Question of the Week: What is Cloud-Based Advertising?

It’s not when you’re at an outdoor concert and see planes pulling banner ads across the sky. And it’s not sky writing either.

So now that we’ve established what it isn’t, let’s address what it is. 

The Gartner IT Glossary defines it as this:

“Cloud advertising are cloud-based services that support the selection, transaction and delivery of advertising and ad-related data in which content and price are determined at the time of end-user access, usually by an auction mechanism that matches bidders with advertising impressions as they become available. This applies to search, display, mobile, social and video ad formats.”

Huh? What does this mean? And why does Gartner sound like such a buzz kill? 

Let’s whittle it down to this instead:

Cloud-Based Advertising Actually Refers to Products and Services

From there, it deals with how they relate to online advertising.  

Typically, online advertising consists of traditional display ads with a static or moving image and some CTA (call to action) text. It’s essentially like old school advertising - in appearance at least - but online.

Cloud-based advertising, on the other hand, pulls in the ever-important social and real-time aspects of the web. (No plane required.) 

This is important because like pretty much all technology, the technology to deliver ads has advanced. Programmatic advertising and advanced analytics are like ruthless task masters demanding better ad production and more creativity.   

Enter Cloud-Based Ad Production Services

This cloud-based component allows you to program display

ads with content management systems, video servers and APIs. That way you can update or swap out components like lead generation forms or white papers based on what’s  trending. 

And what’s trending is almost as important in social media marketing as it was in junior high. 

Plus, if you need to change your ad message for whatever reason (a change of weather, or an unfortunate PR incident which doesn’t bear repeating here), it can be done by updating the ad on the platform so it will instantly roll out across all publisher websites. 

What does this really mean?

No more hassle of having to submit the new creative assets and ad tags to each publisher while waiting for them to upload the changes and everything that follows. First world problems, to be sure. But still important in this context.

The bottom line is this:

Cloud-Based Advertising Equals More Flexibility and Control over Your Brand

And that ain’t too shabby. Especially for a cloud.