What Is Online Advertising and How Does It Work in 2025?

Online advertising represents all the forms of internet marketing strategy that businesses use to deliver targeted advertising promotions to intended customers. It is more effective than traditional advertising and offers a cost-effective, trackable method of promoting products or brands.

In the 2025 digital landscape, online advertising has evolved with AI taking center stage and ethics almost phasing out third-party cookies. Data-centric advertising is now the most effective method to reach potential customers and assure a high possibility of conversion. This method of advertising works by setting goals, defining the audience, designing the ads in various ad formats, setting a budget, launching the ad, and monitoring it to track campaign performance.

This article covers all you need to know regarding online advertising and how to make it work in 2025. It covers:

• How online advertising actually works
• The main steps in launching an online ad campaign
• The major types of online advertising formats in 2025
• The different budget types and bidding models
• The metrics used to measure results of online ad performance
• The pros and cons of online advertising?
• How is online advertising evolving in 2025?

What Is Online Advertising and Why Is It Important Today?

Online advertising is a marketing strategy that makes use of the internet to deliver targeted promotions to customers. You can see it as a way of delivering paid advertising over the internet through social media platforms, search engines, and websites.

The internet has become the new marketplace of the 21st century. With 67.9% of the world’s population situated there, according to Statista, it’s the prime choice of any modern business in search of customers. That is one of the major reasons why online advertising, which takes place on the internet, is so widespread in 2025. Besides that, online advertisements are cheaper, easier to track, and offer a higher chance to drive traffic and meet the target customer.

In 2025, digital media like social media platforms and streaming services have asserted dominance over traditional media like newspapers and magazines. These platforms offer convenience for mobile device users and personalized experiences, as they’re tailored to a user’s consumption habits.

As such, they are the top prospects for online advertising campaigns, but they’re not the only ones, as emails, newsletters, and websites with sponsored content are still effective. That’s why many businesses opt for multichannel online marketing to take advantage of all these platforms to meet their customers.

How Does Online Advertising Actually Work?

The first thing to do in digital advertising is to be clear on what your campaign objectives are. Do you want to generate more leads for a platform? Do you aim to increase the traffic on your mobile website? Or do you hope to get more people to install a new application?

Then you can choose your KPI (Key Performance Indicator). The KPI is a measure of how well you’re doing in achieving your goal (the campaign objective). These measures can be CTR (Click Through Rate), conversion rate, CPA (Cost Per Acquisition), etc.

Next, you’ll define who your audience is. Basically, you need to know the people who your ads are meant for. You can do this through your own research, or you could get the data from a third party, like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software.

Now that you’re aware of your audience, you need an advertising strategy that would work for them. This is where advertising networks, like Blockchain-Ads, are useful. These ad networks make it easy to purchase direct ads from platforms like Google Ads and social media networks such as Facebook. If you want to make automated purchases of ad spaces in real-time (programmatic advertising) through RTB (Real-Time Bidding), then ad networks are your best bet.

Next is to create the images for your banners, headlines for the text ads, and other compelling promotional content that would touch your target clients. Set these media up in your chosen ad platforms when you’re done and put aside the budget for this expense. The budget can be a one-time fee for the whole campaign or a daily fee for the whole period during which the advertisement will run.

While setting up these ads, don’t forget to implement tools for tracking your performance. This can be tracing pixels, UTM parameters, and ad verification tools (if you’re working with programmatic ads). Again, ad networks make this whole process much easier to handle, as they handle most of the tiny details.

You’re done with the setup, and your campaign is ready to go live. Ensure it meets all compliance guidelines so it doesn’t get pulled down later, and you’re good to go. Of course, this doesn’t mean you’re done, as you must monitor the ad to see its progress. You can do this through the dashboard of your ad network or those provided by Google, Meta, etc.

The metrics to monitor include CPM (Cost Per Mile), CPC (Cost Per Click), bounce rate, viewability, and ad impressions. If you’re running a programmatic ad, keep a lookout on the win rates and bid prices of the RTB auctions. While doing this, you will see areas where your campaign is lacking and discover areas that need to be optimized.

Ad networks like Blockchain-Ads also provide real-time analysis of your ad campaign, making it easier to know where optimization is needed. The optimization will be going on continuously as your campaign is in progress to ensure that you meet your advertising goals.

What Are the Main Steps in Launching an Online Ad Campaign?

Although there are many ways to go about launching your online advertisement campaign, there are a few steps that can’t be left out. They include:

1. Set goals: This is where you set the goals of your ad campaign and define what you hope to achieve with the advertisements, such as driving offline sales or raising brand awareness.
2. Choose platforms: To deliver clear results, you need to choose the right ad platform for your campaign. You can choose from Google Ads, Meta, Instagram, X, YouTube, and other websites or social media platforms of your choice.
3. Define audience: You need a good understanding of who your audience is to draft a good ad campaign. So, this is where you define this audience based on demographics, interests, purchase history, browsing behavior, job title, and other characteristics.
4. Create ad creatives: Here, you design the images, videos, text, and other media that’ll be displayed on your ads, including dynamic ads and video ads.
5. Set budget: Now, you’ve got a good idea of what your online advertising campaign is going to be like, so you can set a budget for it.
6. Launch: Ensure that your ad meets all DSP compliance regulations and submit it for approval. If all goes well, the ad should go live and start appearing in the user’s feed.
7. Monitor and optimize: Now you can monitor your online advertising strategy through metrics like CPC, bounce rate, CPA, and more. Using the data from these metrics and other analytics tools, you can keep improving your ads while they're live, optimizing ads to better move potential customers through the sales pipeline.

These are the main steps involved in launching an online ad campaign. If you’re tech-savvy, you can handle it yourself, or you can leave it in the hands of ad networks like Blockchain-Ads.

What Are the Major Types of Online Advertising Formats in 2025?

There are many ways in which ads appear online, but these are the major formats that most netizens encounter when they advertise online:

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• Display advertising: An ad that appears as videos, images, or other types of graphics. It is preferred for the creative freedom it offers advertisers and is best used for retargeting and brand reinforcement.
• Search engine advertising: This is where a business pays a search engine to have their ads appear on the search engine result page. These paid search ads appear when users search for specific keywords, and it’s best for conversion.
• Native advertising: This is a type of ad that’s integrated into the platform that it appears on, so it appears more natural. An example would be promoted listings on shopping sites like Amazon, eBay, and AliExpress. Native ads are the go-to option for building brand awareness as they are less intrusive.
• Video advertising: Video clips that capture and hold a user’s attention. They appear on websites and mobile apps and can also be integrated into streaming platforms like YouTube. Video ads are a powerful part of content marketing strategies.
• Social media ads: Ads that are run on social media platforms like Pinterest, Meta, X, and LinkedIn. These ads can also be tailored to fit that platform.
• In-app ads: These are ads that are integrated into mobile applications to engage with a target audience.
• Affiliate and influencer ads: This is where brands partner with an affiliate or an influencer to advertise their services.

These are the major types of online ads that you’ll find online, and they all have areas where they perform best. Most times, advertisers combine these ads to improve their effectiveness and optimize ads for better results.

What Is Display Advertising?

This is the type of advertising that uses videos, images, text, and other forms of visuals to get the attention of internet users. It is one of the most popular types of advertising, and you’ll notice them on the corners of most websites today.

The display ads that a user sees are based on their interests, internet browsing history, and other demographics. Most of these ads possess clickable elements, which allow users to click on them and get directed to a landing or product page. Many advertising platforms also offer responsive display ads, which adjust automatically to the ad spaces where they appear. This is why you can see the same banner ad on a mobile streaming app or a website on your computer.

Display ads are very versatile and can appear in different forms, such as:

• Banners ads
• Pop-up ads
• Native ads
• Interstitial ads
• Video ads

Advertisers choose display ads when they want full control of how the ad will appear. It allows the advertisers to target specific internet users and to reach a broader audience, increasing brand awareness.

The most popular platforms that offer display ads are:

• Blockchain-Ads
• Adsterra
• PropellerAds
• Taboola
• AdMaven

What Is Search Engine Advertising (PPC)?

Search engine advertising is a digital marketing strategy where businesses pay to get their ads to appear on search engines, like Google Ads. So, whenever internet users search for certain keywords, these search ads will be displayed on the search engine result page. As such, search engine advertising is useful for targeting users who are actively searching for a product or service, providing search help to potential customers.

This type of advertising is also called PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising. That’s because the business would only have to pay the search engine when someone clicks their ad, making it quite cost-effective.

Search engine marketing works through an auction system, where advertisers bid on keywords. Here, the advertiser would have to do their research to discover keywords with a high search volume. Sometimes, such keywords come with low competition, making them cheap; other times, high competition makes them costly.

The aim for search ads is to increase the website traffic a business receives when someone clicks their ad. It also helps to generate leads and drive sales. Some of the platforms that offer search ads include:

• Google Ads
• Bing Ads
• Apple Search Ads
• Baidu Ads
• Yandex Ads

What Is Native Advertising?

These are the type of ads that blend into the surrounding content, so they don’t stick out. Most people won’t know a native ad when they see one since it matches the look and form of the platform where it appears.

An example of such ads is the promotional messages you see on YouTube, which are usually marked as “Sponsored.” Sometimes you might read through a blog, and you’ll get a recommendation for a new topic; that’s a native ad. You could also be searching for a product on Google, and you’ll find a search result marked “Sponsored.”

Since native ads are usually combined with programmatic technology, they are cost-efficient and can provide sophisticated targeting capabilities. They also deliver high click-through rates as they enhance a user’s online journey instead of disrupting it. Due to their non-obtrusive capability, most users are not averse to such ads, and they’re less likely to be targeted by ad blocking software.

The most common formats in which native advertisements appear include:

• In-feed native ads: These are the native ads you find within an application or a website, and they’re usually spotted with a “Sponsored” or “Promoted” tag.
• In-content native ads: This is similar to the in-feed native ads, but it appears within written content, like a news feed or a blog.
• Content recommendation widgets: This is usually found on websites, where you’re recommended similar content after consuming an article.

Some of the platforms that offer native ads are:

• Adsterra
• Blockchain-Ads
• Adcash
• Meta
• Google AdSense

What Is Video Advertising?

This is a type of ad that displays video content. It’s a very popular ad format for one simple reason — people love watching videos. It can appear as a short clip in a banner ad or one that plays in the background of a social media platform. Common video ads are those skippable/unskippable clips that play before the start of a YouTube video, during, and after a video.

Video ads are useful for their great storytelling capability (an innate advantage of video content). They are also used to drive up user engagement, influence users, and improve the credibility of a brand.

Video ads are quite common today, and the formats in which they usually appear include:

• In-stream ads: These are ads that play before, during, and after video content on a streaming platform like YouTube or other social media sites. This comes as skippable ads, unskippable ads, and bumper ads (which are short six-second ads).
• Out-stream ads: These are playable ads that appear outside a streaming site or on a platform without any other video content. You’ll usually notice that their sound is off, and you can only play them with sound when you click on it.
• Native video ads: This is a video ad that blends in with the rest of the content on a website, app, or social media platform. However, you’ll notice the “Sponsored” tag on it.

Some of the platforms that offer these video ads include:

• Blockchain-Ads
• Xandr
• SelectMedia
• Taboola

What Are Social Media Ads?

Social media advertising is a situation where an ad campaign is run on a social media platform, like LinkedIn, X, Meta, and Instagram. This type of advertising allows marketers to take advantage of the popularity of the platform to promote their products on a wide scale. Paid social ads also allow a business to generate awareness of their brand, build a community, and reach new customers. It also allows for precise consumer targeting and supports interactive functions on ads like comments, likes, and shares.

According to Backlinko, the number of social media users has doubled from its 2015 numbers to 5.24 billion. This means there’s a large audience to take advantage of, roughly 63.9% of the world’s total population.

There are quite a few social media platforms that advertisers use, and they all possess unique characteristics.

• Meta (formerly Facebook): The leading social network with over 3.07 billion active users, making it easier for any business to meet their audience. Paid social ads on Meta include photo ads, reel ads, carousel ads, video ads, and Messenger ads.
• LinkedIn: This is the professionals' social network where businesses of all sizes collaborate and meet their customers. Ads on LinkedIn include video ads, sponsored messaging ads, carousel ads, text based ads, and image ads.
• Instagram: This is a visual advertisement social network with carousel, photo, video, and audio ads for immersive digital marketing. Instagram also offers the Explore ad, which appears in the Explore feed and is beneficial to business owners.
• X (formerly Twitter): Even with its limited text space, X is a powerful tool for targeting users based on real-time trends and interests. The ads here include promoted ads, vertical video ads, and X Takeover (sets a business’s ad as the first thing on a user’s timeline).

What Are In-App Ads?

In-app ads are advertisements that appear within mobile applications. It’s a method for app publishers to monetize their products by offering advertising spaces to brands and businesses. So this allows publishers to earn money from selling ad spaces and allows advertisers to easily meet their target audience. Of course, the publishers need to ensure that the ads are not disruptive, so it doesn’t lead to a dip in user engagement.

In-app ads are common these days, and you’ll see them in shopping apps, online games, social media apps, and other utility applications. This type of ad is served through programmatic ad purchases, so algorithms are used to ensure that ads are only seen by target users. As such, in-app advertising is great for improving user engagement, generating revenue, and providing precise audience targeting.

These mobile ads also offer room for personalization, allowing advertisers to customize the ads that are seen by the users. Since most people own a smartphone in 2025, in-app ads are a very effective internet advertising strategy. The most common types of ads you’ll see as in-app ads include banner ads, rewarded videos, and interstitial ads.

Online platforms that support in-app ads are:

• Publift
• Blockchain-Ads
• AdMob
• Unity
• InMobi

What Are Affiliate and Influencer Ads?

Affiliate ads are the advertisements that are shared through a third party like a YouTube channel owner, a blogger, or an influencer. Here, businesses partner with affiliates (which can be people or organizations) to promote their services. The affiliate earns a commission for referring prospects to the business, bringing about sales, and generally promoting sponsored brands.

Influencer ads are advertisements that are handled by social media influencers, content creators, celebrities, and other popular online personalities. This is a situation where these online personalities endorse a product or mention it on their channel. In 2025, influencer ads are one of the most popular methods of marketing a product, as all influencers enjoy the trust of their audience. As such, there’s a high chance of their followers purchasing a product because they endorse it.

Both affiliate and influencer marketing are great for advertising to a target audience, since each affiliate and influencer has a niche. When a business meets influencers and affiliates within their niche, the followers of these online personalities form the target audience. So, all that’s left is for the online personality to use their sway over their followers to improve the trust in that brand or business.

The best platforms for affiliate ads include:

• JuicyAds
• ExoClick
• EZmob
• PlugRush

The best platforms for influencer ads are:

• Upfluence
• Shoutcart
• NeoReach
• YouTube BrandConnect

How Does Targeting Work In Online Advertising?

One of the biggest advantages of online advertising is the ability to bring ads before their target audience. Targeting is the process of bringing ads to consumers based on their browsing behavior, shopping behavior, and general interests. This is done to increase the relevance of the displayed ad, leading to increased engagement and a boost in ROI (Return On Investment).

• Behavioral targeting
• Contextual targeting
• Location targeting (Geotargeting)
• Device targeting
• Interest-based targeting
• Retargeting
• On-chain targeting

Among the online advertising trends that have appeared in 2025 is AI-driven targeting. Here, artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques are used to identify and segment audiences based on real-time data and analysis. This has led to improved conversion rates and a better ROI.

Due to regulation and privacy concerns among internet users, there has been a decline in third-party cookies. As such, targeting has gone through a shift, with audience targeting being less accurate than before.

In response to the decline of third-party cookies, there’s been a rise in zero- and first-party data. Now, advertisers and businesses try to build trust with internet users so they can obtain their data with consent. That’s why online surveys, interactive quizzes, email sign-up forms, and the like are now commonplace on many online platforms.

What is Behavioral Targeting?

This is a type of targeting that uses a user’s online activity to deliver ads that are tailored to them. The online activity that is considered in this case includes their purchase history on shopping platforms, the pages they visit online, etc. So, when an internet user browses about the best iPhone cases, these cases would be recommended when they visit online marketplaces like Facebook and AliExpress.

Pros

• Improved customer experience
• Increased brand loyalty
• Increased engagement
• Efficient marketing

Cons

• Privacy/ethical concerns
• Possibility of analysis error
• Narrow reach

What is Contextual Targeting?

In this type of targeting, ads are placed according to the contents of that web page. Here, the ads that a user encounters are based on keywords or the topic of that page. While this is a privacy-friendly practice, it’s less effective in its audience targeting.

Pros

• Privacy-friendly
• Flexibility in its usage
• Reduction in ad fatigue
• Delivers relevant ads to users

Cons

• Limited personalization options
• The effectiveness of the ad depends on the surrounding content
• The ads can be distracting

What is Location Targeting (Geotargeting)?

This is a situation where internet users receive ads based on the geographic location. This type of targeting works with a user’s location to display the best ads for them. An example would be when Google search results show some restaurants near you when you’re searching for a place to eat sushi.

Location targeting occurs through various techniques, such as:

• Geofencing: Setting a boundary within which internet users receive a specific marketing campaign.
• Geotargeting: Working with the IP address of users to determine their locations and send ads.
• Geo-conquesting: Setting a boundary around certain businesses and using GPS technology to track new customers that enter the boundary. After which an ad will be sent to them discouraging them from using the services of those businesses.
• Beaconing: Using Bluetooth and WiFi to target customers within a small area.

Pros

• Increased personalization
• Improved engagement
• Accurate data collection
• High conversion rates

Cons

• Privacy issues
• GPS data can be inaccurate
• High cost
• Complex to set up

What is Device Targeting?

Here, internet users receive ads based on the type of device they’re using. Besides allowing certain devices to receive ads, this targeting technique also excludes other devices from receiving the advertisements. As such, device targeting makes for efficient and highly personalized ad campaigns.

This is why you can only receive ads to install an application when you’re using a smartphone. If a business is creating Apple apps, they can use this targeting technique to send their ads to only Apple devices.

Pros

• Improved ad personalization
• Cross-device tracking is possible
• Improved frequency capping
• Increase in ROI

Cons

• Data tracking can be quite complex
• Data privacy issues
• Setting it up can be time consuming

What is Interest-Based Targeting?

This is where businesses reach users based on their shared interests and online behavior. Here, the advertisers would analyze the type of content the users consume, the numerous websites they visit, and even their movement on social networks. With such information, a gaming company can easily target gamers who like trying out new shooters. It can also help an online beauty store discover many internet users who are interested in healthy foods.

Pros

• Relevant ads
• Increase in conversion rates
• Cost effective
• The ability to easily target certain demographics

Cons

• Data is not always accurate
• Privacy concerns
• Limited reach

What is Retargeting (Remarketing)?

In this case advertisers and organizations seek out people who have done business or interacted with them in the past. This is done to increase the possibility of those customers returning back to the platform. An example of this is when Amazon sends you an email recommendation for new knives after you purchased some a few weeks before.

Pros

• Cost-effective process
• Reduction in cart abandonment on sales platforms
• Personalized messages
• Increased in brand awareness

Cons

• There’s a chance of annoying customers
• Ad blockers can hinder retargeting
• Privacy issues

What is On-Chain Targeting?

This is where an advertiser or an ad network (like Blockchain-Ads) uses the information from blockchains to target users. This information could be their token history, transaction history, Web3 wallet activity, and token holdings. An example is where a crypto wallet company uses the on-chain information of the Ethereum blockchain to display ads regarding their Ethereum wallets. This means that only users with Ethereum tokens will receive their ads.

On-chain targeting is slowly rising in 2025, as cryptocurrency is becoming commonplace.

Pros

• Precise ads
• Reduced advertising costs
• Users control their data
• Transparency

Cons

• Limited Web3 data
• Technical issues
• Restriction from data privacy regulations

What Are the Different Budget Types and Bidding Models?

An important step in setting up an online ad is to set aside how much you’re willing to spend. Most times, the amount you’re willing to spend can directly impact the effectiveness of your ad campaign. Of course, if you can manage a small budget, it can be just as effective.

There are two main types of budgets:

• Daily budget: This is setting aside the maximum amount you’re willing to spend on your ad each day.
• Total campaign budget: Here, you set aside the total amount you’re willing to spend on the entire ad campaign.

Bidding is the process of competing for ad placement by offering a price for your ad to be shown to your audience. This is required for programmatic ads and RTB systems. Simply put, when a user enters a website, advertisers enter an auction to see whose ads will be displayed to that user. In most cases, the highest bidder wins.

The most common types of bidding strategies include:

• CPC (Cost Per Click)
• CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions)
• CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
• ROAS (Return On Ad Spend)

High bids aren’t the only determinants to winning a bidding war. The relevance of the ad to that page or the landing page of the business’s website also counts. So, you must consider all these things before investing in the bids for an ad campaign.

What is CPC (Cost Per Click)?

Here, advertisers pay every time a user clicks on their ad. It doesn’t matter whether the user converts or not. Let's say a user encounters an ad offering a 20% discount on security lamps. If the user clicks on that ad, the advertiser pays the set amount, whether the individual actually purchases the lamp or not.

What is CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions)?

This is where advertisers pay after their ad has been shown or displayed to users 1000 times. This is the best option for when a brand wants to build brand awareness.

What is CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)?

Here, the advertisers pay each time a user performs a set action. This could be installing an app or signing up for a service. CPA is best for conversion-driven ad campaigns, where ROI matters.

What is CPL (Cost Per Lead)?

This is a pricing model where businesses pay for each lead generated by an ad. Although it’s similar to CPA, CPL is not as broad and focuses on only acquiring leads. CPL is used by brands that are building a newsletter, companies with subscription-based services, and other businesses with high-value products.

What is ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)?

This is a pricing model that measures how effective an internet advertising campaign is. It allows the brands and businesses to discover which marketing strategies are effective and which ones are not.

The formula for ROAS = Revenue from adsCost of ads x 100

Let's say it costs $500 to run an ad campaign, and this campaign generated sales worth $1000. The ROAS is:

1000500 X 100 = $200

What Are the Metrics Used to Measure Online Ad Performance?

After deploying online ads, various metrics and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are used to evaluate the performance of the campaign. These metrics allow advertisers to optimize the ad when necessary and to also learn from their failures. The most important metrics in online advertising campaigns are:

• CTR (Click Through Rate)
• Conversion rate
• Impressions and reach
• Bounce rate and session duration
• Engagement rate

Of course, all metrics are not created equal and are best at tracking a certain aspect of the internet advertising process. So, it's important to choose these metrics according to the goal you hope to achieve with your campaign.

What is Click-Through Rate (CTR)?

The CTR indicates the percentage of people who click your ad. It is calculated by dividing total clicks by total impressions and multiplying by 100.

CTR = Total ClicksTotal Impressions X 100

This metric is useful for evaluating how effective an ad campaign is. So, a high CTR means your ad is quite effective. If it’s low, then it’s time to optimize that ad.

What is Conversion Rate?

This is the percentage of people who complete a particular action. It shows how well an ad is driving users to perform the specified action. The “action” can be downloading an app, signing up on a platform, purchasing a product, and more.

Conversion rate is calculated by dividing conversions by clicks and multiplying by 100.

Conversion rate = ConversionsClicks X 100

What are Impressions and Reach?

Impressions are the number of times your ad is shown to users. Reach is the number of unique users who have seen that ad. These metrics evaluate your brand’s visibility and allow you to gauge how widespread it is. So, if your brand is well-known, many people should have seen its ads.

What is Bounce Rate and Session Duration?

Bounce rate is the percentage of site visitors who leave after viewing a single page on the platform. This is a measure of site quality. It shows how good your landing page is and how well it is aligned to the target audience.

Bounce rate is calculated by dividing the single-page sessions by the total sessions. That is, bounce rate = Single-page sessionsTotal sessions X 100

A high bounce rate means that the visitors are not spending much time on the landing page. This means your landing page is not aligned with the intent of the target audience, or its quality is poor.

Session duration is a measure of how long visitors spend on your online platform in a single visit. A long session duration shows high user engagement. Short session durations indicate that users don’t find the content engaging enough, or they quickly leave after finding what they want.

What Is Engagement Rate (For Social Ads)?

This is a measure of the interaction that people have with your ad. It calculates the number of likes, shares, comments, and clicks and divides them by the impressions before multiplying by 100.

Engagement rate = Total number of interactionsTotal number of impressions X 100

This metric is mostly used for content that is posted on social media and allows advertisers to gauge the appeal of an ad. It shows how well an ad is resonating with the intended audience.

How Do Attribution Models Impact Metrics?

An attribution model is the framework that decides which stage of a marketing channel will receive credit for a conversion. This allows marketers to know which stage of their campaign was most effective in driving user engagement.

There are three main types of attribution models, and they include:

• First-click attribution model: This awards credit to the first touchpoint that a user has with a campaign. It is useful for understanding lead generation sources.
• Last-click attribution model: This model awards credit to the final touchpoint (or stage) a user had with an ad campaign.
• Multi-touch attribution model: This model awards credit to multiple touchpoints across the user’s journey rather than just the first and last points.

Attribution models affect how advertisers evaluate their metrics, especially those tied to a conversion, like ROAS, conversion, CTR, and CPA. It affects ROAS by changing which channel would be receiving credit for bringing in revenue. CPA changes if the multi-touch attribution model is used, as the conversion is spread across multiple touchpoints.

What Are the Pros and Cons of Online Advertising?

Although online advertising is the go-to option for any modern business, that doesn’t mean it is without its strengths and weaknesses. Below are the pros and cons of this type of advertising:

Online advertising offers a flexibility, measurability, and widespread reach that is beyond traditional advertising. However, there’s steep competition in the space these days, meaning creativity is necessary to stay competitive and ahead of the competition.

How Is Online Advertising Evolving in 2025?

There have been a lot of changes in the online advertising space in 2025, driven by the improvement in technology and data protection laws. These changes are summarized below:

• AI-powered creatives: Today, AI like ChatGPT and Meta Advantage+ can take care of everything from creating ad copy to audience targeting.
• Automation: AI automation is now smarter, with auto-bidding and real-time budget optimization.
• First-party data: Due to third-party cookies becoming nearly obsolete, advertisers now gather data directly from users. This is done through online surveys, site interactions, quizzes, and subscriptions.
• Voice search ads: Voice assistants like Alexa and Siri are now optimizing voice-aided search.
• Ethical/privacy-conscious advertising: Users are conscious about the privacy of their data these days. So, advertisers can only acquire user data with their consent through surveys and the like.
• Shifts in consumer behavior: Consumers now value trust and only use the services of brands that align with their values.
• Regulatory impacts: Businesses must adapt to new advertising regulations that require ethical approaches and protect user data.

Final Thoughts: How Should Businesses Approach Online Advertising Today?

Online advertising today is a rapidly evolving landscape where clearly defined goals are necessary to meet the intended audience. With clear goals, businesses can assign relevant metrics to evaluate their online advertising efforts. Transparency and ethical approaches are also important for any business that wants to gain the trust of its audience.

AI advancements have come to stay, and they should be incorporated when necessary to optimize the online advertising strategy. Apart from navigating the complex online advertising scene alone, businesses can also seek the help of advertising networks like Blockchain-Ads.

Blockchain-Ads is a full-stack advertising platform that empowers growth-focused brands across established and heavily regulated sectors to launch highly targeted campaigns. This ad network serves various industries like the blockchain, finance, SaaS, gaming, and adult verticals. It offers native, display, video, in-app, interstitial, and sponsored ads with a proven performance in all its services.