What is display advertising? How do they work? How do you optimize them? This is everything you need to know.

I used to run an e-commerce company and spent $40,000 a month on Google and Microsoft Ads-mainly for search. Although I ran tests again and again to get potential customer-centric display ads to drive sales, all this to no avail.

Fast forward to the present (nearly ten years later), display advertising targeting and ad unit functions have been significantly improved.

I now find myself a strong advocate of display advertising—including those potential customers.

In this article, you will learn what display advertising is, what to consider when running a display campaign, and recommendations on why and how to incorporate them into your digital marketing strategy to drive immediate revenue and long-term branding.

Display advertisements are image and video advertisements shown to people as they browse websites, apps, social media, and recently connected TV devices.

Broadly speaking, they are any digital advertising format other than paid search and audio-only advertising.

Marketers use display advertising throughout the buyer journey to increase brand awareness, specific products, promotional sales, applications, content, or services. They can be static, animated or video-based.

These types of ads are often associated with top-of-funnel marketing, where it’s important for individuals to understand your brand.

all the time. They have value throughout the buyer's journey.

Although the traditional funnel is more conceptual nowadays, given the complexity of the buyer journey, I still find it helpful to think about things from the perspective of the funnel stage because it brings definitions to strategies, use cases, and KPIs.

For example, this is a slide that I often find myself updating when I introduce the benefits of the full funnel approach to customers.

Please note that there are display components for each funnel stage.

Display components include programmatic, social media, native, OTT (video streaming) and YouTube.

These ads are usually purchased at a low cost-per-thousand impressions, and the goal is to expand the top of the funnel by letting people know about your brand, product, or service.

The channels remain basically the same, although you rarely pay attention to display ads without a clear path to explore and conversion (for example, connected TVs are used less frequently because users can’t easily click to enter the site after seeing the ads) ads).

Your ad targeting usually includes some indicators of intent, whether in potential customers or retargeting capabilities.

For example, Google Ads custom audiences allow you to serve static, animated, and video-based ads to people based on comparison terms, websites viewed, locations visited, and apps installed.

Usually, impressions of potential customers drop here, and most of the impressions of impressions are for users who have expressed a high degree of intent (for example, serving a display ad to people who abandon a shopping cart or visit other high-value pages on your website).

Customers can become your business treasure house, from brand ambassadors to new customer recommendations.

Display ads are a great way to stay in their tracks, so when the time comes, you are the first one they consider or recommend.

At each funnel stage, display advertising is a key component.

Given the large number of display ads used at the top of the funnel, measuring the effectiveness of display ads can be tricky for companies that focus on revenue-based short-term key performance indicators (KPIs).

However, with some plans, you can quantify your success and obtain long-term support.

The following are a few key considerations when developing a measurement plan:

Ensuring the correct hierarchy and nomenclature is the foundation for successfully measuring display advertising (and others).

By constructing campaign names, ad groups/sets, ad names, and labels with segmentation in mind, you can slice and dice your data in your preferred data visualization tool.

This gives you insight into which display ads and targeting are best for your KPIs.

For example, here is an example of a Tableau-based advertising test dashboard for one of our clients. Please pay attention to how we understand the value proposition, images, members (people), and banner types.

It is essential to be consistent with stakeholders on how success looks.

Before you use display ads, especially at the top of the funnel (and/or the promotion phase), I strongly recommend that you:

In addition, set expectations about when revenue-based success will occur.

In many cases, lack of communication and poor communication are the main culprits for dissatisfaction with stakeholders. The intentional alignment from the beginning is anecdotal.

At the top of the funnel is the consciousness stage. Pre-click KPIs are usually used as targets to attract target audiences with sufficient coverage and frequency to build brand awareness.

The participation stage is usually the weak link for advertisers. The good news is that there are several KPIs that can make the impact of display advertising obvious.

After clicking, there are a lot of sticky transition points that can be used to connect the top and bottom of the funnel.

Just like yourself, "Besides final conversion/sales, what other user behaviors indicate that someone is interested in the products you provide? What is the diagram?"

On the other hand, what is a negative intention signal? Bounce within 5 seconds after landing is an example.

If you are curious about more research and strategies that align with TOF KPIs, check out this article on getting support for the top-of-channel program.

Finally, if you are a B2B advertiser, you should track and agree on account-based marketing (ABM) KPIs.

Analytics platforms, advertising platforms, marketing automation tools, CRM, tag managers, data-rich products, and other technology stack components all bring something.

Your company should invest heavily in building its technology stack. Find out what's in it and how to use it.

Go to Conversions> Multi-Channel Funnel. Here, you will see several value reports, including path length and model comparison tools.

Conversion time helps determine how long it takes for a typical user to convert after the first click. This information can then be used to set expectations with stakeholders.

List-based display advertising is very effective. Any opportunity to integrate these lists with the platform should be used. For example, for LinkedIn, there is a "one-click sync" option to push Marketo listings to LinkedIn ads.

By using UTM parameters and hidden form fields, advertisers can collect detailed information about down-funnel conversions long after the initial click.

Tag Manager (Google Tag Manager)

GTM enables advertisers to deploy required tracking without having to rely on other IT support, thus simplifying the process of adding conversion tracking (for example, micro-conversions) to a conversion set.

Tools such as Clearbit can help you determine who is visiting and interacting with your website, which can drive future positioning and personalized decisions.

Now, let’s dive into some of the different forms of display advertising you can use in your digital marketing efforts.

For decades, as the backbone of display advertising, banner ads have been placed on websites and applications in various types (.jpg, .gif, HTML5, .mp4) and sizes.

RDA converts videos, images, logos, and text into ad units for available online advertising resources, and considers each user’s profile before deciding which combination to place.

This personalization accelerates learning and performance in a more automated way.

Here is an example of how a responsive ad can be adjusted using the same input:

RDA is the future direction of development. Our agencies have seen time and time again that Google prioritizes responsive ads over uploaded ads (or expanded text ads for search).

Google’s version of responsive display ads was released in 2016 and is relatively new, but it is popular with advertisers and shareholders.

For advertisers, the amount of work required to develop ideas has been greatly reduced. For Google, it squeezed more money from the available inventory across the network.

Other platforms such as Facebook also make full use of responsive ad units.

Here, choosing automatic placement when setting up an ad campaign gives Facebook a green light, and you can adjust your input for use in news, stories, searches, messages, articles, apps, and Oculus placements.

In 2020, Facebook also launched a response function to the text component of sponsored content, thus realizing an AI-driven message test similar to that provided by Google.

Considering performance and resource savings, the vast majority of customers I work with accept RDA, despite their flaws.

When most people hear a native ad, their brain will turn to the "sponsored" article at the end of the content they are reading. Vendors like Outbrain or Taboola are responsible for producing many of these ads-and the quality of ads can vary greatly.

In fact, native advertising usually means that the ad unit matches the look and style of the website or application on which it is located.

Recently, with the emergence of Discovery campaigns, Google has made great strides in this area, which enables advertisers to provide impressions on the Google Discovery Feed, Gmail, and YouTube homepage, search, and watch next page.

On social media, platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit have flourished recently because of their ability to monetize news sources through sponsored content.

Video is one of the most attractive formats for advertisers. Ultra-fast Internet speeds and extensive cellular network coverage unleash potential that did not exist a decade ago.

In the first quarter of 2021, Google announced that YouTube’s year-on-year revenue soared from approximately US$4 billion to approximately US$6 billion, proving this.

All major advertising platforms and ad servers allow you to run video-based campaigns.

Cross-platform, video ads are usually divided into non-skippable and skippable categories.

You must watch the non-skippable video ad before you can watch the video. Non-skippable video ads usually appear in upstream channels, such as OTT/CTV, programmatic and YouTube.

Skippable video ads allow viewers to skip the ad after a certain period of time. On YouTube, it is after 5 seconds. YouTube Trueview Call to Action is a skippable ad type and Google’s most popular skippable ad format.

Shopping ads are a lucrative display advertising format, mainly used by e-commerce stores, but also by physical stores. By using data feeds, they are dynamically populated based on user behavior.

Dynamic display ads dynamically provide display ads to users based on the products and pages they browse. Google Ads has a dynamic display function, and several other suppliers (such as Criteo) also have a dynamic display function, and their advertisements are automatically adjusted according to personal interests and expectations of the proximity of purchases.

Interstitial ads are shown before users see what they are asking to see (for example, non-skippable video ads; full-page pop-ups before the news article you plan to click).

Overlay ads display text and images on top of the content (usually video).

Interactive advertising encourages users to take actions that go beyond simple clicks. For example, on Facebook, you have voting ads, playable ads, and augmented reality ads.

When people interact with them, the lightbox ad will react. For example, these ads may expand to fill the screen, play a video, or allow you to scroll through multiple images in the ad unit. For this type of ad unit, one of my favorite vendors is Vibrant Media, which provides pop-up windows (demos) that display ads on hover over text.

Reward advertisements provide individuals with prizes (for example, coins in games) to watch sponsored display content.

Companion ads are ad units that supplement video content on platforms such as YouTube or streaming audio services such as Pandora or Spotify. In these scenarios, they provide users with opportunities to take action, not just passive listening.

How can you come up with ideas that are eye-catching but not distracting?

This is the framework used by our agency to initiate creative projects and audits:

You can have the best display advertising media strategy in the world, but it won’t help if your creativity is terrible.

The best ideas stand out from the plethora of other advertisements that individuals see every day. It uses humor, emotional appeal, and functional messaging.

In addition, when planning for display ads, you should also consider the following three things:

Your ad image should be closely aligned with the text in the ad unit. It should also align with the landing page.

Ensure interdisciplinary cohesion. Inbound and outbound marketing, customer success, and sales teams should communicate regularly to be consistent in messaging, user experience, and learning what works and does not work.

Forrester tells us that 89% of digital companies are investing in personalization... for good reason. Personalizing the user experience (including display ads) is one of the best ways to improve results.

Always pay attention to how to reuse your creativity. A savvy marketer looks at a piece of content, such as a 60-second video ad, and finds opportunities to cut it into various formats.

For example, a 60-second video might bring you 5 to 10 shorter clips—a social carousel, a few static banners, and a blog post.

Develop an omni-channel strategy that prioritizes creativity (mainly display advertising), positioning, offers, and user experience will achieve long-term returns.

Display advertising is a core component of an omnichannel strategy. They cast a wide net to let potential customers understand your brand's strengths, products and services, and ultimately increase curiosity, participation and publicity.

They are also good at helping to communicate brand identity, culture and differentiation.

If done well, display advertising has the ability to release a lot of scale and efficiency.

Here are five key points to always remember:

Featured image: ProStockStudio/Shutterstock Screenshots and images provided by the author, August 2021

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Justin is a senior media person with 15 years of digital marketing experience, focusing on paid media. As the vice president of closed-loop advertising,... [read full resume]

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