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3 Major Online Advertising Risks You Need to Know About

In today’s world, we are literally surrounded by marketing, all the time. Through media, physical branding, the web and other channels, people are constantly exposed to promotional campaigns. With the advent of social media, ads are starting to acquire an even more refined shape. Campaigns can now be tailored based on detailed user information: advertisers know your demographic, your interests, your geolocation, and many other data that helps them target people with eerie precision.

Information, as you might guess, is a valuable and key asset to advertisers, but where can they source such insane amount of data? well, directly from us. In order to enjoy the perks of free social media platforms, users have gladly shared a lot of information with these companies. Not only your name and address but in many cases, phone numbers, political opinions, interests, habits and many other aspects of your daily life might be recorded as valuable data stored on some server somewhere. Advertisers are paying top dollar to access such information and some companies are making huge profits by using information sourced directly from the people, from you, your family and friends. The same advertisers also make money off of businesses that seek to promote their products or services through them, somehow acting as the "gatekeepers" of user data and charging brands to promote their goods through their networks, without compensating (and in some cases without notifying) consumers.

Needless to say, when such a large scale of information is involved, there is always something at stake for the audience, and for advertisers alike. Read on to find out more about the 3 online advertising risks you really need to know about!

1. Targeting the Wrong Crowd

Online ads are a bit different than posting fliers or installing a huge billboard on a highway. You need to target a specific demographic and really put some thought into researching who and when is going to be able to access your ad. While it is pretty amazing to be able to accurately target your audience to a stunning degree of detail, it might also become a double-edged sword and harm your brand if you don’t play your cards right. If you fail to make proper research and truly understand your market, you might risk spending time, money and effort advertising online to the wrong audience. Targeting the wrong crowd is indeed one of the most common marketing mistakes and advertising risks.
This is particularly true if you are starting out or if this is your first experience trying to market your own business through social media ads.

Some business owners immediately jump to the initial phases of their campaigns, purchasing visibility and ad spaces without really taking some time to analyze their market and understand how to best target their products and services. Just like in traditional marketing, it is really important to understand your customers and get a clear picture of their needs and preferences.

It’s highly recommended to run some tests and see how an audience responds to your particular content, before diving into a full-fledged online campaign and committing a lot of budget and resources to a promotional effort that might actually be misguided and counterproductive.

1. Bots pumping numbers without offering any value

Some marketers and even major online advertisers actually use bots and automated solutions in order to run ads and spread promotional content. While such solutions could help people save money, they might not be the best ways to actually target the audience. A cold and impersonal computer-generated algorithm could fail to match your brand to the right audience, leading to wasted money and untapped potential.

Bots might impress advertisers with huge numbers or stats that look good on paper, but that actually means very little in real life.

There a huge risk associated with bots, which might also lead to situations where your content could be perceived as spam through overexposure. Nobody likes to be subjected to the same ads multiple times and while the exposure is a positive thing, overexposure could get people annoyed and kill a brand. Have you ever been frustrated at a Youtube ad, kicking in before your videos at any given time? That feeling of an ad keeping you waiting to enjoy your video might translate into a distaste for the product being advertised.

1. Your ad content might also become a risk factor

Online ads could reach millions of people across the globe, and while extensive reach is definitely a positive thing, you need to be extra careful to the type of content you use to advertise your business. In some cases, content might be perceived as offensive or culturally inappropriate for certain audiences and demographics. The awkwardness could happen even in the same cultural environment, but produce misunderstandings across several generations. A while back, for example, an old-fashioned furniture making shop was trying to use social media to promote their business to a younger audience, trying to tap into the millennial market and attract hip 25-30 something looking for bespoke furniture for their homes. They ran an ad with the following slogan: “Good wood for young people”.
The business owner was an older gentleman who did not quite understand the rather funny sexually charged innuendo in the slogan, producing a very hilarious result. Ultimately, the business did gain some attention, but for the wrong reasons. The campaign did not produce the desired effect! Instead of being seen as a bespoke, classic wooden furniture firm, the brand looked like an old-fashioned little business unable to translate their brand to a new generation due to a gaffe and generational misunderstanding.

This is only a small example of how things could go terribly wrong without putting much thought into the actual content used to promote a product. This tale might serve you as a powerful lesson: before settling on some content for your ad, make sure to test and check the validity of your content across multiple demographics to avoid any potential goof or embarrassing situation that might harm your reputation and brand, producing a negative result.

So, are there any better alternatives?

With all the risk associated with traditional online advertising, are there any better alternatives for marketers and people alike? There are actually many innovative start-ups and young firms that are trying to subvert the status quo and approach online advertising with a smarter, more democratized outlook that would benefit advertisers and consumers alike.
Many companies are starting to experiment with the potential of Blockchain technology in relation to the online advertisement industry.

A Silicon Valley start-up named BitClave is on a quest to disrupt current digital ad market trends in an effort to put a stop to the strong influence of third parties (Google, Facebook, Amazon…) and create a strong, direct connections between actual businesses and consumers.

As mentioned earlier in this article, user information is the absolute key to online advertising. Data is gold to advertisers, yet users who shared their own information, never really get repaid for their information. On the contrary, their own information is used freely by service providers and advertisers who promote things to them!

BitClave uses revolutionary blockchain technology to customers can finally have more control over their information, deciding who can access their data, as well as receiving compensation whenever a business uses their information in order to promote offers, content or deals to them.

In short, businesses seeking to advertise products to consumers would compensate consumers directly for access to their information and the privilege to send them promotional material.

This is all possible to the promising Blockchain technology, which essentially is a decentralized digital ledger that can be distributed across many computers and networks to record transactions. “Blocks” cannot be altered, meaning that there is absolute protection against counterfeit transactions and other fraud-related issues.
The name owes its origins to the fact that transactions are arranged in nodes, or chains, where transactions, represented by blocks, are interlinked.

The main revolutionary aspect of the blockchain technology is that transactions aren’t stored in a centralized third party system, such as a bank: they are shared by users and are part of a network.

Blockchain-based services are quickly gaining momentum, as more and more people are becoming aware and wary of how their personal data are being used, often without their permission or knowledge.