Display Advertising

What is display advertising in Marketing?

Display advertising (banner advertising) is a form of advertising that conveys a commercial message visually using text, logos, animations, videos, photographs, or other graphics. Display advertisers frequently target users with particular traits to increase the ads' effect. In order to uniquely identify anonymous users, online advertisers today tend to make use of cookies, which are unique identifiers of specific computers, to decide which ads to serve to a particular consumer. Cookies can track whether a user left a page without buying anything, so the advertiser can later retarget the user with ADs from the site the user visited.

Explain the types of display advertising.

Traditional Display Ads: These are the ads that are most associated with display advertising, consisting of landscape, square, and skyscraper image sizes. These ads are primarily image-based with some text and are primarily placed on websites.

Responsive Display Ads: These are a type of display ad that is based on multiple text headlines, descriptions, and images that the ad-platform algorithm uses to place, size, and orient an ad in various combinations. The platform determines the best-performing format for the specified audience.

Retargeting Display Ads: Retargeting (or remarketing) is when a display ad is shown to people who have visited your web property – usually a specific page or set of pages – in a specified time frame but have not yet completed the desired action. Retargeting display ads are a great vehicle for personalized content.

Native Ads: Native display ads are designed and placed in the same style as the content of the website, email, etc. You see native ads as promoted or recommended content on various sites, but they usually don’t look like ads at all.

Social Ads: These are ads you see on social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. Like responsive display ads, they are a combination of text and images with a CTA.

Discovery Ads: Discovery ads are a form of native ads that use machine learning to showcase image assets in the most appropriate format for the user. Discovery ads appear on YouTube search results, Watch Next, Gmail social and promotion tabs, and the Google Discover results.

What is a display advertising platform in Marketing?

Facebook: Facebook is a social media platform, with equally 2 billion users worldwide. They’re quite engaged. They’re what’s called a logged-in environment because they have a profile with an email address to access the platform, and we have access to their demographics and their interests and various things like that. It’s a strong and accurate way of targeting people. And if you consider the mobile nature of Facebook and the mobile nature of the internet community, it’s a very close medium to transit users. So, it’s good for targeting any kind of mobile use.

AdRoll: AdRoll is primarily known as a retargeting platform. We do is we add a pixel to your website or a piece of code, and anyone who goes to the website is then retargeted, essentially served out on premium websites and premium partnerships across the web with your ad. It’s based on a CPM basis and there’s a slight amount of programmatic associated with it too.

Criteo: Criteo is a specialist e-commerce targeting platform. When you look at a particular product on someone’s website, and then you decide not to buy, and then you move to another website, Criteo will serve you that product, the image from the website, and the price from the website. When you click through that ad, it drives you back to that product page. So, it’s a highly specific e-commerce retargeting option.

Premium Network Buys: We spoke briefly about Premium Network Buys if you wanted to buy access to a particular audience. So, if you wanted to buy access to the Guardian&rsquo's audience because you know that they’re likely to be interested in your product, or indeed a section on the Guardian or a section on the New York Times, or whatever it may be. It&rsquo's premium, so, therefore, it’s more expensive.

What Are The Benefits and Downsides of Display Advertising?

There are a number of benefits of using display advertising:

• Visual - you can use eye-catching imagery or rich media to get your audience's attention.
• Awareness - you can build brand awareness and promote your products and services.  While search advertising reaches an audience with an intention to purchase, the display can create initial interest. Display ads have a high reach and can be seen by large numbers of people.
• Targeted - there are certain targeting options that aren't available through search marketing. These include topic and interest targeting and remarketing. You can also reach specific demographics such as gender and age.

There are some downsides to display advertising:

• Lower click-through rate (CTR) - display ads typically have a lower CTR than search ads.
• Lower conversions - a lower CTR also means lower conversions, such as sales and registrations. When users see your ad they aren't actively looking for your products or services, so they may not be ready to buy. Display ads are more suitable for long sales processes than for selling high volumes.
• Ad avoidance - while your impressions may be high, you can't guarantee that users paid attention to your ad. Ad blocking tools can also stop users from seeing your ads.

Explain Display Advertising Importance with examples.

The biggest perk of display advertising is its wide outreach that allows businesses to find prospects worldwide. Take a closer look at other benefits of this type of ad.

• Helps build brand awareness. Unlike search advertising, display ads don’t reach audiences with purchase intent. However, they allow businesses to make people remember their brands even if these users have never needed their products before. This way, they manage to evoke initial interest and let people recall it once they have a need for it. As a result, this particular brand is associated with a certain product they promote using display advertising.
• Provides targeting opportunities. With display ads, you can narrow down your audience to the most high-performing prospects. This is possible due to various targeting opportunities available. You can reach people based on their demographics, geographical position, language, general interests, behavior, and previous interactions. The last one means you can win back leads who liked your products and added them to their carts but didn’t make purchases eventually.
• Enables to track results. After launching your display ad campaign, you can monitor your number of clicks, determine when a prospect converted into a client, identify on which platform conversion took place, and reveal the most effective advertisements. This is a great chance to improve your future campaigns and invest in more successful strategies.