This is where the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” could not possibly be more true. When image ads or “display ads” are shown to the right users, it can really be an uplifting experience for a business or brand looking to promote themselves or their products. Available in a variety of standard and custom sizes (depending on the site and content capabilities), display ads can enhance your advertising campaigns and catch your ideal customers’ eye.
What are Display Advertisements?
Display ads are able to drive potential customers directly to what you want them to see, such as your website, product page, or engrave an image in their mind to search for you or your product later. You can even encourage them to organically travel to your site and buy your products and services.
Display Media can be highly targeted, in order to hit your target market on desktop, mobile, and tablet without wasting your delicate advertising budget.
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Four Ways to Purchase Display Media
There are essentially 4 mains ways that display media can be purchased. They each have their own pros and cons to be considered before deciding which one best suits your business' needs.
1. Network
Networks are large media companies that control ad space across a large number of publishers (websites). Agencies and direct clients alike can buy directly from these networks. This is a great way to increase reach on your campaign by leveraging the sites that the network controls. Networks can provide a great combination of both premium and non-premium ad inventory and can be bought through the network or programmatically. There are many large advertising networks including Yahoo, Microsoft, and AOL.
2. Network Direct
Does you client have a specific need or a niche target market? Network direct buys are perfect for these type of businesses. This method allows you to buy the exact site you want your ad to be seen on. For example, you're running an elite hockey training school and you want your display ads to show on hockey sites. Depending on the scale of the site and rights, you can buy directly from the site or from the larger network who controls its inventory. This way, your ads will be showing to individuals that have a higher probability of click on your advertisement and converting to a sale.
3. Programmatic or RTB (Real-Time Bidding)
The Internet advertising landscape is constantly changing and programmatic is a prime example of this. Programmatic allows media to be bought in real time on a DSP (Demand Side Platform) from a variety of ad networks. Real-time bidding is based on a bidding system running constantly for ads showing up on sites, the eventual ad impression will go to the highest bidder. Each impression bidded on can be based on a variety of data collected through the bidding system that bids on the impressions based on user defined targeting parameters. Programmatic can be a great solution for getting your ad to the right person, without having to pay premiums to buy on site and networks specifically.
4. Google Display Network (GDN)
A group of over 1 million websites where your Google Display Ads can appear on. You can run your Google Display ads (often used for remarketing) alongside your Google Adwords Search campaigns.
GDN is a perfect option for a small - medium sized budget client to enhance their search campaigns. With Google being a popular search engine of choice, your advertisements can be displayed to a wide variety of audience.
Display Advertising is not a solution for every business or client and should be leveraged in the right situation and to clients. You cannot expect a display campaign to produce more leads and at a lower cost than a search campaign, but you can expect to see better holistic results and much greater exposure when properly executed.
