%
• Good targeting options
• Very easy to keep track of budget and control spend

Cons:

• Basic reporting interface that is difficult to navigate

AdRoll

Website: www.adroll.com

AdRoll specialises in remarketing advertising using advertising platforms such as GDN, Facebook, Yahoo and Twitter to display the adverts.

There is a minimum campaign budget of $25 per week and geographic targeting is restricted to either the entire world or just the USA. You can create lists of customers (they call them “segments”) to either target or exclude based on their behaviour e.g. don't show my adverts to people who have bought something already, which is a really useful feature.

Set up is nice and easy, however the biggest draw back from my perspective is the limited control I have over where my adverts would be shown. I don't know which websites will carry my advert and I can't include or exclude any websites.

Best for: Volume led remarketing campaigns.

Pros:

• Huge ad inventory
• Advertise across multiple networks
• Really good Facebook ad integration

Cons:

• Lack of control where your advert appears
• Minimum spend
• Very limited geographic targeting options

Twitter

Website: https://ads.twitter.com

We recently trialled a campaign on Twitter to help promote Sculpt, our free to download responsive framework. These adverts appeared as sponsored Tweets in our target audience's timelines.

Twitter has created a really solid platform with good targeting options and a decent management interface. Setting up is very easy as is performance monitoring and reporting. The key metric Twitter uses to measure cost and effectiveness is “Engagement”, comprised of clicks, retweets, replies, follows and card engagements.

You can choose from two broad goals; “Gain more followers” where you only pay when someone follows your promoted account or “Reach more people with Tweets”  where you pay only when users engage (e.g. clicks on a Tweet, retweets, replies, favorites, or follows). You can target your adverts based on keywords, TV shows they like(!), interests and followers or a tailored audience using your list of emails and Twitter IDs. More general options include device, gender and language.

We ran quite a limited campaign as part of our trial but we saw solid CTR% and conversion rates that suggested a bigger campaign is worth a go. We found very tailored keyword targeting brought back the best results.

Best for: As part of an integrated campaign to drive engagement and awareness.

Pros:

• Good branding/awareness tool
• Easy to set up and get started
• Low cost and only charged upon an interaction

Cons:

• Intrusive advertising rather than complimentary (like Google AdWords)
• Limited chance of direct conversion/ sales