Display Advertising

Display advertising is a type of paid, targeted advertising, through which advertisers display ads on a display advertising network. There are different types of display advertising: text ads, visual ads, and video ads. There are also different channels, such as social media, websites, and mobile applications. There are many benefits of display advertising: companies are able to advertise on like-minded venues, can connect to clients on multiple channels, and are able to pay “per click” so they only pay for engagement.

But to be really effective, display advertising has to be targeted. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of advertising to a targeted group.

Advantages:

• You’re able to focus your advertising on those who are most likely to engage.
• Over time, you can use your data to adjust your advertising campaign to be more successful.
• You won’t spend money unnecessarily, improving your advertising ROI.

Disadvantages:

• You need solid demographic information. You need to know which targeted group is most likely to make purchases from your business.
• Your display advertising has to be effective. You need to create attractive and eye-catching ads that are targeted to the audience, too.

Apart from the advantages and disadvantages of targeting, companies also need to pay attention to display advertisement format and display advertising placement. Both format and placement will control how many customers actually view their ads.

There are different types of advertising, too – such as paid search advertising, under which companies pay to be displayed on search engine query pages. Why use display advertising? Usually, display advertising is used in conjunction with other forms of advertising. One of the primary features of display advertisement is that the marketer has control over the format and appearance of the ad, and the ad network in display advertising has an interest in ensuring that the ads function well.

Why is display advertising an effective acquisition channel? It’s easy to target, you can pay as you go, and you gain a tremendous amount of exposure. But you do need to know how to manage your advertising correctly if you want to succeed.

Google Ads

Google Ads is one of the most popular methods of advertising online, and it’s the first stop for many professional marketers. Google has two major types of advertising: Display Ads and Paid Search Ads. Most companies will engage in both types of advertising, but they may lean more heavily into one or the other depending on their business model.

Google Display Ads are displayed on the Google Display Network. Webmasters sign up for the Google Ads service and choose to display targeted ads on their website. A gardening site, for instance, will likely be showing ads that are targeted towards gardeners. Google display ad sizes will vary; marketers can choose from an assortment of the most common formats, and webmasters can also select the size that they want and where the ad will go.

Before reaching out to the Google Ad network, it’s a good idea for marketers to look at some Google display ads examples. When uploading display ads, the marketer will need to have a Google display network logo and Google display pages. They may also want to write messaging for the ad, such as a headline and a subtitle. An ad can be just an image, a video, a collection of images, or an image with text.

There are often Google Display network examples on websites such as HubSpot, as well as general display advertising examples. Most people are familiar with Google Display network sites. Nearly any time someone sees an ad online, they’re seeing the result of Google Display network targeting. And with so many types of Google display ads, the company should also decide which type of advertising is going to be more effective for them.

How to set up Google Display ads is a trivial process in itself: Google’s system walks you through how to upload and create an ad on their platform. It also provides granular controls, such as Google Ads placement targeting, and the ability to build an audience or upload a “lookalike” audience. Today, there are advanced features such as Google Smart Display Ads examples; Smart Ads adjust themselves automatically. Google Ads managed placements and the Google Ads placement tool can be used to control where your ads are positioned on the screen, though they don’t override how to add placements in Google AdWords for webmasters.

While looking into how to run Google Display Ads, companies may also want to consider Google Paid Search. Paid Search ads show up on the search query page beside other query results and are also highly effective, but they differ insofar as they can only be text. Google Display Ad inspiration and Google Paid Search inspiration can give you better ideas regarding how they operate and the difference between Google text ads vs Display Ads.

How is Google search different from Google Display advertising? It’s both format and venue. But most people are going to use both.

Classified Ads

Before there were display ads, there were classified ads. Newspaper ads may now be largely defunct, but they share a lot of commonalities with today’s display advertising. In fact, looking at newspaper advertisement examples can give people a good idea of what they’re looking at when they craft a modern display ad.

The advantages of newspaper advertising, when used as examples, is clear: Newspaper ads were highly effective, they were developed over decades of time, and they had to operate within similar parameters. Newspaper display advertising, like digital advertising, had to make an impact within a very small space. They had to tell the consumer exactly what to do – they needed to have a call-to-action. And they had to be persistent: Newspaper display advertising was often run for days at a time. Classifiedads usually weren’t changed either: It was a static ad for all those days.

But there are ways that newspaper advertising differed, too. People would sit down to read newspaper ads occasionally, which isn’t something that people do with online advertising. Newspaper ads were limited to certain font and size choices, so while they were in competition with each other for space, they didn’t have to differentiate themselves as significantly. And newspaper ads were more expensive: You paid for the amount of space you used, and it didn’t matter how many calls you got.

Just as there are different types of display advertising, there were also different types of newspaper advertising, such as classified and non classified. The difference between classified and non classified advertisement was simple. Classified ads were the ones that you saw in the “for sale” section, that were fairly small, and that were text-based (usually; sometimes you could pay for an image). Non-classified ads were those full page or half page ads you saw interspersed through the paper. Those were much more expensive.

In the old days, a newspaper advertisement introduction had to be snappy and fast. But they also had the benefit of an audience that was more likely to read them. Display ads need to dial engagement up to 11, but there’s still a lot that digital advertisers can learn from the print medium.

Display Ads Example

Take any display ads example and ask yourself to list the first things you see. Digital advertising examples give you the chance to see ads the way that consumers see them, and identify the areas in which ads are successful and in which they could be improved. Online ads examples can span the gamut between large, skyscraper banners, small mobile banners, and text-only. But even responsive display ads examples are going to have some commonalities to consider.

Display ads are all about the art of design. Digital advertising PowerPoint presentations go over how the eye is tracked over an image, where people focus, and what people are most likely to read. In a display advertising PPT, you can see numerous examples of design theory, such as the fact that people are generally more responsive to ads that have people in them. The display advertising Wikipedia page goes over the basics.

If you want to know how to write a display advertisement, you need to first look at as many video banner ad examples and display and video advertising examples as you can find. Take a look at their color palettes, how they use images, and how they are able to use short amounts of text effectively. Look at what the competition is doing to stand out, or what the competition could be doing better.

Don’t forget that your brand has to shine through. Whether it’s the colors of the brand, the voice of your brand, your logo, or other brand features, customers need to be able to tell at-a-glance that an ad is yours. Make sure to edit your company’s display ads for consistency regardless of the format and channel that’s being used, and test your ads thoroughly to see which ads are the most effective.

Display Marketing

Companies can’t just launch a display marketing campaign and hope for the best. Rather, they need to build a comprehensive strategy. Often, this begins by determining their buyer personas. Who are their key demographics? What segment will these ads be targeted to? From there, they need to build out their messaging: What information does the ad impart? What does the ad want the consumer to do next?

One of the major benefits of online advertising is how reactive it is. A company can almost immediately see whether it’s being successful. It will see if there’s a benefit of display advertising over search advertising, or whether they appear to be about equal. It will be able to compare and contrast visual banner ads vs display ads that are mostly text.

To take advantage of the benefits of banner ads, companies need to research what is and isn’t working within their industry. Banner ads are often ignored by customers if they are too flashy, and likewise if they are too dull. The company has to be able to find its own sweet spot. Website display ads meet most of the press advertising definition for traditional advertising models; consequently, looking at traditional advertising is also another way to figure out which ads will be most effective.

When looking to advertise a new business online, it’s important to create a number of strategies and test them out. Even the most experienced marketer doesn’t necessarily know which advertising campaigns are going to be most effective. The company has to test out display v search, calculate the ROI on display ads, and look into which display network for search ads (Google, Bing, etc) works better.

At the end of the day, advertising is a continual process. Marketers are going to be analyzing and fine-tuning their advertising campaigns on a monthly if not weekly level. But online advertising has proven to have a tremendously high ROI regardless, and it’s this major benefit that encourages companies to continue.