As more people spend time online, companies have more opportunities to build brand awareness as consumers browse. This year, people's total time online will likely reach 12½ trillion hours. That represents a rich potential for advertisers. But how do you compete with all the other brands vying for the same attention?
Display ads attract attention amid all the noise and help your business stand out from the crowd. These ads are very valuable from a branding and ROI perspective, allowing you to reach your target audience and grow the business. Pairing the right message with a targeted audience delivers better results. Unlike search ads relegated only to search engine results pages or SERPs, display ads can appear across millions of websites. However, what's more important is that these ads follow the consumers path throughout their buying journey.
Reviewing Display Ad Campaigns
Display advertising uses static ads or gifs to deliver its message to a targeted audience. You can deliver display ads in many different sizes, depending on what websites are part of the programmatic buy based on the targets. You can also deliver display ads to desktop or mobile browsers, as well as apps or games. They immediately attract the viewer's attention, placing your brand directly in front of the most interested consumers. These types of ads are very cost-effective and have a better conversion rate than Facebook advertising because they are more targeted.
The most common way to sell display ads is by CPM, which is cost per thousand impression. Your average CPM is usually anywhere from $10-$15/cpm, depending on how targeted you make your campaign.
Display ads are an essential component in branding campaigns. When consumers encounter a display ad, it is usually during the first few stages of the marketing funnel: awareness, research, and consideration.
Reach the Right People
Display ads help you reach previous customers and new consumers who are most likely to be interested in your products or services, a crucial step in developing a high ROI. Highly targeting your display ads ensures you reach the most relevant audience, which helps lower costs because those most likely to purchase will be the primary people seeing your ads. This is quality over quantity.
Display ads can use many tactics to get the best results. Advertisers use search retargeting and keyword contextual retargeting most often since they bring the highest results. You can also use demographic targeting for specific interests, ages, or income to be even more strategic in your targeting and determine where to send retargeted ads. The best way to track results is with the number of customers reached per the number of impressions ordered. The numbers of clicks and website viewthroughs also give insight into ad effectiveness. Website viewthroughs occur when you deliver the ad to a customer who does not initially click but returns to your website within 30 days.
Many businesses use geofencing and addressable geofencing to serve display ads to their target customers. Geofencing lets you put a virtual fence around an area, such as a particular storefront, and target someone within that fence with ads. Addressable geofencing is similar to geofencing but, instead of a business or storefront, you target consumers' home addresses. Both tactics utilize cross-device matching to pair relevant ads to the most relevant people.
Pair Display Ads with Other Marketing
Display ads are a fantastic brand awareness tool on their own. However, they function best as one part of a dynamic marketing mix. Using display ads with other more direct outreach, such as SEM, email marketing, and SEO, is an effective strategy. These methods are highly beneficial when paired with display ads because they comprise multiple touchpoints that make customers aware of your company and keep you top of mind.
Display ads can pique the interest of your target audience. However, the Marketing Rule of 7 tells us that a customer needs to be exposed to your brand at least seven times before they decide to purchase. They may see your ad and click through to learn more about you but still not act. Following up with complementary techniques that place your brand prominently in their thoughts helps usher your potential customer through the customer journey quickly and efficiently.
Incorporate Digital Display Ads into Your Campaign Strategy
Capturing the notice of consumers inundated daily with ads from numerous companies is a challenge for every business. You want to strategically choose your ad spend so that you not only reach your campaign goals but gain the most from your investment. Display ads are ideal for branding campaigns, as they are attention-grabbing, easily targeted, and highly cost-effective due to buying by impressions and bidding on the most targeted inventory. To achieve the maximum ROI on your ad spend, consider working with an experienced digital partner.
Written by Karlie Mandigo
Karlie Mandigo is a Senior Digital Marketing consultant for Federated Digital Solutions. She has been leading the consulting team since 2017 and has developed a particular skillset that focuses on the automotive industry. Her passion for her career comes from the ability to cultivate trusting relationships with clients. She enjoys putting all the puzzle pieces together to create a strategy that will help achieve and exceed her client’s goals year over year. Karlie puts the work in with her clients and it shows as she knows and believes that true commitment starts AFTER the sale.
