Display Advertising

What is Display Advertising?

Ever wondered about those ads showing on your favourite blog or news site? What about those ads for that product you recently became interested in that weren't showing before? Welcome to the realm of Display Marketing. Display Marketing is great for brand awareness or when used in conjunction with other digital marketing strategies.

Google (and other Search Networks like Yahoo) have a network of websites that allow them to display ads on. These websites are all separately owned and they get paid by Google every time they display or someone clicks on one of these ads.

How does Display Advertising work?

There are 2 main strategies when it comes to Display Advertising:

• Ad Placement - For want of a better name, let's call this strategy Ad Placement. In this strategy you decide on what websites you want your banner ads to be placed. This can be achieved through different methods, such as Keywords, Topics, Interests and Demographics; or even choosing specific websites and even pages.
• Retargeting (or Remarketing if you're using Google) - In this strategy you place some code on your website that allows you to follow your website visitors around on the Display Network showing specific ads. You choose what ad, how many times and for how long to show it.

These strategies have different advantages, with the Ad Placement strategy being great for brand awareness campaigns and Retargeting being more aimed at direct response campaigns.

Display Advertising vs Adwords

Not sure whether you should be doing an Adwords campaign or Display Advertising. Well if you're a small business, we recommend you always start with a good Adwords campaign. Once you have this working fine and you have some budget left over, than seriously consider some Banner Ads.

Why Adwords before Display Advertising?

The main reason we recommend this all comes down to the market intent.

For someone to see an Adword, they must have just completed a search for a keyword that you have targeted. This suggests that they are interested in whatever it is you are selling. They are either intending to buy or are doing research for a future purchase.

However, with Display Advertising the person will see your banner ad when they are doing something else. This might be reading a news article, blog or information article. Sure, your banner ad might relate to what they are reading about, but their primary intent at the moment is to read the page they are on. You are hoping to distract their attention and get them interested in what you are promoting.

A good example would be someone buying a computer. They could search for "Buy Computers Online" and see you Adwords ad; or they may be reading an article that reviews computers and see your banner ad. Which of these examples would they be more ready to buy a computer?

As you would expect, the conversion rate for Adwords is a lot higher than for Display Advertising.

So if you'd like to know more about how Display Advertising can help your digital marketing strategy, get in contact with us.