A Guide to Advertising In Walled Gardens

Digital advertising offers companies worldwide unique possibilities for reaching their targeted audiences with innovative, creative formats and messages tailored to their needs.

This digital world can be divided into two main areas: the open internet and the walled gardens.

Walled gardens refer to the ecosystems' privacy, which allows them to keep user data private within a confined space without sharing it with third parties.

These platforms include traditional players such as Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Google, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and X (formerly Twitter), and newcomers to the space like Amazon, Apple, Walmart Connect, and others that are part of what is known as Retail Media (the topic of an upcoming blog entry). These companies retain control of the private information of billions of people worldwide, leveraging it into valuable local, regional, and global audiences. Also, they keep track of each user's demographics, preferences, likes, and purchase intent, among others.

Whether your business is a local shop or a global brand or seeking to create awareness about a new product or invite people to your website, each platform has specific solutions for every stage of your marketing funnel.

The platforms also set their own guidelines for the three main aspects of successful advertising: the creative format, the media, and the data. While they make it easy for brands to reach out to unique audiences, their advertising requirements, guidelines, targeting, and reporting change from one platform to the next.

This entry is a brief guideline with specific links to the guidelines for successful advertising in the most renowned ones.

Keep in mind that before you start advertising on any of these platforms, you'll need to set up an account to manage and run your ads for each account independently from what is known as their ad managers. Some platforms help you aggregate and run your ads from a single source of truth, which will be the topic of a future blog entry.

Meta (Facebook, Instagram):

Meta platforms remain the world's most popular social media site, boasting over 3.5 billion users worldwide. The two main types of advertising on Meta are images and video, which are introduced to users in many locations. You can choose from several formats and configurations that best suit your brand, adjust to your objectives, and feature your content.

Choosing the correct format is pretty straightforward, regardless of whether you have defined your campaign objectives or want to do so.

While there are too many configurations and formats for your ads to describe here, you can learn more about each one of them by visiting Meta's Ad Guidelines and going over them in more detail.

Google (Google Ads)

Google provides two main types of advertising: Google Ads, which are featured on their properties, including Search, Google Display Network, YouTube, Shopping, Maps, Gmail, and Play Store, featuring millions of websites across platforms and devices; and the Google Marketing Platform (formerly known as DoubleClick), Google's proprietary advertising platform that helps more advanced advertisers plan, buy, measure, and optimize their digital media campaigns from a single place.

The purpose of Google Ads is to guide promoting businesses when people are online, reaching out through five different channels: Google Display Network, UAC (App campaigns), Performance Max, Discovery, and YouTube.

The Google Marketing Platform includes Campaign Manager, which manages and measures campaigns across various channels; Display and Video (DV360), their DSP (Demand Side Platform - no worries; we'll talk about this in more detail in our blog entry "A guide to programmatic principles"); Search Ads 360, Analytics 360, Optimizations, Surveys, and additional integrations and administrative areas.

Depending on your advertising maturity stage (non-existent, developing, emerging, or mature), Google has a solution for your business. Learning the ins and outs of Google Ads campaigns takes some effort, so we suggest that smaller or local businesses begin with Google Ads, transitioning to more complex workflows as they grow in scope.

TikTok

TikTok is one of the latest entries into the social media space. This platform, focused on video, also acts as a commonly used search engine. Its Ads Manager gives business users all the features they need to launch effective ads, drive sales, and measure performance in an affordable and easy-to-use format.

Snapchat

Advertisers who are seeking a holistic omnichannel strategy should take Snapchat into consideration. This app allows multimedia messaging that disappears after a certain period, generally up to 24 hours. Many brands use it because of instant communication and the availability of more youth-oriented features such as filters, stickers, and AR (augmented reality) objects, which can add a great user experience to location-based campaigns, among others, and significant conversion and consideration rates.

Pinterest

People generally browse Pinterest, not looking for specific products but ideas. This highly visual and engaging app is a hybrid of social media and shopping hub that provides a high awareness rate, allows users to discover new concepts, and offers excellent conversion rates for new and existing products. Users can create boards and fill them with their favorite ideas, products, and concepts, which they can then share with their connections. Brands can increase site traffic by displaying their ideas and products through several formats and ads.

Including several walled gardens and social sites can provide a complete omnichannel experience and increase overall awareness, consideration, and conversion rates for a full-funnel experience. However, advertisers must consider budget, resources, time, and objectives when developing a digital media mix that matches their goals.