If you spend a significant amount of time online, you’ve likely been shown display advertisements without even knowing it. These ads show up on various websites across the internet known as third-party sites. These ads show in different spots and often contain a headline, call to action, link to the advertiser’s site, and images or video. These ads have various uses in digital advertising and can be used for strategies to accomplish multiple marketing goals.
Different Strategies for Display Advertising
Display advertisements vary across the board depending on their intended purpose and the audience they target.
Remarketing
One of the most common uses for display advertising is remarketing advertisements. These ads accompany search ads and target users who have previously visited an advertiser’s website. The overarching goal is to attain users who have interacted with a brand by re-engaging with that brand in hopes of using a service or purchasing a product.
These ads work by adding a small code snippet to your website to track which users visit your site. Once you’ve added the code snippet, you can add a “remarketing audience” to your display campaign in Google or Facebook Ads to start showing your ads to interested users.
Personalized Advertising
With advertising platforms such as Google or Facebook, you can set up a display campaign to target specific demographics, interests, locations, and more. By selecting different demographics and characteristics of your target audience, you are creating personalized ads.
You can incorporate a few different types of personalized advertising into your campaigns, such as affinity audience targeting and in-market audience targeting.
Affinity Audience Targeting
Affinity ads focus on users who are interested in what your business does or relates to. For instance, broad topics such as gardening, DIY projects, sports, and more are all options within affinity targeting. Unlike remarketing, these ads focus on finding new users who have a known interest in what you offer.
In-Market Audience Targeting
In-market ads are focused primarily on people who are actively searching for products or services relating to what you offer. They are more focused advertisements and show to people who are more likely to purchase your product than an average user.
These are great for reaching relevant users, but they also narrow your campaign’s focus, showing your advertisements to a lower number of people. It’s always wise to utilize these types of strategies alongside a strong search ad campaign.
Best Practices for Building and Running Display Ads
Use Simple Designs
The story behind your brand is essential. However, with display advertisements, you only have so much room to work with. Be sure to keep your ad copy focused and concise and use imagery that speaks to who your brand is and what it offers.
Quality Over Quantity
In addition to keeping it simple, be sure to use high-quality images or videos in your ads. Using many low-resolution images and choppy videos will only work to diminish your credibility and hinder your campaign.
Keep Your User In Mind
As you start to advertise, be sure to avoid auto-play videos, pop-up ads, or any advertisements that a user can’t scroll away from. While these ads will undoubtedly get you noticed, they can leave a negative impression if they block the content a user came to see.
Use a Strong Call To Action
Your call to action is the most critical piece of your display ad. It should be hard to miss, to the point, and create a sense of urgency. If you have a generally passive call to action, you’ll receive a smaller number of clicks than if you were to have a strong and active one. Remember, the primary goal of these ads is to get people to your website to take action.
The Takeaway
The main takeaway is that display advertising is a great way to reach your audience across various websites and apps. You can create targeted audiences to reach specific groups of people or use them to accompany your search ads to get people to return to your website. Regardless of how you choose to use display ads, they are undoubtedly a great asset to use in your digital marketing strategy.