This article will teach you everything you need to know about display ads. There are lots of ways to achieve your goal, whether it’s building your brand or generating leads.
This course will teach you how to create ad campaigns that are both engaging and visually appealing, as well as how to target the correct audience. You will also learn how to construct a sales funnel that produces results. Before we get into that, let’s define what display ads are and how they contribute to your growth and digital marketing objectives.
Display Advertising
Advertisers use display advertising to promote their products or services by placing images, videos or other forms of creative advertising on websites or social media platforms. The goal of display advertising is to capture the attention of website or social media users and persuade them to take a desired action, such as visiting a website, downloading a product or becoming a lead.
These ads usually include text, images, or videos that persuade the viewer to click on a link that will take them to a landing page. The goal of these ads is usually to get the viewer to take some sort of action, such as making a purchase.
Most advertising campaigns are charged based on how many times someone clicks on an ad. This means that you will be charged for every time a user clicks on your ad on a search engine, based on your bid.
They can also be used for retargeting campaigns. This is where ads are served to users who have already visited a specific website. This is where ads are served to users who have already visited a specific website. The goal is to “re-engage” them and persuade them to come back to the site to take the same action (or an action at a different stage of the funnel).
What are some things that make a great display ad campaign? How can you put together compelling ad creative to attract your ideal audience?
Other Forms of Display Ads
The short answer is yes! Your display campaigns can come in several shapes and sizes, which include the following:
- Banner Ads: One of the oldest and traditional forms of advertising, banner ads usually appear at the top of websites in a “banner” format. Here’s an example from Amazon Prime:
- Interstitial Ads: These ads appear as web pages that are served to users before they are directed to the original page they requested. In the example below, you can see how this appears before accessing a web page or app on a mobile device:
- Rich Media: These ads include interactive elements, such as video, audio and clickable elements. The example below shows an ad from DemandGen that includes an opt-in form right within the ad itself:
- Video Ads: The YouTube advertising platform, as well as social networks like Instagram and Facebook, have opened a whole new avenue for marketers. Video ads allow you to reach your audience and connect with them on a personal level, and are well worth investing in.
Creating Awesome Ad Creative
It’s time to create effective and compelling ad creative to attract your perfect audience and get them to click.
Here are four tips to follow when planning and designing your creative display ad assets. This means that no matter your design skills, they will be helpful when you are trying to get (or keep) traffic.
1. Use the Right Language
However, rather than using text-based ads, display advertising uses rich media, like images, videos, and animations. Display advertising allows you to target specific customer segments using rich media, like images, videos, and animations, rather than text-based ads. You should address each group separately instead of treating them all the same.
For example, someone who owns an online shoe store might think that most of their customers buy shoes based on style. After talking to customers more closely, it is revealed that many of them purchase products for comfortability.
This store can identify the demographic and psychographic profile of their buyers in order to serve ads that are specifically tailored to them.
2. Use Catchy Copy
The copy in a display ad is just as important as the visuals. Here are a few things to keep in mind when crafting your copy:
- Establish urgency: Use words such as “now” and “need” in order to compel people to act (click) quickly.
- Make them curious: Ask questions and elicit an air of mystery by using phrases such as “beware,” “announcing” and “before it’s too late.”
- Use numbers and symbols: Numbers are easy to understand, which is key when grabbing attention. Use stats and include numbers when providing social proof to encourage people to click.
- Be bold: As important as the words you use is how you present them. Use bold lettering and typography that stands out. But make sure it’s clear to read.
In the example below, Hornitos incite curiosity using copy wrapped in sharp, on-brand typography:
3. Clutter-Free Imagery
Your imagery should be simple, free of clutter, and consistent with your brand. Use photos that represent what your brand is about.
Images can be helpful in conveying a message. Here, Dropbox uses a simple and light illustration that successfully grabs attention:
4. Compelling Call-to-Action
A call-to-action is necessary for your landing pages, PPC ads, and any marketing assets. This text provides an idea for how a company could make their “Copy” more attention grabbing – by creating a button-like shape.
This method is successful because internet users are accustomed to seeing this shape as a button. Since we’re taught to click on it when we see it, we do.
Your call-to-action should also usebenefit-driven or action-driven copy.
Display Ads Being Used
All the time. They have value across the entire buyer journey.
The traditional sales funnel is more of a concept these days, as buyer journeys are more complicated. However, I still find it helpful to think of things in terms of the stages of the funnel, as it helps to define tactics, use cases, and KPIs.
An example of this would be if I were to show a client a slide that demonstrates the advantages of using a full-funnel approach. There are display components located at different stages of the funnel.
Awareness
The display component refers to the use of programmatic, social media, native, OTT (video streaming), and YouTube to market and advertise a product.
The aim of these ads is to increase brand, product, or service awareness by targeting a large audience at a low cost-per-mille (CPM).
Engagement
The type of channels used for advertising largely remains the same, although there is less focus on display advertising that cannot be easily converted to another action, such as clicking through to a website.
Consideration
Your ad targets generally include some indication of what the person wants, either in a getting new customers or retargeting capacity.
For example, with Google Ads Custom Audiences you can target ads to people based on interests, previous interactions, and demographics.
Conversion
Most display impressions are served to users who have already expressed a high level of intent, such as those who have abandoned their shopping cart or visited other valuable pages on the site. Beyond this point, display prospecting generally falls off.
Advocacy
Your clients can be a great source of business for you, whether they’re talking about your brand to others or referring new customers to you. Display advertising is an excellent way to keep your brand in front of potential customers, so that when they are ready to buy, your company is the first one they think of.
Display advertising is important at each stage of the funnel.
Measuring and Optimizing Display Ads
Advertising performance metrics can be difficult to determine for companies who are only focused on short-term revenue, since a lot of display ads are used for the initial part of the process.
You can achieve success and gain long-term support by planning ahead. Here are several key considerations when coming up with your measurement plan:
Account Structure and Naming Conventions
Having the correct hierarchy and terminology is key to being able to accurately measure display ads (and other things).
When you structure your campaign names, ad groups/sets, ad names, and labels with segmentation in mind, you will be able to easily analyze the data in your preferred data visualization tool.
This allows you to make decisions about which display ads and targeting will work best for your KPIs.
An example of a Tableau-based ad testing dashboard from one of our clients. We can see the value proposition, imagery, member (person), and banner type.
Align with Stakeholders
It is important to align with stakeholders on what success looks like.
Before you use display ads, especially at the top of the funnel (and/or in the Advocacy stage), I highly encourage you to:
- Map out what your KPI recommendations are.
- Explain why you are recommending those things (past experience, industry research, etc.).
- And get written buy-in.
In addition, set a goal for when you want your revenue to increase.
Oftentimes, poor communication is to blame for disgruntled stakeholders. The best way to avoid problems is to be intentional about alignment from the beginning.
Redefine Success
Phase one of the funnel is the awareness phase. Pre-click KPIs are often used as the goal to expose a target audience to a brand multiple times to build awareness.
Advertisers often have a hard time keeping people interested once they have them engaged. There are KPIs that make the impact of display ads clear.
Here are four:
- Brand search impression lift.
- Organic & paid search CTR lift.
- Direct visitor lift.
- Unattributed lead lift.
There are a few things you can do to increase conversions from the top of the funnel to the bottom.
” What are some other indicators that a person is interested in what you are offering, aside from making a purchase? What indicates intent?”
For example:
- Time on site threshold (e.g., >60 seconds).
- Article views (URL contains + 75% page scroll depth).
- Newsletter subscriptions.
- Social icon clicks.
- Key page views (e.g., /pricing).
A negative intent signal is an indication that someone does not intend to follow through on something. This could be something as simple as not responding to a message, or it could be something more serious, like canceling plans at the last minute. A bounce within 5 seconds of landing is one example of an activity that burns a lot of calories. This article provides research and strategies to help get buy-in for initiatives related to aligning top-of-funnel KPIs.
If you are a B2B advertiser, you should track and agree upon ABM KPIs. Examples include:
- Total accounts touched.
- Account touchpoints (impressions within org).
- Account engagement (clicks within org).
- Account saturation (# of individuals within an org served ads/clicked on ads).
- Influenced opportunities ( >25 impressions).
- Lead-to-x conversion rate (e.g., lead to SQL).
- Pipeline velocity (days from lead to SQL, Opp, Closed/Won, etc).
The Benefits and Downsides to Display Advertising
There are pros and cons to every marketing activity, including display campaigns. Let’s start by looking at the benefits and downsides of display ads before getting into some actionable and in-depth advice on how to apply them to your business.
First, the pros:
- Diversity: Display ads come in many shapes and sizes. And as you’ve seen above, they can be presented in a number of formats, too. This means you can choose a style and advertising format that will help you achieve your goals.
- Reach: Thanks for the Google Display Network (GDN), you can access millions of sites straight from your Google Ads account.
- Targeting: Because of GDN’s extensive reach, you can also target the right audience by placing your ads on the right websites. This includes demographic and geo-targeting, along with specific interests of your target audience.
- Measurable: Clicks, impressions and conversions can all be tracked from Google Ads, as well as Google Analytics for more granular performance and engagement tracking.
This all sounds great, but what about the cons? There are some downsides to display ads, including:
- Banner Blindness: Because of the prolific nature of display ads, many users have come to ignore them completely. This means a lower click-through rate. However, this can be circumvented using remarketing and rich media ads. You’ll learn all about remarketing later in this guide.
- Ad Blockers: Along with this, ad blocker technology has risen in popularity over the last few years. Many brands and media outlets have tried to circumvent this, however, by giving users the option of allowing ads or purchasing a subscription:
Although there are some small disadvantages, display advertising is still effective – especially when it is done correctly.
Conclusion
A full-funnel marketing strategy that focuses on creative elements (such as display ads), target audience, offer, and user experience will be successful in the long run.
Display ads are a key part of a complete marketing strategy. They use extensive advertising to make customers aware of the benefits, products, and services of the brand in order to increase curiosity, engagement, and support.
They are also good at helping to communicate a brand’s identity, culture, and what makes it different from others. When done correctly, display ads can help to efficiently reach a larger audience.
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