What Exactly is a Vertical?

[Christopher Zito]

Since I started learning about AM, I'm hearing the term "vertical" used a lot. I looked it up and every definition I read still leaves me confused. Could someone please give a clear, simple definition of what a vertical is?

 

[bruce bates]

This is only my understanding and may not be perfectly accurate

Definition: Vertical markets, or "verticals," are business niches where vendors serve a specific audience and their set of needs. ....

By contrast, a horizontal market has a focus that reaches a wide array of individuals, regardless of their industry or particular niche. Online businesses commonly engage verticals in targeted marketing or outreach campaigns.

To put it simply verticals are advertisers and businesses you use to target those in a specific niche.
A horizontal on the other hand are advertisers you use to target a mass array of people in a less targeted way.

Unless you sell something like toothpaste you almost never want horizontals when dealing with online marketing.

So for example if you decided your niche was affiliate marketing, you could consider affiliatefix as part of your vertical - ie the website where you run ads to target the niche of affiliate marketing.

This means when someone asks "have you selected a vertical" effectively they are asking "have you selected a network to run ads that can target your niche".

Again this is only my understanding of it, and I am not always an expert on terminology.

 

[Graybeard]

|TRANSPORTATION|HOUSES|BANKS|CLOTHING|
Verticals are major categories

 

[Christopher Zito]

Thanks for the responses. So let me check to see if I understand:

If someone asked me what vertical my business will focus on, and I say "gardening", would that be a correct use of the term?

 

[azgold]

Thanks for the responses. So let me check to see if I understand:

If someone asked me what vertical my business will focus on, and I say "gardening", would that be a correct use of the term?

Yup. And a niche could be tomatoe gardening, or winter gardening, organic gardening, etc.