Back to Introduction to Digital Advertising
University of Colorado Boulder

Introduction to Digital Advertising

Learn how digital advertising connects business objectives, audiences, creative formats, media buying, and performance measurement across the marketing funnel. You will examine display, search, social, video, native, mobile, and programmatic advertising; distinguish the roles of agencies and advertising-technology partners; and use common campaign metrics and spreadsheet calculations to evaluate results. The course emphasizes practical decision-making: selecting formats and placements, interpreting evidence, weighing privacy and targeting tradeoffs, and identifying opportunities to improve creative, budgets, and measurement. Examples of platforms and industry organizations are presented as dated illustrations of broader capabilities, so the concepts remain useful as tools and policies change. By the end, you will be able to explain how digital campaigns work, connect objectives to key performance indicators, and make more defensible advertising recommendations.

Status: Target Audience
Status: Digital Advertising
BeginnerCourse6 hours

Featured reviews

TH

Reviewed Jun 26, 2020

An excellent overview of all the aspects of digital advertising for people outside the industry and even people IN the industry (ahem), covering display/video, social, mobile and search advertising.

RS

Reviewed May 29, 2020

This course really gave me an informative and in-depth (with different sources) introduction to the digital advertising landscape

WZ

Reviewed Feb 24, 2021

In some cases I wish there was more content. Overall, I learned a lot as someone who has no solid base in advertising.

MS

Reviewed Nov 5, 2025

it should me all language is more comfortable forus poor people from rural villages, or it shuld be in simple english to understand easily for veryone

HC

Reviewed May 15, 2020

Great refresher, though I felt that the peer review could include an option to add feedback on the topics.

TC

Reviewed Jun 5, 2021

The course content is good but it should have included more video content. It was almost all reading assignments

GA

Reviewed Jun 20, 2024

I have never felt so connected throughout the course! So wonderfully structured and explained by the Prof. Thank you Coursera!

KM

Reviewed May 18, 2020

I really enjoyed this course. The material was digestible and clear to understand. I only request that there be more information leading up to the trade desk module.

PY

Reviewed Jan 13, 2020

Content is good, but the audio quality could be better and in several videos the slides appeared out of order or were not shown at all

LZ

Reviewed Sep 26, 2024

Very information to a new person in the AdTech industry. Helped with terminology and parts of the overall AdTech ecosystem. Thank you

SA

Reviewed Jun 5, 2020

Very insightful and great as a first course of specialization, however the Programmatic part was a bit convoluted and I had trouble understanding half of the material about Programmatic.

LL

Reviewed Mar 12, 2020

I think being more clear on the fact that the discussions are key to finishing the course would be helpful. I had to go back through and respond to the questions. :)

All reviews

Showing: 20 of 118

Deepak
3.0
Reviewed Jun 14, 2021
Khamis
2.0
Reviewed Jun 24, 2020
Roberto
5.0
Reviewed Oct 23, 2020
Katerina
5.0
Reviewed May 17, 2020
Lindsey
5.0
Reviewed Mar 13, 2020
Simily
5.0
Reviewed Apr 7, 2020
Sofya
4.0
Reviewed Jun 6, 2020
Khaled
4.0
Reviewed May 19, 2020
Pashala
4.0
Reviewed Jan 14, 2020
Nathan
1.0
Reviewed Dec 22, 2024
Sarah-Jane
5.0
Reviewed Oct 2, 2020
Jeremy
5.0
Reviewed Aug 9, 2020
Phú
5.0
Reviewed Aug 18, 2020
Georg
5.0
Reviewed Oct 27, 2020
Vivek
5.0
Reviewed Aug 22, 2020
santiago
5.0
Reviewed Oct 23, 2020
Fatima
5.0
Reviewed Dec 26, 2021
Víctor
5.0
Reviewed Feb 3, 2020
HIRAL
5.0
Reviewed Jul 9, 2020
ISABEL
5.0
Reviewed May 28, 2025