Discover how ads can work for your brand.
Display advertising is a highly visual format that immediately captures your audience’s attention. These ads provide a wide range of marketing benefits, including metric tracking and brand consistency. By using display ads, pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns can also be improved through eye-catching custom designs that stand out from standard text-only ads.
Advertising agencies may offer display advertising as a cost-effective marketing strategy. Read on to find out what display ads are, the pros and cons of display ads, and how the approach can help expand and optimize your marketing outreach.
What is display advertising, and how does it work?
Display advertising is a form of online advertising that combines visual formats—such as banners, graphics, and pop-ups with text—that can be presented across applications, websites, and social media platforms.
The advertising approach can increase a brand's visibility online, improve customer engagement and conversions, and can prove instrumental for small businesses on a budget.
Benefits of display advertising
You can apply display advertising to capture the attention of your target audience through a wide range of online channels, which improves audience interaction by guiding them toward a clear call to action (CTA). Display advertising enables your brand to leave the best impression with notable advantages over regular text-focused ads.
Visually appealing displays
Display advertising applies multimedia presentations that keep your audience engaged. These may include gifs, videos, and images, all stylized according to your brand and underlying campaign message.
Market research shows that 91% of audiences prefer visual content[1] to written content. As such, a highly visual display advertising campaign can help you connect better with your target audience and encourage them to follow up with brand interaction.
Effective targeting strategies
Display ads get distributed via a display advertising network through a PPC model. You can fine-tune your customer outreach and display marketing by modifying ad details based on the preferences of your target demographic. Display advertising targeting specifications may include the age and gender of your audience, buyer interests, location, and the peak traffic period of online activity.
Platforms, such as Google Analytics and Google AdWords, make it possible to retarget your display ads[2] with a detailed remarketing list.
Retargeting strategies can help convert previous site visitors who did not follow up with a specific purchase or CTA during their initial visit. You can choose from pre-configured audience segments, such as “users who completed transactions” and “returning users.” Alternatively, you can create a new segment from scratch based on audience profiles, which can help streamline your targeting strategies.
Brand visibility improvements
Focusing display ad campaigns toward an interested audience helps you increase user engagement and improve overall brand visibility and awareness. Targeted display ads appear in front of interested parties, keeping your brand front of mind.
Flexible pricing models
Display advertising offers pricing options such as cost-per-impression (CPM) and cost-per-click (CPC). These flexible arrangements enable companies to plan and customize the number of ads required based on their campaign needs for cost-effective results.
Despite their lower cost of entry compared to other advertising channels, display ads offer metrics such as CPC and CTR that have proven effective in shaping the success of programmatic marketing efforts that drive a generally positive ROI[3].
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Types of display ads
Display advertising offers diverse opportunities for engaging your audience, ranging from static views to animated videos, and interactive elements. Choosing a combination of different display ads diversifies your ad campaigns and breaks the monotony, encouraging greater customer engagement. Rather than considering display ads vs. native ads or display ads vs. banner ads, a display advertisement strategy utilizes a combination of methods for ideal results.
Banner ads
Banner ads apply attention-grabbing visuals, such as a logo, graphic, and written copy. Interested site visitors can click on your banner ad image embedded with a hyperlink, which directs them to your brand’s landing page. An interactive banner ad may contain gifs and animations, effective for advertising a product, event, or making a limited-time promotional announcement.
Rich media
Display advertising with rich media elements features a combination of dynamic visual elements with sound, videos, and images. Rich media ads may also present interactive elements like polls and flash games to draw your audience’s attention and create a lasting impression.
Interstitial ads
These display ads appear as full-screen presentations on hosting sites and applications. Your chosen hosted interface displays interstitial ads during transitional points of the user experience, such as between levels in an online game.
Video ads
Video ads remain one of the most popular content delivery methods. Market surveys show that 91% of consumers want to see more video content from brands[4]. In display advertising, video ads usually appear in a minimized view, running simultaneously alongside video content without disrupting the viewing experience. An interested audience can click on the non-linear video ad to access your landing page and interact with your brand.
Native ads
You can create a seamless online campaign through specially designed native ads that blend with your in-house brand theme. While banner and rich media ads stand out to capture attention, native ads complement the rest of the online channel’s interface, without causing any form of distraction.
One setback with non-native display ads is that they could result in a significantly lower click-through rate (CTR) since they may appear easily recognizable as ads, resulting in disengagement.
Best practices for display ads
You can optimize your display ad campaigns by researching competitor practices and targeting audiences that indicate interest in your brand offerings. It also helps to learn more about the top display advertising networks to find the most suitable platform for optimizing audience outreach.
Consider audience experience
The technical quality of your display ads affects audience engagement and interest. Ad delays, repetitive ads, and other technical issues can result in high abandonment rates on your website. For example, a 5-second ad delay can cause up to 19.24% of site visitors[5] to abandon a site.
Also, it is important to include flexible ad sizing structures, catering to different screen dimensions. You can further improve audience experiences by closely monitoring the key metrics of your display ads and measuring their performance against the latest display advertising trends.
Implement a simple design
A clear and concise display ad design that features your unique brand elements (e.g., color schemes, typography, and voice) creates an engaging touchpoint without overwhelming your audience. Quality display ad campaigns can enhance brand identity by standing out from the rest of the competition through an eye-catching display.
Include a strong call to action
A strong call to action determines the success of your display advertising campaigns by attracting audience interaction. For best results, ensure that your CTA stands out from the rest of your ad to promote a clear follow-up action.
Including copy with a sense of urgency and displaying prominent CTA buttons with catchy copy can propel your prospects to make the move.
Display advertising KPIs
You can measure the success of your display advertising campaigns by referring to a set of metrics that keeps your brand’s message consistent, cost-effective, and optimized across every channel.
Advertising professionals such as creative ad agencies and full-service advertising agencies often refer to the following KPIs to monitor and manage the success of their display advertising efforts.
Measure audience reach
The audience reach[6] of your display ads shows the number of unique views reached and the frequency of the ad shown to a specific audience. Accessing the audience reach informs you about the progression of your ongoing campaign and helps you decide on further actions taken to hit your audience reach goals.
Impressions
Your digital ad’s impressions, or ad views, refer to the number of digital views received for specific online content, such as a banner or native ad. Impressions matter as they indicate audience outreach, where a low value could suggest issues that require further action, such as poor keyword performance.
Click-through rate (CTR)
CTR refers to the number of clicks per impression, which determines the functional quality of your ad campaign. You can calculate your ad CTR with the following formula: (Total Clicks on Ad) / (Total Impressions) = Click-Through Rate.
Conversion rate
You can calculate your ad’s conversion rate by dividing the number of conversions per ad interaction, displayed as a percentage. The metric helps you gauge your display ad’s efficiency in converting site visitors into customers.
Cost
Calculating the ad spend of your display advertising campaigns can help you determine the efficiency of your approach. In terms of accounting, advertisers usually measure impressions by cost per mille (CPM), where one mille equals a thousand views. Your advertising cost depends on your ad targeting methods and selected platform.
Next steps
Ultimately, an optimized display advertisement can help you engage and retain your target audience with accuracy, cost-effectiveness, and consistency for optimal results. Implementing a combination of display ads helps you promote your offerings without disrupting the online audience experience, piquing interest while preserving a positive brand identity.
Visit Capterra’s buy list of recommended display advertising software to elevate your online branding campaigns and boost your advertisements with improved ROI.