Display advertising is an excellent yet often overlooked tool in the arsenal of a digital marketer. With PPC and Search advertising becoming increasingly saturated, display advertising has emerged as an efficient and cost-effective way to promote your products. Display ads offer laser targeting and re-targeting options, ensuring that you get the maximum value for your ad spend. Similarly, they are visually appealing and represent a great way to make your brand stand out in the increasingly competitive online environment. With excellent-real time analytics also on offer, display ads can also be regularly optimised for future performance. This detailed article will identify the seven major benefits of display advertising and highlight why digital marketers should aim to use it more frequently.
Visually Appealing
Effective display ads will stand out on your website and catch the eye of prospective customers. With more users browsing the web on mobile than on desktop now, attracting attention through a visual medium is a very effective way to convey your message. Display ads offer up much more creative freedom than their search ad counterparts, making it easier for savvy digital marketers to engage niche audiences. Just as they do in person, consumers online shop with their eyes first and foremost. In a digital world where it is difficult to capture the long-term attention of your audience, the engaging visuals of display advertising represent an excellent way to increase conversions.
Focused Targeting
Display advertising helps you target the specific people that are most likely to purchase from your business. You are able to customise which specific sites your ads are shown on, which regions they appear in and which market they are being promoted to. This is an extremely useful tool as it exponentially reduces the amount you’re spending targeting customers that have no interest in purchasing from you. With the laser-focused targeting of display ads, you can ensure that your ads are only being put in front of an engaged audience, maximising your return on ad spend in the process. In a digital marketing space that is increasingly reliant on analytics, the focused targeting of display advertising will help you keep your costs down.
Increased Brand Exposure
A common gripe that many digital marketers have about PPC ads is that users must click through to a dedicated landing page to find out more about the business and their offer. The customisable and stylish branding options of display ads essentially eliminate the need for these landing pages. Users can find out all they need to know about your brand and offer just by seeing the ad. This is a much more efficient and convenient sales funnel that is very much catered towards a modern digital audience. Increased brand exposure helps to improve the user experience and will increase conversion rates when used in the correct context. As long as you can continue to attract the same volume of potential customers, this is an excellent way to increase total revenue.
Increased User Engagement
Through HTML5, display ads can host interactive media such as videos and animations. Statistics have shown a noticeable increase in click-through rate, engagement rate and in-screen impressions compared to their static counterparts. Assuming you can maintain a similar conversion rate, these are all metrics that will significantly increase your overall revenue. When done effectively, these will help your business stand out amongst the typically bland advertising seen online. The rich media advertising space is predicted to grow 40% year-on-year, indicative of the potential that advertisers see in this space. As such, effectively implementing this in your display ad campaigns now is an excellent way to get ahead of the competition.
Brand Recall
The conversion funnel represents an excellent lens from which to view your business. Essentially, this is a diagram that reflects the journey that customers will take through your sales funnel. As more and more customers are exposed to your display ads, the more likely they are to consider purchasing your products. Statistics suggest that customers are much more likely to purchase from brands that they can easily recall. Display advertising represents an excellent and cost-effective way to ensure that more and more consumers are aware of your brand, increasing your brand recall and commencing their journey on your sales funnel.
Real-Time Analytics
Through the use of tools such as Google Analytics, display ads will provide a complete insight into how your ads are performing. Advertisers will be able to track the exact demographics and frequency of people who are clicking your ads. You can see exactly what’s working, as well as the areas that need improvement. This is incredibly valuable data that can be used to optimise ad campaigns for future performance. For example, if your ads are converting 27-35-year olds at a higher rate than 20-25-year olds, you can then allocate a higher ad spend to this 27-35-year old group. In an industry where 5% can be the difference between profitability and failure, this is an incredibly valuable feature that rich media display ads offer over their static counterparts.
Assist with Retargeting
Effective retargeting is simply one of the best ways to increase revenue for your business. Create a large enough audience and you’ll be able to generate significant income on auto-pilot every month. Fortunately, display ads help with exactly that. Their advanced retargeting capabilities allow you to place your ads in front of your previous site visitors. Whilst they may not have made a purchase from you at the time, people in this group are amongst the most likely to purchase from you in future. Retargeting has consistently proven to be one of the highest ROI forms of online marketing available. The ability to retarget these customers with display ads is a huge advantage over other forms of online advertising.
These are just seven of the benefits that dynamic display advertising can offer your business. With rich media advertising experiencing the most growth of any sector in the digital marketing space, now is the perfect time to get in on the ground floor. The excellent analytical and targeting options of display ads help to provide a competitive advantage over others in your industry. Similarly, the improved branding and user experience of these ads are fantastic for increasing the long-term value of your customers.
Want to learn more about PPC and display advertising? Check out some of these Marketing.com.au articles to enhance your knowledge:
Nital is the founding director at Octos Digital Marketing Agency. He has served big corporate brands of Australia and has more than 10 years of experience under his belt with a profound level of expertise in search strategies, planning and management.
