A few years ago, many businesses grumbled about social media being “just a fad” that “had no place in the business world.” Look how that turned out.

The businesses that accepted social media is here to stay and figured out how to leverage it are the biggest winners.

Digital advertising – especially native ads and social ads – are at that precipice, and the only question is will you take the plunge or retreat to what’s safe and comfortable?

For those willing to forge ahead, we created an infographic to help you decipher The Real Truth About Digital Advertising:

Everybody knows the big knock against digital ads: they apparently annoy consumers and get blocked by a high percentage of the target audience. But maybe we all need to be less scared of digital ads and instead do what digital marketers do best: embrace the challenge of a fluid environment and discover where the opportunity to get ahead truly lies.

Digital ads are still extremely young. Technologies that help marketers and businesses run better ad campaigns are improving rapidly, and the ad platforms improve their products every single day. At the very least, digital ads are worth a little bit of experimentation, especially if you’re already working on increasing your brand’s digital footprint.

I know we just talked about how digital ads are still so new, but the growth rate of digital ads is astounding. Next year, digital ad spend will surpass TV ad spend. Think about that for a second: digital advertising will soon be more popular than TV advertising. That’s crazy. But as TV continues to shift toward streaming services and other digital formats, the significantly lower cost of digital ads becomes an appealing option.

TV advertising still has the Olympics, but as with most forms of traditional advertising, something digital will eventually take over.

If you’re still worried about consumers’ ad blocking habits, then native ads have you covered. Native ads hide among the normal habitat of digital platforms and, in some cases, consumers see and interact with ads without realizing they are ads.

This is a huge win for businesses (especially skeptical ones), marketers and even consumers. Given the hyper-targeting capabilities of native advertising, marketers can show ads to only people who they are absolutely sure will be interested in their products and services. And it really works – I’ve seen a native ad for a product and wondered how I’d never heard of it before (yes I soon purchased the product!).

Its clear businesses have embraced the idea of social media as a marketing tool. Case in point: a study found that 80% of SMBs have a social media presence. And yet the same study claims only 19% of these businesses have tried social media advertising. These two stats don’t make sense – businesses are embracing one tactic, but shunning another tactic that could enhance the effectiveness of the first tactic? If you’re doing any kind of marketing with social media, you owe it to your boss or client to at least see how social and native ads impact your existing campaigns.

This tip comes directly from digital advertising guru Larry Kim. If you’re thinking about how odd it is that Twitter created a component of their platform that just doesn’t work, you’re not alone. But that’s what I mean about digital advertising’s youth; if you can think outside the box and discover ways to improve digital ads that nobody else is using, they’ll be that much more effective for you.

That’s the end of our monthly infographic summary, but come back next month to see what we have in store for July.

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