Everything You Need to Know About Display Ads

Everything You Need to Know About Display Ads

Display ads put the value of pictures and images to work for you. They’re part of a marketing strategy known as display media advertising or display media marketing, and they serve to distribute and enhance your content by putting it in front of the right people – in the right place, at the right time. A properly applied display advertisement increases the authority of your other content.

Whoever is handling your display media marketing initiatives needs to have a solid grasp on the identity of your target audience, as well as their preferences as to how information is conveyed to them.

Everything you need to know about display ads falls within the concept of “buyer’s delight.” For how this is accomplished, let’s have a look at every aspect of the display media advertisement strategy.

What is Online Marketing?

Online marketing is a catch-all term. It refers to strategies which have been developed to help a business find new customers and boost sales online. It does this by focusing on the brand’s identity from the customer’s perspective, then enhancing that brand’s positive aspects… things like industry authority, relevance, and overall product quality.

There are two broad aspects of online marketing. One of these is evident in search engine optimization, and in other forms of Web optimization. These serve to draw customer attention to your brand, enabling potential buyers to locate and identify you online. At that point, content marketing comes into play, providing the other half of the equation. Content alone does not help people to find your website – instead, it is used to convince them to stay. This is accomplished through conveying value to your site’s visitors directly, through providing useful information in a fashion that engages their interest, and by providing more valuable products and services than your competitors.

Display ads are where these two broad strategies come together. Search engine marketing offers multiple techniques by which your content may be distributed outside of your website. This is done to help those who fall under your target market to find you, but – at the same time – the content being displayed works towards boosting impressions of your authority.

How to Advertise Online

Display ads provide income to the networks which distribute and host them. Google alone generates billions of dollars in advertising revenue per year. This lucrative industry creates numerous opportunities for the appropriately directed use of your company’s display advertising. It has also resulted in the development of multiple levels of assistance. This is a necessary complication; according to multiple studies, as many as 98% of advertisers are using their ads incorrectly. Despite recent advancements in display advertising, there remain numerous misconceptions in its application.

The best use of display ads is in native display networks. Google’s Adwords network is undoubtedly the biggest provider here, but other alternatives include Amazon’s Affiliate network, and LinkedIn. These ads work well because they are well-positioned next to other, relevant media, or other websites that are relevant to what your customers search for. By associating your ads with the right targeted keywords, these networks place them in front of an interested audience – your prospective future customers.

Another excellent place for your display ads is within your social media accounts. You can link to valuable content on your website, post website and content updates, and make important announcements, all through social media. By taking advantage of social media marketing, your ads will reach internet users that re-share the content to their own networks of friends and followers. SMM, in effect, turns your followers on social media into de facto marketing professionals, working on your behalf.

Website Advertising Rates

As is explained to greater detail within this article, there is a combination of several factors which contributes to the cost of Web-based display advertising. Given this variation, advertising costs can vary enormously, and are prone to sliding quickly out of control if they aren’t being managed by an experienced marketing professional.

On the other hand, a well-managed paid advertisement campaign can result in a quick and dramatic boost in traffic, which continues to bolster more passive, long-term methods of Web optimization long after the ad campaign itself has ended.

Advertising rates depend (more or less entirely) upon ad size, ad location, ad performance, and market demand. Here are a few examples, as collected by Promise Media. Costs presented are typically in the format of CPM, or “cost per mille,” with “mille” being the Latin word for one thousand. So, they’re the dollar value charged per one thousand impressions. Smaller networks, as well as more well-established agencies, may offer CPC, or cost-per-click. This is based upon results, with the ad only generating revenue for the network displaying it when a customer actually clicks on it. Major publishers prefer the far more equitable CPM method, and will only offer CPC in the event that they have exhausted their CPM options… but there are notable exceptions: Google’s Adsense network is the largest advertising network on the planet, and it is entirely based on cost-per-click.

CPA, or cost-per-action, is rarely available as an actual measure of advertising rates in a practical sense – with the obvious exception being affiliate sales networks. It reflects a setup whereby the advertiser is only paid in the event that a purchase, or some other desirable action, is made by someone who followed the advertisement. While largely unavailable, “effective CPA” must be computed by any responsible business which is marketing its product through display ads. This allows for the determination of how effective each advertisement is – in real time.

Ad Sizes

There are three standard sizes for online ads: 728 x 90, 300 x 250, and 160 x 600. These values are presented in pixels, with the total pixel count for each size being 65,520, 75,000, and 96,000 respectively. The 300 pixel ad reflects a 14% increase on the size of the 728 pixel ad, and the 160 pixel ad reflects a 28% increase on the 300 pixel ad. Ad size plays heavily into website advertising rates.

Ad Location

When it comes to location, the most important concept is viewability – whether or not an ad is visible above the fold. The “fold” is a concept based upon traditional newspapers, which need to be unfolded to read the entire front page. It refers to that which is visible on a page without having to scroll down, and it represents premium ad real estate.

Ad Performance

This refers to the expected clickthrough ratio- how well the ad is going to work towards its intended goal. This is similar to taking location into account, but is much more highly focused upon surrounding content. An ad for cat products, for instance, is going to have higher performance on a shelter’s kitten adoption page than it will on a page about horse grooming. This affects its cost.

Market Demand

Market demand is based largely upon the combined effects of an ad’s location and performance. A clever ad provider might offer a low initial rate for well-placed ads with high expectations on performance. This encourages client retention, as highly effective ads are pure gold for a brand’s identity. The combination of low rates, high visibility, and effectiveness translates to more potential clients seeking the provider’s service, and as a result of this increase in demand their rates – and their profitability – will rise in the long term.

Media Buying

Media buying is defined as the procurement of advertising inventory – the negotiation of price for, and the acquisition of, advertising space. Due to its complex nature, media buying is often conducted by marketing specialists on behalf of the brand being advertised. An effective media buying campaign can result in up to a five hundred percent enhancement of the advertised brand’s return on investment.

There are two ways, predominantly, in which media buying functions.

The first is through an agency which functions specifically as a media buyer on your behalf. While this is the more expensive of the two options, it has the benefit of securing demonstrable results. The prospective increase of several hundred percent on ROI is based on results secured through a media buying agency.

The second is through media buying software. Within this category, there are two options: ad agency software, which is optimized for use by media buying agencies, and more user-friendly software which is designed to allow for in-house media buying. Licensing said software can be the more affordable option, over purchasing an agency’s services, but its use will require a certain amount of industry and marketing expertise. In addition, because a human agency offers levels of intuition and innovation which no existing artificial intelligence can match, results are rarely on the same level.

Moving Forward

Display ads are not usually maintained constantly, except by the largest and wealthiest of brands. They are highly effective when used optimally, in short bursts, as a way to enhance other aspects of an ongoing marketing strategy. Unless your company has a highly experienced in-house marketing team, your best option is to go with professional options for both the drafting of advertisements and the purchasing of advertising property. A skilled marketer will optimally position your ads in locations conducive to the generation of targeted leads, and can secure results which far outweigh the cost of their services.