The purpose of this reading is to introduce you to a common type of advertising: display advertising. Display advertising is used by millions of companies around the world because of its effectiveness.
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What is display advertising?
Display ads are visual ad formats placed on webpages or apps. Display ads are images, text, videos, or GIFs that are submitted to display networks and then placed in front of your ideal audience to promote your brand, service, or product.
A display network is a group of websites, videos, and apps where your ads can appear. Some display networks may include up to two million websites. Display networks allow marketers to target ads to particular audiences, contexts, locations, and more. Some examples of display networks are the Google Display Network, Taboola, and Criteo. However, there are many options, and we encourage you to research as many as you can in order to determine which is best for your company.
There are also ad exchanges, digital marketplaces where buyers and sellers come together and enter into a real-time bidding process to buy and sell ad space. Ad exchanges pool ad inventory from multiple publishers and display networks. Agencies and advertisers typically bid on impressions from ad exchanges via a tool called a demand-side platform. Xandr, OpenX, Magnite, Pubmatic, and Google Ad Manager are examples of ad exchanges.
Types of display ads
- Image ads are static JPG, PNG, or animated GIF files that appear on websites. Reaching customers through visuals is an effective approach because users can see the usefulness of your product.
- Text ads are general ads that appear on websites as text only. These aren’t the most dynamic ads, since they are text only.
- Responsive ads automatically adjust their size and format to fit the available space around them. The flexibility and capability of responsive ads makes them very popular. They can also appear as native ads, which means they are designed and formatted to look like a native piece of the website’s content.
- App promotion ads are ads that drive app downloads and engagement from users by getting them to download apps. App promotion ads are great because when clicked, they send users straight to their app store to easily get whatever app your company wants them to download. These ads will only appear on devices compatible with your content.
How do display ads fit into the marketing funnel?
As you create digital marketing campaigns and aim to introduce your company and engage with potential customers, you may opt into using display ads to ensure an effective and successful marketing strategy. At Google, display ads are employed during the awareness and consideration buckets of the funnel because of the potential to drive awareness and increase the customer base. However, we also enlist display ads further down the funnel to remarket. Remarketing delivers paid ads to customers who have visited your website or social media profile. This helps increase conversions and keep loyal customers.