Digital advertising has really found its foothold: last year, online ad revenues surpassed television for the first time ever. Marketers are finding it more effective than just about any other form of advertising - but online advertising should come with a word of caution.

Neustar, a real-time provider of cloud-based information services and data analytics, found that companies waste 26 percent of their advertising dollars, by not picking the right outlets or technology for online ads.

What does that mean for you as a B2B marketer? It means identifying the best channels to allocate your advertising dollars and maximize your results.

Neustar says marketers and agencies waste digital dollars in five main ways:

1. Not identifying which channel will reach the target market: It takes some careful planning and market research to identify the target demographic and the best ways to reach people in that demographic. That way you can plan advertising that actually reaches your customer, not that just gets lost in the ether.

2. Overlapping ads: To make the most use of your online advertising, you need to identify unique segments of users on each channel to figure out where you'll get the most outreach. Remember, people use multiple websites, even ones that are very similar to one another, so it's important that you're not reaching the same small number of people with every ad.

3. Too many ads: Like in many other applications, when it comes to advertising, less can be more. Bombarding your market with frequent ads isn't the way to get people to click on them - they're more likely to just get annoyed and ignore them. Monitor your market to determine the best frequency, and then control it for optimum clicks.

4. Assuming first or last impressions are best: don't assume that the final ad a customer sees is the one that convinces him to make a sale - and only track analytics or that ad. Many marketers still use a last-touch attribution system, but that might not be the best way to go about it.

5. Not connecting online and offline efforts: Monitoring your marketing efforts across all platforms, digital and non-digital, will help you determine which channels are working - and which ones aren't worth your time or money.

At Ripley PR, we can help you identify the best options for advertising as part of your B2B public relations and marketing strategy. Contact us today to find out how we can help you with lead generation, franchise sales, and more.