The Benefits of Display Advertising

Hi, I’m Sam and today I want to talk to you about the benefits of the
Display Network with Google.

The first thing I want to look at is the types of targeting that you can
use when it comes to using the Display Network, and the first of that is
the contextual targeting. What this essentially means is that Google will
determine which websites they will show your adverts on based on the types
of keywords that you’ve put into the campaign. So it’s not you specifying
the websites, it’s Google will determine which websites your adverts will
go on based on the type of content on that particular site.

On the other hand, you’ve got placement targeting, and with placement
targeting you can actually specify which types of websites and the actual
websites you want your adverts to appear on. So if you already know the
types of websites that your potential customers frequent, you can look to
see if they’re opted into the Display Network, and then you can actually
specify that you want your adverts to appear on these particular sites.

There’s also additional targeting that you can use when it comes to the
Display Network, and within that you can get interest targeting. So that’s
based on the types of interests that your potential customers have got. Now
that’s determined based on their user search queries, their history, and
also their ad preference manager where you can actually go in as any kind
of Internet user can use. You can go into Google and specify the types of
interests that you’ve got, so that you’re only receiving adverts based on
those interests.

Secondly, you’ve got topics. Now although this sounds very similar to
interests, it’s actually slightly reversed, so it’s not based on the
audience, it’s based on the websites. So if you’re looking to target topics
such as sports or education or fashion for example, you’re telling Google
that these are the types of topics that you want your ads to appear on, and
then Google will determine which websites to place your adverts on based on
those particular topics.

You’ve also got the geographic and location targeting. Now that’s pretty
self-explanatory.

And then finally you’ve got demographic targeting, so you can look at
targeting your adverts based on websites that are based on your audience,
based on their age, their gender, or their parental status. Now I kind of
see this demographic targeting increasing more and more over the years as
Google finds out more and more about the types of visitors that are
visiting websites. So that could get more and more targeted as we go on.

One of the other benefits of using the Display Network is high profile
websites. Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve often browsed websites that
you kind of look at on a day-to-day basis, and you see adverts from
companies and you think, “How are you affording to advertise on those types
of sites?” Now this is where the Google Display Network comes in, because
you can get your adverts appearing on these really high profile websites at
quite a little cost.

We’ll come on to look at bidding strategies in a little while here. But
just remember that you can actually get your websites on these high profile
websites, and it’s not going to cost you an absolute fortune.

One of the other things that you can use with the Display Network, which I
think is really good, is you can reinforce your brand message. So you can
create captivating adverts that you don’t necessarily get the same feel
when you’re just doing your standard search campaigns within the Google
search listings, because you can’t have the images and so forth. So being
able to use the Display Network, you can actually create those images that
you really want, have them bright, have them engaging, have them eye
catching so that when people are actually visiting these different
websites, your advert is the one that stands out in the corner. Your advert
is the one that people want to actually click on and come to through to
your website. You’ve got control over the types of ads that you put on
there, and how your ads look, and reinforcing that brand message, keeping
it all within your brand colours, and keeping that message reinforced
across every website that your ads are going to go on.

Next, I just want to look at the different bidding strategies. Now one of
the really good things with the Display Network is that you’ve got two
options for how you want to bid. You can either bid on cost per thousand
impressions, so that’s how many times your ad gets seen. Or the bit that I
really like is you can actually bid on a cost per click strategy. So your
ad could get seen by thousands and thousands and thousands of viewers, but
until somebody actually clicks on that advert, you don’t get charged a
penny. So for me, the cost per click bidding within the Display Network is
absolutely key, because you’re getting all that brand message out and your
ads are being seen by all these different people, but, again, you don’t pay
a penny until somebody actually clicks on it.

And next up I want to look at view through conversions. Now this is
something that was launched a while back, and as long as you’ve got AdWords
conversion tracking set up, and by that I mean that you’re not using the
goal tracking within Analytics and importing into AdWords. As long as
you’ve got the actual AdWords conversion tracking set up, what you can
actually see now is if you’ve got your ad on a website and somebody doesn’t
click on it, but then they come back to your website in two or three weeks’
time, for example, and they then convert, you can see how many times a
particular ad has been shown and how many times that ad has potentially led
to somebody coming back and converting with you, even though it’s not a
direct conversion from somebody clicking on the ad.

So even though sometimes your display campaigns may not look like they’re
generating a load of conversions, if you’re just looking at the conversion
column, make sure that you’re looking at the view through conversions
because they could be actually aiding somebody to actually come and convert
at a later date.

And then finally within AdWords and Analytics, you’ve got a massive
reporting suite when it comes to looking at how your Display Network
campaigns are working. My favourite report is the placement report. So what
a lot of people are doing or should do is when you’re first getting started
with this Display Network you should start off with contextual targeting
settings for your campaign so that you’re actually saying, “Google you
place my adverts on where you think is relevant based on the types of
keywords I’ve got in my campaigns.” And then with using the placement
report, you can scan down there and see right, okay Google have placed me
here, here, here, and here. This one’s working really well for me. I’ve got
loads of conversions or view through conversions. This one’s really not.
This particular site here I really don’t want to have any association to at
all.

So using the placement report, you can (a) find the sites that are working
really well for you and move them from your contextual targeted campaign
and put them in placement targeted campaign, because you know these ones
are working really well for you. Then what you can also do from that list
is uncover the ones that you don’t want to have any association with, and
you can use the Site Exclusion tool to put the placements in there so that
Google won’t actually display your ads on those sites anymore, so that
you’re continuously refining your Display Network campaign , and the
reporting suite is there to sort of aid and help you along with that.

My final point I want to make is the Google Display Network alone reaches
92% of Internet users. So if you’re not utilising the Display Network at
the moment, you’re missing out on a huge potential consumer base that you
may not be tapping into already. So it’s definitely something that would be
on my marketing checklist for 2014 into 2015, if you’re not already.

If you’ve got any questions or you want help with setting up a display
campaign, please do get in touch with us on the contact details below,
thank you very much for watching.