Display Advertising Agency

The Display Advertising Network is a network of websites which allow video, interactive or image content to be placed upon them and linked, with the purpose of showing an advert for another website, business or service. The network is similar to a traditional advertising network, but online, in general websites who host the adverts will be paid a certain amount to do so, based on impressions or clicks and this amount will be paid by the advertiser through an intermediary.

Display Advertising has grown in popularity in recent years, specifically among people who are looking to launch a new product or service, or simply grow visibility for this. It’s also a popular option for people who are looking to include additional touchpoints into their user journey and help to push users back into the funnel (Display Remarketing) is a very popular option for this and can often be used as a standalone form of advertising in this instance.

The Google Display Network is one of the larger display networks available and currently covers around 2 million websites, videos and apps which reaches around 90% of users worldwide. The Google Display Network or GDN as it is more commonly known is a popular option for users due to its ease of use and significant reach, allowing users to get up and running quite quickly and having a plethora of options to choose from when it comes to targeting effectively.

The GDN allows you to target by a range of options including contextual targeting (keywords and topics), remarketing (users that have already been on your website and/or undertaken a specific action), particular audiences or also to users in particular locations. The granularity means that you can be quite targeted with your display advertising, which is great if you already have a specific target audience in mind.

Your Display Ads have the option to show right across the Display network and can appear on a range of websites, devices and apps unless you stipulate that you don’t want them to by adding negative placements. As an agency we regularly review Display placements to observe if there are any which we feel are inappropriate for our clients, but keeping on top of placements is also essential to removing low performance placements and getting the best efficiency out of the overall network.

It’s worth bearing in mind that the Display Network is vast, so if there are particular areas where you would prefer your ads not to show for particular reasons then reviewing the Placement report and identifying these within an exclusions list will help to ensure that your ads only show where they should be.

Display Advertisements can include almost anything that you want from imagery through to text, video, interactivity – but it’s important to remember that this ad is designed to make you stand out while also keeping in line with brand recommendations, so it’s important to have a clear branding document or at least tone of voice for how you want your display ads to come across and what you want them to achieve.

Too much text can be heavy for the reader, but on the flipside if you don’t include enough text it could be hard for the reader to understand what you are trying to advertise and you could pull through a range of irrelevant clicks – so it’s important to find a balance here. Interactive ads can also be a great option as they can attract the users attention on the page and this can help them to be more engaged with your advertising and your brand.

Display Ads can come in a range of different sizes and shapes and the size/shape you choose may depend on your audience and also what you want to include in the ad. Google gives some great guidance here as to the different types of specifications that you display ads should adhere to in order to fit onto the various pages across the display network, but you can also choose Responsive Display Ads which are a great option if you only have limited assets – in this instance you can provide the assets to Google and Google will automatically resize and update the assets to fit into different sizes/shapes as the websites require.

There are a number of different types of display ads that you can roll out on the display network, these include:

• Animated Ads

Animated Ads are a great way to catch a user’s attention and can be rolled out across the display network. In general these ads can be built within HTML5 and as long as you adhere to Google’s basic requirements for using HTML5 ads (which are quite straightforward) you can get started with this almost immediately. You can also build animated ads within Google’s AMP program (accelerated mobile pages) – these tend to load faster than regular ads which make them a popular option if you are advertising on mobile devices

• Non-Animated Ads

Non-Animated Ads or static ads are generally image ads or a mixture of image and text ads which are displayed across the display network. These ads generally fall into three categories – square and rectangle, skyscraper and leaderboard, there are also mobile options for the non-animated ads. Within these three categories there are a range of different sizes that you can choose from depending on the website where you are displaying the ad.

Display Advertising can be measured through Google Analytics, but we’d recommend that you use multiple attribution funnels to understand display advertising as it doesn’t always come at the start or end of the funnel so it can be easily missed in the middle and the value of the display campaign can be quickly lost.

Multi-channel attribution within Google Analytics is a good way to do this and also the Model Comparison Tool can add value here. By splitting out Display and understanding how its contributing to the larger picture of also adding brand awareness, you will be able to get the maximum value from your display campaigns.