Dear Congressman questioning Mark Zuckerberg: You Don’t Know Squat about Digital Advertising. Let’s fix that.

Screenshot of the Facebook ad platform targeting women aged 40 to 46 in the state of Virginia who like chocolate.

Dear Congressman

Please note that the global digital advertising marketing will grow to $335 billion by the year 2020. Also note that nearly two-thirds of that spending will go to two U.S.-based companies: Google and Facebook. From your questioning of Mark Zuckerberg in committee it is obvious that you know precious little about how this market works.

Here’s a primer in 10 bullet points:

1. What is it? Digital advertising allows companies to market goods and services via the Internet.
2. There are 2 basically types of advertising: search and display. When an individual uses a search engine (like Google or Bing) to look up information the search engine shows advertising relevant to that search. When an individual is browsing an online newspaper or social network (like the Wall Street Journal or Facebook.com) advertising will appear as visual or textual ads is specific places.
3. Platforms — Companies looking to sell products and services will use advertising platforms to publish their ads and target specific audiences. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bing, Yahoo, and recently Amazon all provide their own advertising platforms (or engines). Companies upload their ads and use…