They seem to be everywhere, staring you straight in the face. Remember the outdoor advertising you used to see on the road en route to school or work? These days, billboards are found not just on the road, on buildings or in the mall, but virtually everywhere in the online world.
They seem to be everywhere, staring you straight in the face. Remember the outdoor advertising you used to see on the road en route to school or work? These days, billboards are found not just on the road, on buildings or in the mall, but virtually everywhere in the online world.
The Internet has its own billboard advertising, too—while you may know it as “programmatic advertising” or the more familiar, “banner ads”, it is, quite simply, “display advertising”.
By answering these Top 10 Questions You Must Ask About Display Ads, NEO360 gives you an in-depth look at what display advertising is and how it can help your business grow. In it, you’ll learn:
If you’d prefer a more personal explanation of the inner workings of display ads, ask us for a display advertising walkthrough at NEO360 today.
Display advertising, or contextual advertising, is a form of online advertising that aims to expose your brand to your target market, in order to enforce brand awareness and recognition. Much like traditional types of advertising such as billboards, prints ads and TV ads, display ads provide upfront information to help your target market decide whether to choose your product.
With so many advertising techniques to choose from, advertisers are often confronted with the question of whether to choose display, native, or search advertising, or all three for their campaigns. To help you decide, here are some of their distinguishing characteristics that advertisers might want to consider.
If you are a brand that’s just starting out, display ads or native ads are a good way to start driving brand discovery and awareness.
With a better knowledge of what display advertising is, marketers and advertisers can tell exactly when and where which kind of ads—whether for B2C or B2B advertising—is best used for which campaigns.
To use display ads is to advertise website-based—the banner for websites or ads are embedded in specific sections of websites that target the same market as the product it is selling. These ads can include text, advertising images, videos, sounds, animation or other highly-interactive elements to attract the attention of website visitors.
Remember the good old days when the only decision you had to make while surfing was whether you would click on the web banner that said, “Have you ever clicked your mouse right here? You will.”
A lot has changed since then. The web marketing world today can often be confusing for marketers and their markets. It is a world full of clichés and buzzwords that have been so overused that they’ve lost their meaning. Every business claims theirs is the best and the most preferred, and everything seems to be right in your face which makes buying decisions harder to make.
Digital display advertising and banner marketing have evolved so much since they started 15 years ago. From flashy, neon, flat display banners, we’ve come to the age of highly-interactive media display. However, in order for us to make sense of the present and look forward to the future, we have to revisit the past.
It was in the year 1993 that web advertising can be said to have been born, when the first display ad was sold by Global Network Navigator. Global Network Navigator was the first ever commercial web publication which offered clickable ads, and is also now considered as the first commercial website in history.
In October 1994, the first rotating advertising banner was introduced by HotWired, the first ever commercial web magazine. HotWired worked independently and separately from Wired, its printed counterpart, and therefore needed funds to pay its writers. This is when the first banner display ad was conceived and introduced to the public.
HotWired, after pressing concerns on budget, thought of a plan to allot sections of their website to advertisers who want to promote their products, much like how it works with print magazine ads and newspaper ads. These ad spaces were leased to advertisers, who had to pay upfront online advertising costs in exchange for banner ad exposure in certain parts of the website at certain times of day.
The first ever ad space sold by the web magazine was to AT&T above-the-fold, at the very top of their website for a span of three months for $30,000. The webpage banner or “banner ad” (which was a term coined by HotWired itself), when clicked, would direct visitors to the first landing page in history.
As advertising banners continued to be popular in 1995, advertisers thought of a way to get a higher click-through-rate (CTR) than the 44% rate achieved by the AT&T ad: instead of showing their ads on random websites, advertisers would show their ads to the consumer demographics they actually targeted. Hence, companies like WebConnect were born out of the emerging need for this kind of advertising services.
WebConnect, a digital advertising agency, began specialising in helping advertisers make sure that their online banner ads were shown on websites most likely to be visited by their target market demographics.
It was also in 1995 that the same online advertising agency introduced the CustomView tool to prevent “banner fatigue”. To keep people from becoming sick of a banner ad they have seen too often, the CustomView tool limited the number of times a specific ad is shown to a specific website visitor.
Through these digital advertising revolutions, advertisers were able to reach more relevant consumers – those who were more likely to buy their products. Through the rise of the precision targeting tools of those times, website publishers also began to show display banner ads that were more applicable to their readers.
The company DoubleClick ruled the advertising world in 1996. It was an online advertising network agency that introduced DART (Dynamic Advertising Reporting and Targeting), a tool that allowed advertisers to monitor their ROI by tracking consumer clicks. DART also allowed advertisers to further improve their ads according to the data gathered by advertisers on their ads’ performance.
Through an extensive network of websites as advertising media, as well as premium ROI tracking tools, DoubleClick became one of the most successful ad network agencies of its time.
Because of the performance-based tracking DoubleClick devised that year, a new pricing model for online advertising was also introduced: Cost-per-impression (CPM). When display advertising started, advertisers had to pay flat website advertising rates or fees for ad spaces being leased by website publishers for a certain number of months. With CPM advertising, publishers were paid according to the ad’s performance or the number of times people saw the ad on their websites.
Web banner ads slowly but steadily began to fail because of decreasing cost of advertising or banner prices and CTRs. As they could not rely on web banner advertising, website publishers had to think of other ways to monetise their websites. In 1997, Ethan Zuckerman was said to be the first person to create code that allowed pop-up and pop-under ads to open up to a new window that redirected to the advertiser’s landing page. ExitExchange became the first to create pop-under ads.
However, because most people find these ads intrusive and annoying, the success of pop-up ads ended as soon as it began. They were soon disregarded as an online advertising medium as web browsers devised codes that would block pop-up ads.
Digital banner ads have since become a form of creative advertising, becoming more interactive and attention-grabbing. The animated banner is a good specimen of these banner ad examples. Tools in targeting and ROI-tracking have become more precise. Advertisers now find more value in storytelling via display ads and other ad formats. But as more people distrust and find these ads intrusive, is display advertising still worth the advertiser’s money and effort?
Why should you get Google Display Advertising to work for your business?
The Display Network of Google AdWords reportedly reaches 90% of internet users via various websites around the world. This, in spite of some digital advertisers in the paid search community who say that the Google Display Network (GDN) in Google AdWords doesn’t really work and is just a waste of your time and money.
However, the convenience of the Google Display Network today is such that it is increasingly being used to reach more of your target customers or website visitors. Here are three reasons why GDN can really be great for your business.
One of our campaigns on the search network averages around $10.00 per click. On the other hand, the ads we have on the Google Display Network is only at less than $1.00 per click.
The cost of your campaign on the search network can skyrocket if you don’t manage your campaign carefully, because of the high average cost. Moreover, the search network competition is really a big battle for ranking or topping Google’s search results. This means that it would be very expensive in some cases to bid for your brand using expensive keywords.
A low quality score is a dilemma in the Google AdWords search network, because it results in low visitor traffic to your website—which in turn means you get a low number of conversions or leads.
The display network, however, doesn’t work that way because you can directly manage your targeting through keywords, placements, interests, topics and remarketing. As a result, your target audience will increase dramatically.
Remarketing involves showing paid ads to users based on their past activity on your website. This ability of GDN permits digital advertisers to follow previous visitors and show ads to them across Google’s large network of partner sites on the GDN. These sites may include Youtube, Facebook or any other website your previous visitors browse.
Moreover, this tool helps you to win back the interest of past visitors who didn’t purchase or convert. Remarketing helps advertisers complete the circle of engagement on paid search where you always keep previous visitors engaged on your website.
A lot of digital advertisers do not use the Google Display Network in their campaigns because of the vast targeting involved. They think that they will just waste money by using GDN. They may not be aware that this can expand your audience reach and can really increase brand awareness as promoted by your site. An increase in awareness will most likely increase the engagement on your website.
Google AdWords is the largest Display Advertising provider. With AdWords, you even reach users who search with other search engines apart from Google. Search engines advertising also covers YouTube, which ranks as the second-largest search engine.
The Google Display Network (GDN) allows advertisers to choose the ad formats they want to use. The formats may be based on website context or target audience. As the Google ad network expands, advertisers must recognise how important Display Advertising is in promoting their businesses, particularly for small business advertising efforts.
When creating display ads Google gives you a wide variety of formats.
Text Ads consists of headlines and two lines of text. It allows advertisers to create a wide range of ads to see what is effective and garnering the most clicks.
These are the types of standard text ads:
Image ads feature fixed images that take up the entire ad space on a website—care must be taken to ensure guidelines are followed, as ads that violate policies are subject to disapproval.
Video ads are popular because of YouTube’s accessibility and its inclusion in the Display Network—ads may be placed in YouTube videos.
Rich media ads include online video advertising, audio, animation or any platform that engages interaction with the audience such as a photo carousel.
Google Adwords has these guidelines for those who want to design banner ads:
The Interactive Advertising Bureau or IAB also has guidelines of its own for display ads that advertisers need to be aware of.
Display Ads come in different standard banner sizes.
GDN offers different Ad Block Sizes, where each ad block that comes out on Google is designed to fit in a particular website layout. It is good practice to create Google display banners in different banner ad sizes to be able to come out on different websites—if your online banner design doesn’t come in different sizes, you limit the audience you are able to reach.
Banner web design that features images and rich media may have more chances to get higher click-through rates, but they have less visibility. This is because one image ad takes up a single block which has enough space for three text ads. Banner ads cost may be higher for displaying your ad in this space.
These are the top performing web banner sizes for Google display ads:
| Ad Size | Description |
| 300x250 | This size has more available inventory from advertisers, and contribute to higher earnings when combined with text and ad images. This is also called the “medium rectangle”. It performs best when displayed with text content or at the end of articles. |
| 336x280 | This size has more available inventory from advertisers, and contribute to higher earnings when combined with text and ad images. This is also called the “large rectangle”. It performs best when displayed with text content or at the end of articles. |
| 728x90 | This size has more available inventory from advertisers, and contribute to higher earnings when combined with text and ad images. This is also called the “leaderboard”. It performs best when displayed in forums or placed above main content. |
| 300x600 | This size gives advertisers a lot of space for displaying their messages and encouraging users to engage. This is also a particularly effective size visually, and the size for growing the number of impressions quickly. It is also known as the “half-page”. |
| 320x100 | This is an alternative size for 320x50 and the 300x250. This is also called the “large mobile banner”. It has twice the height of a mother leaderboard. |
Remember: A clear call-to-action and a branding message must be included in your Google banner ads. Your banner ad design should always be relevant to the website and its content.
If you don’t have a lot of resources for creating display ads or banner design, you may use the Google AdWords Display Ad Builder to make creative banner ads.
Audience targeting plays a big part in creating effective Google Display ads. Great ads won’t do you any good if they aren’t seen by the right people. Driving the correct potential consumers towards a particular product is what makes a campaign successful.
The Google Display Network allows you to reach your target customers by letting you choose the websites or webpages where your ads appear.
A great way to get started on display targeting is to use keywords and affinity audiences
Picking out people to show your ads to according to their interests is done by making ad groups on the GDN. These people are identified based on the websites they’ve visited, the apps they use or the videos they’ve seen on YouTube.
The affinity audience of our sample art supply store, therefore, includes the people who have visited painting websites, use certain apps to edit their hand-drawn illustrations or watch YouTube painting tutorials. These the ones who are most likely to see your ads.
You may also use in-market audiences when you target, which are made up of people who are actually looking to buy (your) particular products. They may be using Google to search or browsing your or your competition’s website to shop around or compare.
GDN gives you a lot of leeway in terms of how wide a net you want to cast (or your budget allows you to cast) to catch customers. For starters, you have two basic targeting methods:
1. Target and Bid. You can fine-tune the reach of your targeting using the “target and bid” option, which makes sure that your ads are shown only on websites or pages that have the keywords and/or the affinity audiences you specified.
When you have a group of ads that have the same target keywords, you form an ad group. Returning to our example above, some sample ad groups might be the following:
Ad group: oil painting
canvas
linseed oil
palette
palette knife
chiaroscuro
Ad group: watercolour
watercolour paper
hot press
cold press
paper tape
wet on wet
Ad group: paintbrushes
sable brush
synthetic brush
watercolour brush
flat brush
round brush
Given these ad groups, GDN will show the ad for your art supplies shop only on websites that have something to do with these keywords. Every time the keywords cause an ad to come out, you will be asked for a bid or your Cost Per Click (CPC).
You can get detailed instructions for creating ad groups here.
2. Bid only. This option allows you to show your ads on websites or pages that fall outside of your specified audiences and keywords.
Google says that as of January 18th 2017, display ad groups without a specified targeting method will be allowed to show ads on the GDN.
Making Your Targeting More Accurate
Digital marketing pros who are GDN adepts can further refine their display targeting to meet their marketing objectives. This is done using targeting methods in addition to keywords and audiences such as age, gender, topic and placement.
Being super specific as to who will see your ads is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you become more sure that those who do see your ads are even more likely to be receptive (and more importantly, to convert).
On the other, your targeting might become so refined that hardly anyone will be able to meet your specifications to even see your ads. This is where having display advertising specialists can be a great help in getting your display ad campaign off the ground.
You can get more details on how GDN’s targeting options work here. For even more details, keep an eye out for NEO360’s upcoming in-depth discussion of targeting on the GDN.
Because by targeting the right audiences and placement, the Google Display Network becomes a powerful digital marketing tool.
In creating a campaign for Display Ads, you first need to choose a Campaign Type and Sub-Campaign Type. The Campaign Type specifies where you will be showing your ads to customers, and what format they have to be in (i.e. images or videos). The Sub-Campaign Type selects the options and settings for your campaign—this type can be used to achieve a particular advertising goal.
These are the different Display Ad campaign types that you can set up and use:
When it comes to advertising management, you must learn how AdWords is structured to put together a well-organised campaign, This will help you create an effective campaign and set advertising goals.
These are the three layers of AdWords:
Ad Groups enable you to set up separate campaigns, each with a focus and goals that can drive traffic to your website or to other sites that are most likely to offer your products or services. Banner exchange networks and demand-side platforms or DSPs also provide an option to find sites for displaying your ads. You may also set up using geotargeting or selecting locations in the vicinity of your target areas.
You can also organise your Ad Groups, which allows you to put campaigns together to form sets of ads and keywords that are related to each other. This can increase your quality score and give you the return on your investment.
Remember: Target audience is a huge factor, as the right audience will enable your ad campaign to make a huge impact and reach your advertising goals successfully.
These are the things to consider when setting up bids and budgets:
You might also want to try out the campaign’s ad delivery method, where you can see how quickly your ads are shown, and how long your budget lasts within a single day.
Once you have set up the targets and budgets, you may now create a specific ad group. It is better to create separate ad groups for each team or product. Each ad group has its own set of keywords, ads and bids that you will be managing—these are the main components of ad groups that run on the Search or Display Networks.
These are the guidelines for selecting and organising your keywords:
When researching new keywords, use the Keyword Planner or Display Planner. Check the Search Terms Report to see what people typically search for when they view or click on your ads.
When optimising your keywords, use keyword match types to see and control which people get to view your ads. Include negative keywords to filter terms that are not related to your ads.These are the main points to remember when creating effective ads:
Remember: You can always experiment and research which of the best ads make the most impact in marketing your products and services.
Ever wonder why you see Display Ads or Text Ads while browsing or searching on Google? These ads seem to follow you wherever you go or whatever you do on the Internet—whether you’re checking your mail, checking your Facebook account or watching YouTube, the ads keep popping up on your desktop computer, laptop or mobile phone.
This is the power of the Google AdWords Remarketing Campaign. Remarketing or retargeting enables you to show your ads to people who have visited your website—those who have made purchases on your website as well as those who made no transactions at all. Remarketing specifically shows your ads to visitors who did not purchase or transact on your site, targeting them where they will be browsing in the future.
These are ways for reaching your target audience using Remarketing Campaigns:
Before creating a Remarketing Campaign, it is very important to determine the kinds of people you want to target in order to achieve ideal results.
1. Targeting visitors who took no action on your website
In Google Analytics, a high bounce rate is a huge no-no for digital marketers. In advertising statistics, a bounce rate represents the percentage of visitors who view a page on your website and then leave without viewing your website’s other pages.
Remarketing helps you to get these visitors to return to your website by showing ads to them as they browse elsewhere on the Internet. This is commonly done through retargeting, usually with tools like AdRoll. Moreover, you can choose how long you will be targeting them—the default duration is 30 days while the maximum is 540 days.
2. Targeting visitors who abandoned their checkout carts
Remarketing helps you to get visitors who were shopping on your website to complete an abandoned purchase. The ads are specifically for the products or services left in the cart, which will continue to follow these visitors wherever they go on the Internet after they have left your site.
Such visitors do not complete their purchases for a variety of reasons, usually financial ones—they may not have enough funds or might be waiting for special offers or discounts. Remarketing helps to remind these visitors that they can complete their purchases at any time.
In conclusion, the Remarketing Campaign of Google AdWords in a great way to reach back out to potential customers who may be interested in your products or services. We at NEO360 can help you set this campaign up and to achieve your desired results.
Would you like to know how display advertising can elevate your brand and your business in the digital space? Get in touch with us today
If you have ever wondered at the ability of display advertising to maintain meaningful connections with an ever-growing number of people, consider this: there are 1 Trillion impressions every month on the Google Display Network across more than 2 million websites. (This number does not include Facebook, Bing and Baidu Networks.) When you add the consideration that GDN presents ads to different demographics and locations, you might get an idea of how big and awesome display advertising is.
Display ads give advertisers an alternative to search engine optimisation or SEO, which takes some time before results can be assessed. Paid display advertising is the fastest way to drive instant traffic and leads. When done correctly, display can result in not just leads but brand loyalty.
While many companies prefer text ads to get their message across, a growing number of companies are going all out for display advertising—especially those that are pursuing brand awareness and loyalty. For example, Macy’s Department store spent $16 million on display and $32 million on search in 2015, which sounds like a lot of money, but is just a drop in the bucket by comparison.
Here are three reasons why online display advertising will remain a powerful tool for effective business branding for both small and big companies.
The reasons why Facebook display ads are growing faster than Google’s is that Facebook has been able to execute people-based marketing programmes for advertisers. In addition, it enables custom audience targeting which leverages existing traffic and leads to an increase in sales.
For the year 2017, we’ve been looking forward to how display advertising will continue to grow and dominate our clients’ digital marketing campaigns. Display advertising has been a powerful tool for reaching new customers, building positive brand perceptions and increasing leads and sales.
Check out our display advertising page and get started with your own advertising today.
Since display advertising first surfaced in the world of marketing, many have found success in employing this digital marketing channel. Here are three case studies of past and present clients that used display advertising to reach new customers and build positive brand perceptions for their businesses.
At NEO360, we’ve worked with a number of physicians and healthcare professionals in Australia for over 10 years. In that time, we’ve helped cosmetic surgery clinics to promote their brand and services across different medical-related channels through display advertising.
Among them was Esteem Cosmetic Studio, which wanted to promote their new liposuction services in Brisbane and Sydney. In addition to reaching more people and making them aware of these services, the Studio also wanted to receive enquiries from their website traffic, as well as impressions.
To reach these goals, we launched a display advertising campaign for liposuction services targeting relevant websites in Australia and other well-known third party websites, where most people who are interested in cosmetic surgery spend more time online.
Below are the top 10 websites where we purchased placements to promote liposuction services through the Google Display Network.
For this campaign, we were able to reach 8.8 million people in Australia and receive 144 leads. The total cost of the campaign was A$10,133.00.
NEO360’s understanding of the customer’s buying cycle is what sets it apart from other digital marketing agencies. We know which digital channels are ideal at a particular stage of the cycle, for reaching a customer, and influencing his buying decision.
Display Advertising comes in at the beginning of the customer’s buying cycle, at the moment when he acknowledges that he has a problem, or a need. Your brand, or specifically your product or service, solves that problem, but your customer may not be aware of it.
Display ads are a fast and efficient way to make the customer aware of your brand. Very simply, customers can’t buy your product if they don’t know it exists.
Display ads play an essential role in building your brand online because it enables you to make sure that you target the right people using the right channels. This means that your brand will be seen by potential customers on the sites, search engines and social media platforms they are most likely to use.
Marketing experts agree that “effective frequency” or multiple exposures are necessary for a customer to remember a message. Classical marketing wisdom cites the Rule of 7, which says a customer must be exposed to your message at least seven times.
Display ads act much in the same way Public Relations and traditional media, such as TV and radio, do when creating awareness.
Not only do display ads ensure that your brand will be noticed, but they also increase the chances that potential customers will be more receptive to it. This is because display ads adjust to your customers’ lifestyles, taking any size, shape or style, and more importantly, being there when customers are looking for the solution to their problem.
NEO360 is a Google Partner with AdWords-certified team members, who have the know-how to help you get the most out of your display advertising. We tailor your campaigns to exact specifications including objectives and target market, and carefully track the performance of every display ad you have.
This allows you to measure your returns on investment into display advertising, as well as gain valuable marketing insight into your customers’ online activities and preferences.
We’ve specialised in Display Advertising for so long, it’s become second nature to us. Discuss your business needs with thedisplay advertising aces at NEO360 to help you reach, listen and engage with your target market today.