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DIGITAL MARKETING (SUMMER CERTIFICATE 2020)

Name

Course
Date

Table of Content
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1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………3
2. Background Theoretical Information about Digital Marketing…………3
3. Digital Marketing in the modern world…………………………………...4
4. Role and Value of Digital Marketing……………………………………....7
4a. Pricing and Bidding……………………………………………………..8
4b. Personalization…………………………………………………………..8
4c. Segmenting………………………………………………………………11
4e. Cases Showing digital Marketing and its Value………………………11
4d. Budgeting………………………………………………………………...11
5. Digital Marketing Mix……………………………………………………..12
5a. Statistical Twins…………………………………………………………14
5b. Affiliate Marketing……………………………………………………...15
5ba. Roles and aims of affiliate marketing……………………………..17
5d. Display Marketing……………………………………………………….18
5da.The Background of Display Marketing…………………………...18
5f. Video Marketing…………………………………………………………18
5fa. Video Editing……………………………………………………….20
5fb. The Development of Video Marketing……………………………20
5fc. The objectives of Video Marketing……………………………….22
6. Digital Marketing Conception……………………………………………...22
7. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………23
8. References…………………………………………………………………....25

1. Introduction
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Taking a course on digital marketing could help someone’s improve his or her
understanding of many aspects associated with digital marketing. In particular, this is an
opportunity to learn the concepts and strategies that digital marketers use to advertise and,
therefore, promote a company’s brand, among many other marketing objectives. With the advent
of the internet and the subsequent development of social networking sites, digital marketing has
used such platforms to become popular and help business enterprises promote their brands.
However, it is difficult for marketers to develop new marketing techniques, especially because
what influences consumers do not change as such. Digital marketing only seeks to offer new
platforms that effectively spread the message, improve the consumer experience, and increase
targeting. Also, digital marketing seems to provide an alternative solution to the ever-changing
consumer behavior. For instance, consumers were used to a television-based advertisement.
Also, since mobile devices and other new technological devices have shifted consumers’ focus
from television, to other platforms such as mobile phones, it is only proper for marketers also to
change marketing platforms. 
Digital marketing has introduced new terms in the marketing lexicon that were rarely
used before, such as affiliate marketing. This form of marketing has become popular, especially
in the e-commerce industry, which encourages partners to influence consumers into buying
goods in online shops. The partners will be paid in return in the form of commissions. This is an
aspect worth discussing further, so this discussion will explore it in detail as stipulated in the
digital marketing course. 
Lastly, the development of new platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat, which
allow video content to be posted and viewed, have further promoted digital marketing. Video
marketing is an important area that is featured in this digital marketing course, and will be
discussed in detail as well. These are some of the things that this discussion intends to look at
while summarizing the digital marketing course. 
2. Background Theoretical Information about Digital Marketing
The idea of digital marketing revolves around the use of conventional marketing coupled
with the use of strategies and tools, particularly on the internet. But when analyzing it from a
digital world’s perspective, this form of marketing has helped develop formats and channels for
marketing. It has helped in the development of strategies and tools that could not have been
thought of offline1. It is important to point out that the increased evolution of digital marketing
strategies provides organizations and brands with great potential to advance their brands and
advertise services and products effectively.  
The best way to assess the enormous opportunities that digital marketing offers
companies is to look at the role of visual communication among marketers. While addressing
visual thinking in marketing, it is important to remember that digital marketing enables
marketers to have different video- and image-based tools2. This is important, especially when
trying to reach out to many audiences and increase consumer’s and organization’s engagement. 
The other enormous opportunity being provided by digital marketing is enabling
marketers to develop relevant advertising, which is more effective in the current marketplace.

1
Piñeiro-Otero, Teresa, and Xabier Martínez-Rolán. "Understanding digital marketing—
basics and actions." In MBA, pp. 37-74. Springer, Cham, 2016.
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Piñeiro-Otero. "Understanding digital marketing—basics and actions." 2016.
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With digital marketing, customization and segmentation are made easier, which when used in the
internet optimizes output3. The internet has also allowed marketers to develop effective
advertising methods, which could not be possible when done offline. For instance, the internet
has improved communication among communities. This is particularly important since the
targeted audience can now easily connect with organizations. Moreover, the internet connectivity
enables marketers to increase consumers’ experience, improving their relationship with
organizations and promoting a given brand or product. 
Digital marketing has improved how marketers brand their services and products. The
use of the website and other online platforms creates a perfect opportunity for companies to
advertise or improve their brand image. Such platforms also allow for constant updates, which is
key to improving the brand image or its presentation to consumers4. This is another great feature
about digital marketing that is useful to marketers or marketing. 
Virality is important in marketing as advertisers need to have their message spread very
fast to promote their products5. The internet can make every information or content circulate
exponentially through the platform. It is important to mention that viral communication is often
effective when there is proper connectivity. Other features that increase the virality of
information include the shareability and instantness of many online platforms. The essence of
virality is to increase the dissemination of content6. Therefore, with the use of the internet, digital
marketers can benefit from their content's virality, which is important to increase reach and
audience. 
There are many theories associated with digital marketing, which could explain why it is
organized differently. The first theory is known as the number rule, which implies that marketers
should try as much as possible to reach many people online7. This concept is relevant
considering that more people have started using Google to research the kind of purchase they
need to make online. 
The other theory is associated with the strategies employed in digital marketing. Digital
marketers are concerned with the best strategies that should be employed to reach out to the
online audience. These strategies include but are not limited to direct message, email marketing,
social media marketing, video streams, and mobile devices8. Some marketers have preferred
using offline marketing techniques, such as newspaper ads and product flyers. 
The theory of market segmentation is often used in digital marketing to define the target
market. This theory advises marketers, in this case, those dealing with digital platforms, to move
away from mass marketing techniques and instead be specific to target particular consumers9.
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Piñeiro-Otero, 2016.

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Piñeiro-Otero, 2016.
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Piñeiro-Otero, 2016.
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Piñeiro-Otero, 2016.
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Chron Contributor. "Theories of Selling." Small Business - Chron.com. Accessed
January 28, 2021. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/theories-selling-59532.html.
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Chron Contributor. "Theories of Selling." Small Business - Chron.com. 2021.
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Chron Contributor. 2021. 
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There are many ways to define a segment, such as age, behavior, or region. When used
appropriately, the advertisers can avoid wasting the message to consumers who are less likely to
make purchases and concentrate on potential clients. 
3. Digital Marketing in the modern world
The digital age has changed how businesses communicate to consumers, especially how
they market themselves to consumers. For instance, there are distinct features common in the
past but are no longer fashionable to be used in marketing in modern times. The best way to
describe this is to consider yesterday’s approach versus today’s marketing approach. In the past,
businesses used to look for clients, target everyone while advertising, use intuition to guide
marketing, concentrate on a short-term bang with potential clients, and lastly, they were able to
achieve few channels or use few marketing channels10. However, all these have since changed as
businesses have devised new marketing methods with the help of technology. In particular,
businesses can now position themselves where clients can easily find them and have one-on-one
communication with the potential clients11. Unlike using intuition, businesses have now adopted
data-driven methods for marketing12. The other distinctive feature about marketing in the digital
age is developing multiple connected channels and long-term relationships with their
consumers13. Having a long-term relationship is particularly important for building loyalty and
ensuring the repeated sale of goods to particular clients. 
Most businesses appreciate the need to develop a multivariate marketing form as no
single form of marketing fits all consumers. This is made possible with increased development in
marketing technologies. For instance, the marketing technology landscape has since advanced to
include email marketing, display advertising, video ads and marketing, events and webinars, and
content marketing14. The other features commonly used in modern marketing include marketing
apps, call centers, and calls, creative and design, social ads and search, marketing analytics,
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among many other experiences. It is also important to point out that the new technologies have
also introduced new marketing roles or platforms. For instance, there are data or customer
management platforms, which have been made possible through interactive features provided by
technology15. 
The evolution of marketing has been partly influenced by the weakness experienced by
traditional methods of marketing. For instance, the traditional marketing channels proved to be
ineffective in facilitating interactions between consumers and businesses16. 
An excellent example is the out of home advertising, which involved advertising in
public places or specific commercial locations such as retain venue. This method involved
advertising in highways, transit, street, billboards, and roads17. However, it is important to
mention that people, in this case, the targeted consumers, have shifted towards digital
technologies such as mobile phones and social media, hence targeting them through these
platforms would be more effective. Also, the traditional digital technologies such as televisions
are no longer effective advertising platforms than new platforms such as mobile phones, which
seems to be taking much attention of the people, or targeted consumers18. Also, people are more
focused on using tablets and laptops than in the past, making business sense to target consumers
on digital platforms such as emails and social media sites. Many countries are embracing mobile
marketing and have increased spending on digital ads targeting mobile users. For instance, a
study carried out on mobile spending in Germany found that the country’s spend on mobile ads
has increased from $ 3.5 billion in 2017 to about 5.20 billion in 202019.
There are many other reasons why digital marketing is increasingly being preferred to
traditional advertising or marketing. For instance, experts believe that e-commerce is on the rise
and will continue in the same trend for the foreseeable future. This implies that businesses should
invest in online platforms and other latest digital platforms to be effective20. An excellent

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example to illustrate the increased popularity of the online or digital platform is that in the US,
the search on Amazon constitutes about 60 percent, and about 45 percent in Germany. 
Despite the obvious significance of businesses’ need to concentrate on digital platforms, there is
a need to appreciate the changing communication behavior trend. For instance, there is evidence
to show that an increased supply of digital advertising could reduce the message's effectiveness21.
The other noteworthy thing about changing marketing trends is the ineffectiveness of traditional
channels, which are more likely to have a low return on the ad because of the attention shift in
consumers towards digital platforms22. As mentioned earlier, mobile technology has become
popular today, and businesses should concentrate on them while marketing. Lastly, digital
commerce continues to be popular year by year. Business leaders should adjust their marketing
strategies to match the changing trend in consumer behavior or communication behavior based
on these trends23. 
4. Role and Value of Digital Marketing
To determine the value of digital marketing, it is important to consider different
marketing aspects such as processes, performance marketing, and brand marketing. Also, there is
a need to use different cases to illustrate this aspect. Therefore, this discussion will start with,
brand marketing and performance marketing. 
Brand marketing tries to associate a particular brand with services or products. The main
objective of brand marketing is to associate a given brand’s values, personality, and identity with
its being communicated to the targeted audience. The essence of brand marketing is to create
demand for particular services or products24. On the other hand, performance marketing uses
digital marketing techniques to influence a particular transaction or user reaction. It is important
to state that the activities associated with performance marketing are geared towards driving
sales. 
Brand marketing can be done with the aid of technologies that allows visual images such
as televisions and computers. A study in 2020 found that about 80 percent of people consume
content on various screens, which implies that businesses could use marketing brands' platform25.
Also, the increased rate of streamlining services has seen Amazon introduce platforms for

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advertisers to market brands. Besides marketing by visuals, brand marketing is also being done
through digital audio, which has become popular in recent times26. 
Digital audio is believed to be the second most popular digital channel, which is being
used by almost everyone who is between the ages of 14 and 29 years27. As new vendors develop
appealing content to consumers, establish vendors are influenced to evolve to meet consumer
needs. Some of the platforms that have been instrumental in promoting digital vendors' content
include radio and podcasts, Webradio, YouTube, and audiobooks28. With digital audio in the
advertisement, the envelope of marketing has been expanded, and is now being done in cars and
even in loudspeakers. 
As part of the business model, digital marketing can be evaluated to determine its value
in business. Some of the value associated with digital marketing include upselling. This practice
involves influencing consumers to buy relatively expensive goods or upgrade to enable different
businesses to increase revenue generation29. The other aspect that digital marketing has been
associated with is called cross-selling, which refers to the additional sale of a service or product
regarded as equal to the consumer. Unlike upselling, which influences consumers to buy high-
end goods, cross-selling intends to influence them to purchase different services or products to
increase sales efficiency30. 
The sales funnel another concept which the digital marketing intends to achieve. It is
described as the process of buying in which companies act as leading agents to consumers in the
process of buying. Another important concept used to measure marketing's value is the return on
investment, which is the value derived by comparing the cost of investment and the net profit31.
When used to measure performance, the return on investment focuses on evaluating the
efficiency of certain activities associated with marketing or comparing the efficiencies of many

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channels. Digital marketing can be evaluated for performance in marketing in many ways. For
instance, when used as a business model, its role is to increase transactions or sales32. Therefore,
most metric used to evaluate digital marketing revolves around return on invest. The value of
return on investment is calculated by finding the difference between the marketing budget and
the revenue generated33. However, for economic reasons, the activities associated with digital
marketing are mapped against the sales visualization funnel. 
Processes in digital marketing are also important as they determine the value of the whole
marketing process. One of the features often associated with marketing is targeting, which
implies the act of trying to influence people or an individual to behave in a certain way34.
Successful targeting methods need prior comprehension of the targeted audience and the
use of appropriate tools and methods to involve or not involve certain people in the marketing
activity. There are various options often used when considering the target to be used. Keyword
targeting is one such option35. It entails the use of Ad exposure with reference to particular
research keywords or in line with certain editorial context that conforms to specific keywords.
The other option is socio-demographic targeting, and this involves using features such as gender
and age to target consumers. On the other hand, behavioral targeting relies on people’s behavior
on the marketing platform being used36. Digital marketers could also do regional targeting, which
uses geographical information and IP address to target locations. With the advancement in
technology, there has also been a new form of targeting based on the operating system and
internet speed, such as WIFI connection, and is described as technical targeting37. Lastly,
targeting can be done based on marching available data about consumers and the target audience,
and this form of targeting is called CRM targeting. All these options are used in digital
marketing to increase marketing efficiency and ensure the message is effectively designed to
reach potential consumers. 

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Other than targeting, digital marketing can use attribution to increase the effectiveness of
advertising. The idea involves allocating values towards given attributes associated with a
particular object. To simplify further, attribution models can use relatively minute pieces of data
to other pieces regarded as primary data38. It is important to point out that when conversing in
attribution, the first contact is supposed to be connected to various touchpoints throughout the
consumers’ journey. There are different forms of attribution, such as position-based, time-decay,
and data-driven. 
4a. Pricing and Bidding
In business, bidding and pricing are done strategically to achieve business objectives.
There are different strategies for bidding, such as cost per view, cost per mille, and cost per click.
The click per click is supposed to make people pay for every click they have on their ad, ad its
major goal is to increase traffic39. On the other hand, there is the cost per mille, which a person is
supposed to pay for every impression they get on ads, and is intended for reach goals. The last
one is the cost per view, which is supposed to make people pay for every view they have on their
video, and is intended to reach targets40. 
4b. Personalization
Businesses have tried to advance the concept of targeting to designing ads and websites
that seek to target a particular consumer41. While an advertising pillar is supposed to convey the
message to anyone viewing it, a website can be designed to sell to whoever is viewing it
specifically42. While the previous focus among marketers was on the whole segments,
personalized marketing intend to customize advertising. There is a widely held belief that
personalized marketing can influence customers to increase their involvement43. However, other
studies have shown that personalized targeting may come across as irritable and annoying since
it disturbs consumers while visiting particular websites44. 
4c. Segmenting

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41
Dahlgren, Sanne, and Beatrice Tabell. "Personalized Advertising Online and its
Difficulties with Customer Privacy." (2018).
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Dahlgren, Sanne, and Beatrice Tabell. "Personalized Advertising Online and its
Difficulties with Customer Privacy." (2018).
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Segmentation is closely associated with personalization and is supposed to group people

based on their needs. When segmenting people, or potential consumers, businesses can design a
message targeting a particular group45. Market segmentation's role is to identify potential buyers
and then make marketing plans aimed at targeting such a market segment. Once the market
segment has been identified, a marketing mix would then be used to ensure businesses reach the
segment both efficiently and economically46. 
4d. Budgeting 
There are different forms of budgeting, such as agile budgeting, which involves different
phases. There is the initial budget phase, which does not include much. Then there is the
monitoring, optimizing and booking, and the shifting phase47. The monitoring phase involves all
placements and campaigns that are monitored to improve permanently. Secondly, the concept of
optimizing implies that a business seeks to shift the budget and adopt the best performing
placements. Lastly, a phase involves shifting and booking, which compels businesses to book all
the relevant campaigns in various channels. 
4e. Cases Showing digital Marketing and its Value
To determine the real value of digital marketing, it is important to evaluate companies'
different cases using digital marketing and the value it brings to their companies. For instance,
Airberlin is one such company that engages in e-commerce, and in 2016, its total revenue was 3
billion Euro, but the E-commerce revenue amounted to about 1 billion Euro, which implies that
the digital platform has a significant influence on the total revenue collected48. 
Digital marketing is also being used in the food industry to market food products. This
has particularly been made possible because shopping lists are now being made available to
advertisers who can effectively influence consumers. For instance, Exkurs is an application in
mobile phones which is being used to influence consumer buying49. 
5. Digital Marketing Mix

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Shen, Anyuan. "Recommendations as personalized marketing: insights from customer
experiences." Journal of Services Marketing (2014).
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Cruz, Ryan E., James M. Leonhardt, and Todd Pezzuti. "Second person pronouns
enhance consumer involvement and brand attitude." Journal of Interactive Marketing 39
(2017): 104-116.
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Social media marketing: social media is a form of digital marketing that has become
popular in the last two decades. Blogs were the first forms of social media marketing before
other social networking sites such as Twitter, WhatsApp, and Facebook later developed and
became popular. The first blog was established in the US in 1999, and by 2002, there were about
500, 000 blogs used throughout the world50. 
Digital and social media such as blogs have evolved how people communicate. For
instance, it is now easier for organizations to reach their clients through digital channels. The
significance of digital and social media has necessitated the use of social media platforms for
companies to remain relevant in the public sphere51. 
The key thing that every business should know about social media is the type of content
they put out on their platform. In most cases, what counts is the type of content put on social
media and the dialog being generated, especially because every platform brings a particular value
into the community. Therefore, advertisers have to be careful on how to remain respectful and at
the same time bring value to the community while marketing52. 
The concept of adding value and remaining respectful cannot be overemphasized,
especially when using social media. The concept of adding value while maintaining respect is
derived from psychology, and is often advocated for in marketing53. The development of social
media has revolutionized public communication, in the sense that companies and social media
channels no longer have the sovereignty of public communications. In modern times, both
organizations and humans can be described as owners of media houses. This is because every
user can now get in touch with public stakeholders or brand organizations with just a single
click54. Social media has thus massively increased public interactions through enhancing
communication throughout the world. However, this is not to say that media houses no longer
can control the narrative being shared on their platform. They can own media houses by ensuring
they run specific brand messages on their platforms, especially when targeting a particular
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segment in the market. This is advantageous to companies as they do not have to depend on
intermediaries such as publishers or journalists to run their message55. 
There are four main states of social media marketing, which are: shared media, owned
media, earned media, as well as paid media. All four types of social media marketing have
specific objectives they seek to achieve. Some of these objectives include strengthening
employers’ brand, which will see the company recruit and attract more top talents. The other
goal is to create brand ambassadors, which is important, especially when promoting awareness56.
The other aspect is to spread conversation with a specific target audience, made possible through
storytelling. Also, business needs to do market research. This is another aspect that social media
platforms seek to achieve, especially for product development. Marketers need to build trust and
loyalty among their clients, so social media sites are advised to create value and be respectful as
this will enable companies to increase sales significantly57.
Social media platforms have enabled companies to create effective and easy-to-reach
customer support where clients can present their claims and further build their reputation through
the feedback being channeled. These are some of the objectives that companies have in mind
when using social media sites for marketing or public communication. There are many cases in
point that can be used to illustrate how social media can achieve the above-cited objectives. For
instance, currently, the number of Facebook users accounts for about 2.5 billion, while Instagram
and WhatsApp account for 250 million and 250 million users each, respectively. There is a
noticeable behavioral change in the Facebook platform, especially regarding the audiences, when
using different Facebook services. In particular, while the older generations are more glued to
Facebook’s main platform, the younger generations appear to be shifting to WhatsApp and
Instagram58. 
It is important to mention that Facebook is credited for offering the most powerful ad
products in the market. The company has been able to achieve this is attributed to having most of
its propriety data presently available on the company’s platform. The ability of Facebook to
target a particular segment is also highly advanced, and continues to be important aspect
marketers are looking for when advertising59. In particular, the platform allows marketers to

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achieve the following target criteria, which are: interest, third party data, education, behavioral,
interest, demographics, professional experience, among many others. These are valuable aspects
that marketers consider when using Facebook, which could be of value to any business enterprise
considering using Facebook as its major advertising platform60. 
5a. Statistical Twins
These users seem to display identical features compared to other users who have already
been converted. In general, targeting statistical twins is important as it often leads to increased
conversion rates than when companies decide to market random targets to users. For instance,
excursus Facebook is an audience modeling that can allow the customized audience to achieve a
lookalike audience61. 
LinkedIn’s ability to target clients is one of the main features that has made the marketing
platform quite popular among professionals and marketers. There are various ways the platform
organizes its platform to ensure appropriate targeting. For instance, the platform organizes
members based on function, seniority, standardized job titles, and occupation. The other
categorization is based on size, university, company, and industry. Professionals are also grouped
in the platform based on gender, education, and skills. The other categorization used in the
platform to increase targeting is based on geography, interest, and grouping62. 
When talking about targeting, it is important to describe some key terms often used or
consulted when targeting. The first one is business-to-consumer or often called B2C, which
stands for business-to-client. The term is used to refer to communication done between an
individual consumer and business. Secondly, business-to-business is used to describe
communication carried out between two businesses and not between an individual consumer and
a business. 
Search engine marketing, is a concept used in digital marketing, and therefore it is
important to describe it, especially when discussing digital and social media marketing63. There
are many descriptions associated with search engine optimization or often shortened as SEM, but
this discussion will consider it as the use of multiple techniques to improve market exposure and

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visibility, for either a service, product, or brand. SEM techniques include search engine
advertising, and search engine optimization64. 
To start with, search engine optimization, there are various features associated with it.
For instance, it does not require an advertising budget. Also, it appears to have long-term effects,
especially because its results are dependent on the algorithms designed for the technique. In
terms of its influence, the technique can improve result rank, especially with technical
implementations and content for particular keywords used. The rank or position is often known
as google ranking and determines the market visibility of a product65. 
Search engine advertising is another concept associated with social and digital marketing.
Some of the features of this technique include its ability to give immediate feedback or achieve
immediate effects, which implies that marketers can observe results right away. The other feature
is regarding the advertising budget, which is needed in this case but is dependent on the price of
the keywords used. Lastly, marketers can achieve high results directly when using a separate
advertising area. These are some of the key features associated with search engine advertising.
Google is one of the main platforms used by the marketer for digital advertising. The platform
uses Google ads, and the ecosystem comprises search, shopping, and mobile66. 
 5b. Affiliate marketing
This is the internet-based sales of services and products. In this case, the commercial
vendor is referred to as the affiliate, acts as a broker, and is often involved with rewarding the
merchant, based on the success-oriented commission. The concept of affiliate marketing is not
that old, as it was developed around 1997, when Amazon was still in its infancy. The concept is
associated with Jeff Bezos, the founder, and CE of Amazon, credited for being the first to
implement the idea on Amazon. Back then, the affiliate marketing program was known as an
associate program, and offered advertisers attractive commission for influencing successful
purchases on Amazon67. In its year, the program attracted about sixty thousand partners and has
grown significantly to have about one million registered affiliates presently. After the launch of
the Amazon program, other companies embraced the idea and have successfully introduced
similar programs throughout the world. At the moment, affiliate marketing is a worldwide

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industry that is more than 6B in worth. Affiliate marketing remains an important component of
the digital marketing mix68. 
Affiliate marketing uses a specific model while marketing. In particular, a partner, who is
often regarded as an affiliate, would advertise a service or product on their website. When a
successful purchase is made, which can directly be traced back to the partner’s website, the
business partner would then be compelled to pay a commission to the affiliate based on the
negotiated value between the partner and the affiliate before any transaction is made69.  
The main difference that can be observed between traditional and affiliate marketing
portrayal of marketing is largely associated with compensation. In particular, when talking about
affiliate marketing, the website owners will get paid only when the users complete a particular
action, which is that they make a purchase. On the other hand, in display marketing, the
advertisers are compelled to pay for the traffic or impression on a website and do not consider
whether there was conversion70. 
An excellent example to illustrate this is when one brings about a thousand visitors to his
website when they click an affiliate link, directing them to a particular shop. When no one of the
thousand visitors makes a purchase, then in affiliate marketing, the website owner will not earn
anything. On the other hand, when one brings about ten visitors to the online shop, by
influencing them to click on the affiliate link contained in the website and which is directing
them to the online shop, when five of them makes a purchase, then the owner of the website is
going to be given a commission which amounts to five times the base value agreed upon to be
given to the advertiser as a commission71. 
Affiliate marketing can use two methods to achieve its goals, that is, direct and indirect.
Regarding the direct method, this involves using the partner program to send conversions to the
merchant. Also, the direct method involves two contact partners who happen to have direct
relationships. The last feature associated with the direct method is that the commission is paid
directly, especially when the conversion has been made successfully. The other method is the
indirect one, which involves a relationship of three contract partners, these are advertisers, the
networks, and the publishers. Moreover, the method entails sending conversions to the people
involved in advertising using affiliate networks. Lastly, this method involves the creation of
affiliate campaigns with particular publisher verticals. These are some of the features associated
with the two methods of affiliate marketing72. The latest development on affiliate marketing

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involves the use of Instagram to promote affiliate marketing. Other platforms being used for
affiliate marketing include comparison platforms and content websites. 
5ba. Roles and aims of affiliate marketing
The affiliate marketing programs are intended for conversion, and therefore to increase
sales. It is important to mention that the activities associated with affiliate marketing, which
cannot influence or uplift sales, can rightly be regarded as a financial failure. The most common
pricing system used for affiliate marketing includes cost per order and cost per lead, compared
with the cost per acquisition. When the advertisers are more focused on the brand's marketing
objectives, experts believe that affiliate marketing would not be the right channel to invest in.
Other than the fact that it has different pricing models, which are based on affiliate ads on sales,
the whole affiliate marketing method would be ineffective when used for branding. This is
because it will not be in a position to meet any requirement needed for brand marketing73. 
Affiliate marketing works best when companies are focused on performance-oriented plans for
marketing, where the potential users are directed to e-commerce offerings regarded as high-
quality. An excellent example of these plans would be consumers who purchase a videogame on
Amazon after being directed through an affiliate link contained on a tech blog74. 
There are different times when a person needs to use affiliate marketing. The first one is
based on return on investment. It is important to base the consideration of affiliate marketing on
economics. Affiliate marketing makes sense when the amount of the business enterprise spent on
the partner program is mathematically less than the amount of revenue the program would
generate. When dealing with advertisers, it is important to mention that affiliate marketing would
only be useful concerning transnationals, or the marketing approaches used for sales-oriented
such as insurances and travel services. Therefore, affiliate marketing will not be appropriate
when advertisers want to achieve branding and traffic objectives. Lastly, when trying to measure
the achievements made based on campaign targets, a business needs to use advanced
mechanisms for tracking. In most cases, the return on investment of affiliate marketing is
measured using attribution models75. 
5d. Display Marketing
When businesses’ experts are talking about display advertising, they are implying the
exposure generated using graphic ad formats like videos, animations, buttons, and banners, or
other assets that are being advertised. When such assets are presented on the websites, they are
often displayed on the page’s header, side frame or footer. Therefore, when users click on the ad
format, they will be then directed to the advertiser’s website. It is important to note that

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advertisers are compelled to pay for impressions, which then makes publishers able to monetize
the inventory only when the ads are being displayed76.
5da. The Background of Display Marketing
Display marketing remains gigantic, but a lot has changed, especially when considering
the fact that banner ads are no longer being used in display marketing. In addition, it is important
to point out that the development in display marketing has been spearheaded by the emergence
of display ad formats like moving images, media ads, and sticky ads, among many other display
ad formats. These ads appear to have a high influence on the audience, which is why they have in
recent times become popular77. 
The main direction of the influence of display marketing is on the maintenance and
development of brand awareness. In addition, with the use of display advertising, it is now
possible for organizations’ brands to attain upper-funnel objectives like traffic and branding. The
most common model used for pricing display digital advertising or marketing is the cost per
mile. In addition, there is evidence to show that display marketing as a tool used for marketing
does not deliver much when it comes to conversion rates, since it is often about 0.1 percent. For
that reason, it is always advisable to use display advertising when doing particular functions,
especially with regards to activities associated with the upper funnel. In addition, display
advertising could be effective when used together with other digital channels that would be used
as conversion drivers78. 
5e. Video Marketing
This is another form of marketing commonly used by advertisers to sell brands and
influence consumers into behaving in a particular way. When assessing the background of video
marketing, one realizes that people started viewing online videos around 2003, but it did not
have any commercial context in it. However, in modern times, video marketing has become
popular as it has become the most important and highest volume market in the digital world
ecosystem, especially when talking about marketing. The essential feature about video marketing
that makes it appealing is its ability to achieve massive reach when used by business brands or
advertisers and brands. Also, digital videos offer the highest reach opportunities in the digital
marketing mix79. 

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Video advertising, just like other marketing strategies, needs to consider certain things to
ensure success in marketing. For instance, the creative assets employed need to be of high
quality and respect the psychology associated with a particular platform. For example, it would
not be appropriate to put in on YouTube when doing a TV commercial. This reduces its
effectiveness as the target audience would consider such ad inappropriate and therefore fail to
deliver whatever brand message intended80.
Video marketing is also easily distinguishable both in outstream and instream advertising.
Therefore, the platform can address a particular audience because of its ability to target and
avoid waste in advertising significantly. Also, due to its massive audience, video advertising can
easily achieve efficient penetration of the audience81. 
There are two methods used for video marketing, and these are: outstream and instream
video marketing. To start with, the instream marketing, implies the impression often present on
the video ads in the current video stream. The in-stream video ads are associated with various
features, such as the fact that they are often skippable after about 3s, which means a person can
easily use the skip button to avoid them. The other feature about these ads is that they often
interrupt the natural user experience by using either post-, mid-, or pre-roll ads. Lastly, most of
these in-stream ads may be regarded as disturbing or intrusive due to their interrupting features. 
The other method used for video marketing is called outstream, which refers to the video
impression’s ads existing outside of the video streams, especially within the editorial
environment. Some of the features associated with the outstream method include the ability to
allow users to either watch them or not. In addition, unlike the instream, the outstream ads begin
on autoplay and can therefore be easily avoided using over-scrolling. Lastly, the ad format with
innovative features tends to be less intrusive but is not as developed than in install ads82.
5f. Video Editing
The use of online videos has increased worldwide, which is evident when assessing
statistics on user behavior. For instance, even though in 2006 there were about 28 percent people
consuming video content on the web, the number increased to about 82 percent when re-
evaluated in 2015. This pattern is likely to continue on the same trajectory into the future, which
will see most people consume video content83. 

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It is essential to mention that quite often, people tend to watch video content on mobile
devices. The growth in mobile devices, especially in the online platform, has become immense,
which is estimated to be over 600 percent growth from 2006 to 2015. In addition, in modern
times, videos that tend to be shorter than 10 minutes are likely to achieve a mobile share of about
88 percent. The amount of ads spent on digital video appears to be increased proportionally to
the video usage. The other noteworthy fact is the idea that the total spend is not growing
significantly because the budget used for videos is slowly being diverted to other marketing
channels. In recent times, TV ads have seen a massive shift in spending as any additional funds
used on video advertisement are from TV ads84. 
Video-on-demand is used to describe the method of consuming and calling videos,
especially from the online platform, without entirely storing and downloading the video file
being downloaded onto a device. Most people consider video-on-demand as the counterpart of
linear television85. 
The other term commonly used in video advertisement is user-generated content, which
refers to the media content, which is present either on a platform or website, but has not been
developed by the owner or operator but rather by users of the same platform. There are certain
aspects that the user-generated content has to meet to be regarded as ideal for use or marketing.
Firstly, it has to be published content, and secondly, it has to be a creative contribution. Lastly, it
has to be produced outside the professional routines86.
5fa.The Development of Video Marketing
The earliest trend in video marketing can be traced back to when TV broadcasters were
streaming services online and using VoD platforms. There is a wide belief that large media
platforms such as Amazon Prime Video and Netflix would finally open up to be used for
commercial. It is essential to mention that for advertisers have to incur cost when advertising on
all these platforms87. 
YouTube is the most successful video advertising platform globally, whose parent
company is Google. For advertisers, YouTube is ideal, especially because it has a relatively
wider reach but can also come across as highly competitive when laying out advertising
conditions for various video ad formats. However, despite the platform providing advertisers
with a competitive edge, it also has various disadvantages, including but are not limited to

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having a limited safety brand platform that advertisers are entering. In addition, YouTube has a
relatively high rate of UGC, which is not a good thing that most advertisers would prefer88. 
It is important to mention that other social video platforms like Snapchat and TikTok are
emerging and could give YouTube a stiff competition. The advantage that established brands
such as YouTube have is their ad products, which are quite advanced compared to either
Snapchat or TikTok, which are supposed to compete with established brands. Most advertisers
look for seamless integration when they use video platforms such as YouTube for advertising.
This implies that the creative execution provided by the video platforms used ought to be one
that allows for creative execution, which would then allow users to perceive the video ads used
in a positive light89. 
In social networking sites such as Instagram or Facebook, the online videos in such an
environment can be used for advertising purposes. In terms of production, the instream video
produced by editorial publishers tends to come across as expensive to be produced and is
relatively limited compared to text inventory. On the other hand, the outstream video can be
placed on any place on the website, which is an important consideration when advertisers are
trying to figure out which method of video content to use for advertising. Due to the feature
mentioned above, outstream videos enable publishers to monetize non-video features with video
ads' help. This is easily achieved without the need to use or produce expensive video content that
is meant to contain instream video90.
In the same way, Facebook is used to target a particular group, YouTube can also be
designed to target a particular group, either based on age or geographical region. This is
important for marketers who are trying to target a particular segment or demographic within a
given population or region91. 
5fb. The Objectives of Video Marketing
The most common objective of using video marketing is to reach as many people as
possible while at the same time carrying out the emotional appeal the company intends to put
across. Video marketing also targets users who can easily get enthusiastic regarding service or
products, as a result of video advertising. Such users tend to be highly relevant as far as funnel
entries are concerned and can therefore be easily converted into sales using other digital
marketing methods. There is a need to point out the significance of including emotional appeals
to brand messages used in most video ads, especially because such messages could contain or

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come across as complex content to the audience. This is particularly important when trying to
advertise different services or products that seem sophisticated, and which require explanation92. 
Despite the many benefits of video advertising, this form of marketing has many
disadvantages, which should be addressed. For instance, the rate of ad-blocker is now over 25
percent for video ads, and is expected to increase, which would make video advertising quite
expensive. The other negative aspect associated with video ads is the less attention they often
give to the ads, especially when presented as interrupting ads. Moreover, about three-quarters of
the population online tend to use VOD platforms for ad-free. This implies that the majority of
paid ads fail to reach a significant section of the targeted population. In addition, there is
evidence to show that about 46 percent of the video ads created do not reach the intended target
population93. 
6. Digital Marketing Conception
The conception process of digital marketing involves the application of the digital
marketing concepts discussed above to develop a plan that would be used for advertising or
marketing. For instance, the first step may involve picking the right channel mix. This requires
integrating various concepts from social media marketing, search engine marketing, video
marketing, and affiliate and display marketing94. 
With regards to social media marketing, there is a need to consider the best propriety
information, which will then be used for targeting. The goals to be achieved could be ensuring
there are high clicks on a website, high conversion rates, and increased interactions. Lastly, the
billing method used for social media marketing is the cost per click95. 
With regards to search engine marketing, the key thing to consider for targeting is the
keywords to be used. In terms of the objectives for search engine marketing, there are two mains
ones, which are: increasingly the conversion and clicks on the website. Lastly, the billing method
used for search engine marketing is the cost per click96. 
With regards to affiliate and display marketing, the target to be considered involves
editorial environments as well as relevant websites. The goal of affiliate marketing, as
highlighted before, is to increase or generate revenue and sales. On the other hand, display
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marketing’s objective is intended to generate reach and promote awareness of the services, or
products to be sold97. 
With regards to video marketing, the target to be considered include social demographics,
editorial websites, relevant websites, user affiliates as well as social demographics. The
objectives of video marketing should consist of uplifting brand awareness, storytelling, and
generating reach. When using video marketing, the message needs to contain specific elements
intended to evoke emotions when the message is presented to consumers. All these aspects could
be helpful when developing a digital marketing conception98. 
7. Conclusion
Overall, the discussion has shown that there are many concepts and strategies used in
digital marketing, which were contained in the course, and that are used to help digital marketers.
The new form of marketing has changed how companies relate with clients. For instance, in the
past, the discussion has shown that companies used to look for a client, do indiscriminate
advertising, be guided with intuition when marketing, put more value on a short-term bang with
potential consumers, and could not achieve many marketing channels. However, this has since
changed, as the new form of marketing has seen organizations being able to position themselves
where they can find clients quickly, and have increased targeting on potential clients. Also,
businesses are now adopting data-driven marketing methods, which tend to be more accurate
than relying on intuition. In terms of the value and role of digital marketing, the discussion has
shown that brand marketing is one. Its significance is that it tries to associate a particular brand
with services and products. It also improves the value of marketing by influencing consumers to
behave in a certain way intended by marketers. However, despite the value and effectiveness of
digital marketing, it also has its downsides. For instance, when digital advertising is used a lot, it
could lower the effectiveness of the message being promoted. Therefore, marketers should be
cautious how they use it to avoid generating undesired outcomes. The other noteworthy thing
about digital marketing that has been discussed above involves forms of digital marketing. These
forms include but are not limited to video marketing, display marketing, and affiliate marketing.
They all have objectives they seek to achieve, such as influencing online users to make
purchases, influencing them to view particular shops online, and targeting potential consumers
on new technical gadgets such as mobile phones and laptops. Lastly, the discussion has shown
that when marketers want to develop a digital marketing conception, it is essential to create a
plan that involves picking the right channel mix. Such a mix includes integrating the concepts of
social media marketing, search engine marketing, video marketing, and affiliate or display
marketing. Such a combination would help advertisers to achieve their intended goal. 

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8. Bibliography
Brill, Florian, “Digital Marketing Summer Certificate.” (July, 2020).
Brotspies, Herbert, and Art Weinstein. "Rethinking business segmentation: A conceptual model
and strategic insights." Journal of Strategic Marketing 27, no. 2 (2019): 164-176.
Chron Contributor. "Theories of Selling." Small Business - Chron.com. Accessed January 28,
2021. https://smallbusiness.chron.com/theories-selling-59532.html.
Cruz, Ryan E., James M. Leonhardt, and Todd Pezzuti. "Second person pronouns enhance
consumer involvement and brand attitude." Journal of Interactive Marketing 39 (2017):
104-116.
Dahlgren, Sanne, and Beatrice Tabell. "Personalized Advertising Online and its Difficulties with
Customer Privacy." (2018).
Piñeiro-Otero, Teresa, and Xabier Martínez-Rolán. "Understanding digital marketing—basics
and actions." In MBA, pp. 37-74. Springer, Cham, 2016.
Shen, Anyuan. "Recommendations as personalized marketing: insights from customer
experiences." Journal of Services Marketing (2014).