The PPC Power of Display Network Advertising

Display network advertising can make your brand visible.

This nework has more than a million websites, videos, and apps where your ads can appear. This magical place is Google Display Network advertising. It’s a magical place because you can place your ads on websites relevant to your business and/or products. The best part of the whole thing is that your ads can be visual. Videos? Images? Buttons? You bet.

Display Network advertising gives you the power to place ads on websites that your potential customers visit. You just might feel like you have unlimited power—but with great power comes great responsibility; the display network can be volatile and campaigns on the network require consistent and thorough management.

What Display Network Advertising is Good For

Display Network advertising is different from advertising to search engine queries. It’s more about letting people know you exist instead of catering to people who are actively searching for you. On the Display Network, your ads are all about exposing potential customers to your brand, products, and/or services. Using Display Network advertising allows you to generate awareness and interest in your product or service.

The Display Network is a great place to reach prospect customers in the upper rungs of the purchasing funnel. Because of the higher positioning of these customers, it can take longer to convert users who come from the Display Network as they will likely conduct further research, whereas customers who are served your search advertisements are usually searching with buying intent.

This difference in the purchasing funnel usually translates into fewer direct conversions from the Display Network, that is, conversions that occur directly after the click of a display advertisement.

Although the Display Network will not yield as many direct conversions as the search network, it is still an extremely important tool in the current online marketing world as internet users spend more and more time browsing videos and using apps. Your display advertisements will keep your brand top of mind and can easily influence the next search for your products or services.

The Display Network will even track the assistance it gives later conversions. These statistics are recorded as either impression assisted conversions, later conversions that are attributed to a unique individual after a display ad has been served but not clicked, and click assisted conversions, later conversions that are attributed to a unique individual after a display ad has been clicked.

As well as new forms of media, Display Network advertising is one of the best avenues for remarketing ads, as it allows you to keep your products top of mind and even offer unique promotions.

Display Network Advertising Drives Search

Academics from Harvard University and Ozyegin University in Turkey teamed up to conduct a study on the impact of display ads on search queries.

Conclusions of the study reinforced the industry conception that Display advertising aids search advertising. More specifically:

• Display advertising generates increased search volume, clicks and conversions
• The reverse is not true—search ads do not drive increased interaction with display ads
• Display ads influence on search may not be experienced immediately but is significant “after a period of two weeks”

Put Yourself on Display:

Getting on the Display Network is not difficult. You just need to set a campaign to “Display Network only” or “Search Network with Display Select.” Once your campaign is set up, you can begin to consider what kinds of visual ads you want to make. The only constraints are the size restrictions Display Network advertising has and a set of guidelines to make sure your ads have a degree of integrity.

Once you’ve got a snazzy set of properly sized display ads, it’s time to place them. This is done in three different ways:

1. Using keywords and topics:
   Known as contextual targeting, the best places for your ads across the Google Display Network are determined by keywords you select. Once again, this lets you target an audience that’s likely interested in what you have to offer.
2. Choosing specific placements:
   Do you think visitors of grumpycats.com will want what you’ve got? No problem, by using managed placements you can show your ad on specific webpages, online videos, games, RSS feeds, and mobile sites and apps that you select. Don’t think cookie clickers would be interested? Add the site as a negative placement and you won’t show your ads to them.
3. Target groups of people:
   Remarketing does this with its audience lists. There are also, more broad scale, affinity audiences that are TV-like and good at brand awareness generation. You can get even more specific with in-market audiences that target people looking at a specific product or in a specific area.
4. Layer your targeting:
   The targeting options available for the display network can be used simultaneously to create deeply layered targeting profiles. These layered approaches can limit your traffic considerably, but it may also help your display advertisements generate much more relevant and valuable traffic for your website.
5. Keep an eye on the network:
   The success of your efforts on the display network is largely determined by a vigilant approach to targeting. Because the network has such massive reach, the efficacy of your ads can be volatile if not watched carefully for poor performing targeting decisions.

Go Forth and Display!

We hope some insight into the mighty Display Network is available in this post. If you’re still unclear, or think you can be doing more with your display campaigns, feel free to contact us for a free PPC consultation

Read the next PPC Fundamentals article here:
How PPC Advertising Reaches the Right People at the Right Time
Read the previous PPC Fundamentals series article here:
The Extensive Guide to Successful Online Remarketing: Part 3