Display Advertising

What is display advertising?

Online display advertising is a great way of getting traffic to your website, social media page, blog or to raise awareness of anything else you want to promote. Display advertising takes many forms and is not restricted to online e.g. digital display boards in airports, however only the online variety is discussed below.

Usually paid for, there are 3 core types used online:

- Banner – runs parallel on screen, typically around 468 x 60 pixels
- Tower - runs vertically on screen, typically around 120 x 600 pixels
- Island – placed as appropriate, typically around 300 x 250 pixels

You will be presented with various ads as you browse the web, often promoting deals on products and services through video, graphics and catchy headlines. Display advertising’s success is often measured by the number of clicks the ad receives vs. the number of times it was displayed (impressions); this gives the click through rate (CTR). Other metrics should however be included, as, for example, when running a brand awareness campaign a user can see an ad, not click on it, but it may still have made an impression on them (hence the term number of impressions).

Studies show that the size and media content of ads has a direct effect on the CTR. There is thorough analysis on ad size vs. CTR but 300 x 250 is shown to perform best with pictures of people and video receiving more clicks than text and static graphics alone.

Cost can be based on each click, number of impressions, ad size, content and length of time on display; or a combination of these.

Working example

To support the launch of your new funky t-shirt range, you have created a game on your social media page; it’s now time to get an advert out to drive traffic to your promotional page (landing page).

You decide to create a tower ad which is delivered through AdSense, this along an island add in Facebook generates you a steady, but targeted flow of traffic. As your ad is pay per click, the return on investment was worthwhile.

How does Display Advertising fit into Digital Marketing?

Display advertising can be very targeted and if done well, can bring a strong return on investment; for example using LinkedIn you can target by sector, group, location, gender even job title reaching millions of potential clients. As most ads can display rich content they can be very effective when promoting your business and services.

You may decide to run an ad to raise brand awareness or promote a product; the result may be traffic to your website or perhaps more followers on your social media profiles. You can expect a click through rate of anywhere between 0.02% up to 3% or 4% (or more if it’s very targeted and well designed); it depends on the target audience and content. You would expect it to be less than Google Adwords, for example, because your audiences are not necessarily looking for your products and services.

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