Display Advertising
What is display advertising?
Display advertising as a type of advertising refers to the use of visual ads such as banners, images, and videos on websites, social media platforms, and mobile apps to promote products or services as part of advertising efforts. These ads usually appear in various formats and sizes and are designed to capture the attention of potential customers as they browse online.
Display advertising can be a critical strategy for businesses as part of their wider marketing strategies to promote their products, increase brand awareness, and attract potential customers.
The first display ad was created by HotWired in 1994 - a banner ad for AT&T. Since then, display advertising has evolved significantly, and various ad formats have emerged, such as pop-ups, interstitials, and video ads. The growth of programmatic advertising has also revolutionized the way display ads are bought and sold, making it easier for businesses to reach their target audience more efficiently.
What assets and components make up display advertising?
Display advertising is generally made up of the following assets and processes:
Visual creatives or banners
Targeting options and ad placements
Benefits of display advertising
Display advertising is a popular form of online advertising for a number of reasons. The main ones include:
01. Increases brand awareness - increased visibility online trough display ads, brings you to the attention of more people and fast. However one of the potential downsides of this is over exposure, leading to potential customers or users becoming fatigued by online ads.
02. Targets specific audiences - by its nature display advertising is designed to show ads in online spaces, where customers are known to be and based on their previous browsing history. This also allows advertisers to create ad assets that target specific users better.
03. Drives traffic to websites or landing pages - where potential customers or users can be made aware of your brand and encouraged to take actions, such as a lead generation or conversion action.
04. Increases conversion rates through retargeting - users and consumers can be retargeted based on data from previous campaigns. This makes it easier and more effective at going after the right target market in the right places.
05. Provides measurable results through analytics and tracking - this also makes it easier to optimize future campaigns for even better results and ROI.
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Examples of display advertising
One excellent example of effective display advertising is Spotify's personalized ads that used their listener's data to create targeted ads that resonate with them.
How to optimize for an effective display advertising campaign
In order to make the most of your display advertising efforts, consider the following:
Define your target audience clearly. This will help you understand where to target them and how. Use data to define this audience and be as specific as possible.
Create visually appealing and relevant ads that also target your audience as well as they can.
Use clear and compelling CTAs to encourage users to make the next step. Don't waste your assets.
Optimize landing pages for conversions.
Track and analyze performance regularly, use your data to set KPIs and then understand out how to work towards these, and to improve them.
Challenges of display advertising
One of the challenges of display advertising is ad blindness, where users ignore or overlook ads due to their frequency or irrelevance. Another challenge is ad fraud, where bots or fake clicks inflate ad impressions, leading to wasted ad spend. To overcome these, businesses will need to focus on creating engaging and relevant ads and working with reputable ad networks that have measures in place to prevent ad fraud. The Google Display Network is one of these.