Digital Display Advertising is a format which many of the big companies can utilise quite easily to engage with their target audiences, but in Google terms, what is Display Advertising?
What is Digital Display Advertising?
‘Digital Display advertising is a type of online advertising that comes in several forms, including banner ads, rich media and more. Unlike text-based ads, display advertising relies on elements such as images, audio and video to communicate an advertising message.’
As mentioned here, multiple types of digital display advertising can be placed in certain areas to drive target-specific traffic to the website. We see this on a daily basis on pretty much every website and social media that we go on and can be at the top or bottom of the site (banner) or down either side (Tower). The visual is linked to a specific landing page so if clicked will drive the traffic to the website or social media page.
There are also display advertisements known as pop-ups, this is where you open up a web page and the irritable advert pops up in front of the page that you want to look at, having to click the little x to get this out of the way to carry on reading the content that you were looking for.
Monetising Website Space Through Display Ads
Website owners will usually rent out space on their website to those willing to pay the highest amount, obviously, the more traffic the site gets, the more they can charge as more consumers will see the advertisement of the brand. This is usually done on a cost-per-click basis or in some cases a cost per thousand impressions, whichever cost metric they put against this channel, in my view it is worth it (as long as you get on the right websites) as this will help tremendously with your off-page SEO.
This may be a good idea if you are a website manager/website owner to implement yourself as by renting out this space can earn you some decent return. Do be careful, though, as doing this means that you are taking the hard-earned traffic away from your own site onto someone else’s and if you are paying heavily for this traffic it could cost you more than you are earning.
Consumer Perspective on Display Ads
Personally, the team at HC Media Group do not like the pop-up traffic, and this is usually seen in the gambling world we think this is intrusive to the consumer. As a consumer myself, I get annoyed with this and try to click off as much as I can. Putting yourself in your consumer’s position is important – and thinking of consumer journeys you’ve been on yourself and elements you do and don’t like is important.
You also need to bear in mind that with the digital display area if you are advertising on other sites then there is a chance for a slip finger, where someone clicks by mistake and then clicks back as soon as they get to your site. As mentioned before, if the traffic on the site bounces back very quickly then this could give a poor score and damage your SEO if happens in large volumes.
Choosing the Right Platform for Display Ads
When thinking about display ads, and displaying your advertising campaign on other websites, we need to think about the traffic that particular site is generating, how the traffic is generated and what the demographic/geographic of the consumer that is visiting the site. If you have a charity business, then renting the space on a gambling company website will not be a good fit for your brand, but a high street shop would be. In most cases, you will find it incredibly hard to advertise on your competitor’s website for obvious reasons.
Once again, content is key, and also the visual in this case. You want the display advertising campaign to be appealing, send out a great message, and get consumers engaged and wanting to click through and read some more. A call to action could be a fantastic idea here as the consumer could click through and get something.
For instance, holiday companies may have a call to action of ‘Request Your Free Brochure Now’ – this means you know why you are clicking through, and there is a clear message for the consumer, creating a clear customer journey by taking them straight to the request page. This also means that you can get something from the advertising campaign, instead of just the traffic, you want goals completed and capturing the consumer’s data so you can retarget at a later date using other channels.
Retargeting with Display Advertising
Going a bit more technical, there are now some networks in which you can retarget using display advertising. This is where your website recognises the IP address of the website visitor, and then when the consumer leaves your site, they can be followed around to other sites and your display advertisement can be seen on other sites. This is a great way to re-engage consumers after they have spent some time looking at your products or services and then click away to look at competitors.
It would not be so great if the visitors were looking for a present and it was on a shared computer. I have heard scores of people saying how they have been caught out by this. This can though be very difficult to implement if you do not know the correct contacts, and very expensive as you will then be bidding against your competitors for this added space.
I would suggest that with this channel, if you have not already got the contacts of web owners that you can rent their space, then you should look at speaking to a company that has a network of sites that they already use. This is down to the amount of time it will take to find these companies that will let you rent out their space. This could be a full-time job for someone, for not a lot of return.
What you may find with network brokers is that they may do this also on a cost-per-click basis. And take their cut from this. This means that you are getting much more value for time and money. Do, though, ensure you have some very deep conversations with these kinds of companies about the messaging that is going to be used, and if they are designing the visuals that will be viewed, please make sure that you approve everything before the campaign goes live.
The Role of Display Advertising in Brand Awareness and SEO
All in all, the display can work very well for brand awareness and off-page SEO. However, if your budgets are very tight then this could be a possible channel not to do so much due to its low click-to-conversion rate. You would want to focus on channels that bring a direct return, and not just fluffiness and link building (though that is vitally important if you want to build a global business and get ahead of your competitors on search engines)