Giving Your Startup a Head Start: 4 Tools for Digital Advertising with No Platform Fee

Digital advertising has been a boon to small businesses. It helps them reach their target audience and get more opportunities to enhance their sales. But typically, small business owners have a limited budget to work with, making subscribing to expensive ad services a problematic option.

But for those of you who are more into a hands-on approach, a good set of free digital advertising tools can make up for what most professional paid services can do. Here, we have listed some of the essential tools to help you get started on your digital entrepreneurial journey.

Self-Serve Demand-Side Platform

A self-serve DSP (demand-side platform) is a software tool that helps you manage your ad auctions by automating media buying using real-time bidding technology. As the name implies, instead of outsourcing programmatic advertising to a third-party service, you get complete control of the platform. You can manage all your campaigns on your own and adjust the settings as required whenever you want.

Self-serve DSPs allow you to program ad trading and are also the most cost-effective solution to get started with. Some characteristics of a self-serve DSP that makes it a perfect tool for startup owners are:

• It charges zero platform fees;
• Easy ad management;
• Real-time analytics & reporting;
• Auto-optimization tools.

In-Built Advertising Platforms On Social Media

Almost every popular social media network comes with an inbuilt ad platform letting you reach your target audience more effectively. Social media advertising is known for its high ROI and ability to connect with the right audience and generate better engagement.

Small businesses have a lot to gain from social media ad platforms, and you can get started with the free features first. While other marketing tools take time and may have inconsistent results over time, social media advertising can give you consistent results from day one.

You can also check out related supportive free tools like bit.ly (URL shorteners), Easel.ly ( for creating engaging infographics), Headline Analyzer, and more to further enhance your social media ad campaigns.

Free Ad Creative Builders

Many online platforms and tools let you create some beautiful and interactive content in the form of video or rich media that you can use as your ad material. Small businesses may not have the budget, time, or resources to make high production value videos and ad content like display banners from scratch. But by using creative ad builders, you can easily and quickly create rich media content, video ads, and all types of social media and online ads.

Free Ad Platforms

Most ad platforms can be signed up for free, and you only have to pay when your ads make the impressions or get clicked by a prospective customer. Google Ads is the best example of such an ad platform.

There are also entirely free tools like Google My Business that help you promote your business on the Google network like Google Search and Maps. You can use this tool to create your online business profile, connect with your customers and observe customer interaction with your business on the Google network.

The Bing search engine, too, has a similar tool called Bing places for business which is also a free tool. It helps promote your business on Bing Search and Maps.

Wrapping Up

Running a startup on a shoe-string budget is a challenging task. However, with a bit of diligent planning, the right set of tools, and an excellent team, you can make your presence felt among your target audiences. Give your startup a head start that it deserves, and go ahead on your entrepreneurial journey. That said, if you want to improve your business efficiency, this article provides interesting insights.