In this article, you’ll learn what display ads are, things to consider when running display campaigns, and recommendations on why and how you should incorporate them into your digital marketing strategy to drive both immediate revenue and long-term branding.

What Are Display Ads?

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

Broadly, they are any digital ad format outside of paid search and audio-only ads.

Marketers use display ads across the entire buyer’s journey, promoting brand awareness, specific products, promotional sales, apps, content, or services. They can be static, animated, or video-based.

These types of ads are often associated with top-of-funnel marketing , where making an individual aware of your brand is paramount.

When Are Display Ads Used?

All the time. They have value across the entire buyer journey.

While the traditional funnel is more conceptual these days, given how convoluted buyer journeys are, I still find it helpful to think of things in terms of the funnel stages as it brings definition to tactics, use cases, and KPIs.

Note that there are display components at each funnel stage.

Awareness

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

These ads are often purchased at a low CPM and have a goal of widening the top of the funnel by making people aware of your brand, product, or service.

Engagement

The channels largely remain the same, although you see less focus on display advertising that doesn’t have a clear path to exploration and conversion (e.g., Connected TV is used less frequently since users can’t easily click through to a website after seeing an ad).

Consideration

Your ad targeting generally includes some indicator of intent, either in a prospecting or retargeting capacity.

For example, Google Ads Custom Audiences allow you to serve static, animated, and video-based ads to people according to comparative terms, websites browsed, locations visited and apps installed.

Conversion

Generally, display prospecting falls off here, where most display impressions are to users who have expressed a high level of intent (such as serving display ads to people who abandoned their shopping cart or visited other highly valuable pages on your site).

Advocacy

Clients can be a treasure trove of business for you, from brand ambassadors to new customer referrals.

Display advertising is an excellent way to stay in their orbit so when the time is right, you are the first in their consideration or recommendation set.

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

How to Measure & Optimize Display Ads

Measuring display ad performance can be tricky for companies focused on short-term, revenue-based key performance indicators (KPIs), given that a bulk of display ads are used at the top of the funnel.

However, with a bit of planning, you can quantify success and get long-term buy-in.

Here are several key considerations when coming up with your measurement plan:

1. Account Structure & Naming Conventions

Ensuring the right hierarchy and nomenclature is foundational to the successful measurement of display ads (and beyond).

By structuring your campaign names, ad groups/sets, ad names, and labels with segmentation in mind, you gain the ability to slice and dice the data in your preferred data visualization tool.

This gives you the insight to make decisions on which display ads and targeting work best for your KPIs.

2. Align with Stakeholders

Aligning with stakeholders on what success looks like is paramount.

Before you use display ads, especially at the top of the funnel (and/or in the Advocacy stage), I highly encourage you to:

• Map out what your KPI recommendations are.
• Explain why you are recommending those things (past experience, industry research, etc.).
• And get written buy-in.

In addition, set the expectation for when you anticipate revenue-based success to come.

Far too often, lack of communication and miscommunication are the culprits for unhappy stakeholders. Being intentional about alignment from the getgo is the antidote.

3. Redefine Success

At the very top of the funnel is the awareness phase. Pre-click KPIs are often used as the goal to saturate a target audience with enough reach and frequency to build brand awareness.

The engagement phase is often a weak spot for advertisers. The good news is that there are several KPIs that make display ad impact obvious.

Here are four:

• Brand search impression lift.
• Organic & paid search CTR lift.
• Direct visitor lift.
• Unattributed lead lift.

After the click, there are quite a few squishy conversion points that can be used to bridge the top and bottom of the funnel.

Ask yourself, “Outside of the end conversion/sale, what other user behavior indicates that someone has an interest in what you are offering? What indicates intent?”

For example:

• Time on site threshold (e.g., >60 seconds).
• Article views (URL contains + 75% page scroll depth).
• Newsletter subscriptions.
• Social icon clicks.
• Key page views (e.g., /pricing).

On the flip side, what is a negative intent signal? A bounce within 5 seconds of landing is one example.

Finally, if you are a B2B advertiser, account-based-marketing (ABM) KPIs should be tracked and agreed upon.

Examples include:

• Total accounts touched.
• Account touchpoints (impressions within org).
• Account engagement (clicks within org).
• Account saturation (# of individuals within an org served ads/clicked on ads).
• Influenced opportunities ( >25 impressions).
• Lead-to-x conversion rate (e.g., lead to SQL).
• Pipeline velocity (days from lead to SQL, Opp, Closed/Won, etc).

4. Display Ad Strategy & the Sales Funnel

Like all digital marketing strategies, display advertising starts with goal setting. Display ads are no different, but this time the benefits are slightly different.

According to Display Benchmarks Tool, the average CTR of display ads across all formats and placements is 0.06%. However, Retargeter set up a retargeting campaign that generated an ROI of 486%.

Therefore, your strategy will ultimately depend on your goals. Some possible display ad goals include:

• Building brand and top-of-mind awareness
• Generating leads by offering a lead magnet
• Attracting abandoned users/customers through retargeting
• Nurturing leads through the buying process

In other words, display ads should be used to build or maintain brand awareness, and foster loyalty.

Remember, the average CTR for display ads is 0.06%. As with all marketing channels, it’s worth testing – especially if you’re building out a robust search engine marketing strategy. But it’s important to look at the data.

Another thing to consider is how your display ads will work in tandem with your SEM funnel and PPC campaigns. For example, you might find that targeting users who don’t take action after visiting a PPC landing page can increase the overall ROI of that campaign.

Your goals are the first part of a well-documented strategy. Ensure you’re defining why you’re running ads, what you hope to achieve, and the metrics you’re measuring (which you’ll learn more about later).

5. Get Your Display Network Targeting Right

This is the part that can make or break your campaign. Without the right targeting, you risk serving your ads to people who simply don’t care about what you have to offer.

The number of targeting options available can be daunting. While the process works in a similar manner to the search network, display targeting goes far beyond keywords.

Let’s explore the different targeting options across the display network and how each of them work:

1. Keyword Targeting: Google will serve your ads alongside content on websites that contain any target keywords you define.
2. Demographic Targeting: Allows you to target an audience based on a website or audience’s basic demographic profile.
3. Placement Targeting: This allows you to choose which website(s) your display ads appear on. For example, if you’re targeting a fashion audience, you can have your ads display on specific websites such as Vogue, Elle and Grazia.
4. Topic Targeting: Allows users to target a group of websites that fit within a certain topic.
5. Interest Targeting: Google has access to several data-points on its users, which allows you to serve display ads based on what users are entering into the search engine. These are then segmented into two further categories:

1. In-Market: These are relevant to products and services, and are usually aimed at those expressing an interest in purchasing.
2. Affinity: Analyzes overall topics and interests to build the identity of a specific user.

• Audience Targeting: Allows you to target users who have already visited your website (remarketing).

There may be times when you don’t want your ads to appear on certain websites or websites that address certain topics. These are known as display targeting exclusions, which allow you to exclude your display ads from certain keywords, topics, placements and demographics. These act in a similar manner to negative keywords, in that you are defining which content not to target.

Then there are site category exclusions. Typically, these are used to ensure your ads do not appear on websites containing themes such as mature content, gambling, error pages etc.

Ultimately, you must get your targeting right if you want to see any results from your display ad efforts. By serving ads on irrelevant websites, you’re going to experience a low CTR and wasted budget.

6. Effective Landing Pages

You’ve got an attractive and eye-catching display ad that compels the user to take action. Great! Now it’s time to convert that traffic into customers and leads.

Landing pages are the lifeblood of any marketing campaign, especially PPC ads. And display ads are no different. First, let’s cover some landing page best practices:

1. Your landing page should have one purpose (and one message)
2. Illustrate how your product, service or offer is used in context
3. Include social proof in the form of testimonials or company logos
4. Keep it short but sweet, include only necessary information
5. Remove the navigation bar to avoid the user clicking away
6. Make your call-to-action visible above the fold
7. Test how video affects conversion rates
8. When using lead forms, ask for only the necessary information

You’ve likely heard many of these best practices before. But when it comes to display ads, there are a few other things to take into account.

5 Key Takeaways for Display Ads

Developing a full-funnel strategy that keeps creative (largely display ads), targeting, offer, and user experience at the forefront will reap long-term rewards.

Display Ads are a core component of a full-funnel strategy. They cast a wide net and make prospects aware of your brand’s benefits, products, and services to ultimately grow curiosity, engagement, and advocacy.

They also excel at helping communicate brand identity, culture, and differentiation.

Done right, display ads have the power to unlock a lot of scale and efficiency.

Here are five key takeaways to always remember:

1. Display advertising is a massively broad form of advertising that spans channels, formats, and stages of the funnel.
2. Display ad success is found by ensuring proper targeting, strong creative, and pre/post click alignment.
3. Quantifying display ad success requires adapting from the straightforwardness associated with paid search.
4. Responsive ad formats enable advertisers to test multiple variations of graphical and text creative at once using machine learning to drive results faster than manual A/B testing.
5. Video is here to stay. Brands that develop video content and repurpose it for various placements will have a marked advantage over brands that don’t prioritize their video content.

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