Every year, an estimated £145 billion is spent on digital display advertising. More than the combined total spent on PPC (£102 billion) and online classified advertising (£21 billion), display ads account for 21.3% of global advertising spend across all online and offline channels.
Considering these astonishing figures, it’s no surprise that businesses across all industries are looking to utilise display advertising services as a key element of their digital marketing strategy. However, with so many different formats, platforms, and methodologies to consider, for those businesses without much paid search expertise, choosing a route into the market can be confusing.
This is where a display advertising agency like The Bank can help!
At The Bank, our marketing and media buying specialists have extensive experience in the development, implementation, and management of paid search and paid social campaigns. Our display advertising agency services cover everything, including:
- Campaign strategy and budgeting
- Audience targeting and keyword analysis
- Auditing of current paid search and social media ads
- Website and landing page optimisation
- Ad copy and content creation
- Campaign implementation, performance monitoring, and reporting
By investing in the advertising services of a dedicated display advertising agency, you can be sure your campaign is fully optimised and ready to generate the greatest possible return on your investment.
So, whether you’re looking to build your first digital advertising campaign, or want to improve upon your existing banner ads and display marketing, give us a call! And in the meantime, take a look below for our handy guide to all-things display:
What Is Online Display Advertising?
At its core, online display advertising is a form of graphic marketing, relying upon the delivery of ads through desktop, smartphone, or tablet screens.
Whilst there are a huge number of display advertising platforms and formats available, display ads are typically delivered as part of content-rich web pages or applications, and feature interactive functionality that allows users to click through to a specific website or landing page.
The Benefits of Running Display Advertising Campaigns
Boost Brand Awareness
Digital display advertising can be placed across a variety of websites and applications, meaning your target audience is exposed to your brand over myriad digital environments. Over time, this increased visibility can help a business to achieve increased brand awareness, and cement itself in the minds of potential new customers.
Effective Targeting
Running a digital display advertising campaign gives advertisers supreme options for reaching their target market. Through in-depth market research and refined use of specific keywords, your display campaigns can be targeted at high-value clients and potential customers at a low up-front cost.
…and Retargeting
An effective display advertising strategy can simplify the process of retargeting previous website visitors and potential customers. By leveraging the target audience data you’ve already gathered, you can ensure that you don’t lose that in-market audience from the sales funnel.
Generate Traffic
For online retailers, display advertising can be a great way to increase traffic to your business’ website or landing page, generating more leads and more conversions.
Get Creative
Digital display advertising offers a great deal of potential for creativity. Your display advertising campaigns can employ a variety of ad types and media formats to create eye-catching and impactful campaign materials that speak directly to your target audience.
Types of Digital Display Ads
Static Display Ads / Banner Ads
A static display ad – or banner ad – is a type of display advertising, generally taking the form of an image that is placed on a website.
One of the very first forms of digital marketing (the first static banner ad was published in 1994), banners remain a familiar site across the internet. However, as a ‘legacy’ format, banners don’t generate the same interest or click-through rate as more modern paid ads.
Animated Display Ads
A way to combat audiences’ ‘banner blindness’, animated display ads use movement and sound to capture customers’ attention.
As users scroll through content, these animated ads can stop them in their tracks, delivering short animations or videos that quickly tell the advertiser’s brand story.
Interstitial Display Ads
Interstitial display advertising is most commonly found in mobile apps, though it is also seen on desktop pages from time to time.
These full-page ads appear between primary content, forcing a brief interlude before users can continue.
Interactive Display Ads
Interactive display ads are designed to engage users, and encourage them to interact with the ad itself.
This type of display advertising can take many forms, from games and quizzes to ‘scratch-and-reveal’ offers. The goal of interactive display advertising is to create a memorable experience that will encourage a user to click through, generating traffic and building brand awareness.
Video Ads
Video advertising is one of the most popular and effective forms of digital marketing, providing businesses with a way to tell their story in a creative, engaging format.
Instream video display advertising is delivered pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll within a video window; outstream video display advertising is delivered through a video player that floats over other website content.
Expandable Display Ads
Expandable display ads are a type of digital marketing that allows advertisers to “expand” their ad beyond the initial space it occupies.
This is most commonly seen in the form of a banner ad that, when clicked, will expand to reveal additional content such as videos, images, or text.
Display Advertising Services: Targeting and Purchasing
When it comes to running a display advertising campaign, you need to establish how you will get your display ads seen by new customers, as well as the strategies you will use to ensure your targeted ads are seen by the right potential customers.
Targeting
When it comes to developing our clients’ display advertising campaigns, we tend to look first at targeting: who do our clients want to reach, and how we will get them seen? This usually means focusing on three key factors:
- Keyword Targeting: Select targeted keywords and phrases that are relevant to your product or service.
- Topic Targeting: Select topics and themes that are consistent with your brand identity.
- Demographic / Interest Targeting: Select demographic and psychographic factors which are consistent with the customers you wish to target.
Purchasing
With a targeting strategy in place, you display advertising agency will look at ways to implement your marketing materials. There are two primary methods to achieve exposure across the web:
- Manual: Purchase ad space through a display marketing platform, such as Google Ads.
- Automatic: Use real-time bidding (RTB), or programmatic advertising automatically purchase ad space via a display-side platform.
Manual: Google Ads / Google Display Network
One of the most popular methods of running a display ad campaign is through Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords), and its Google Display Network (GDN).
The GDN is host to more than 2 million active websites. As an advertiser, your marketing material is entered into an auction where it will compete with other ads for space on websites in the GDN.
One of the main benefits of using Google Ads is the amount of control it offers: you can decide who sees your ad, and specify much you are willing to pay per engagement. You can target your display advertising by factors such as demographics and interests and can create campaigns that target only specific websites.
Automatic: Programmatic / Real-Time Bidding (RTB)
Programmatic advertising, or real-time bidding (RTB), is the automated buying and selling of ad space in real-time.
When a user visits a website, the programmatic advertising exchange is notified, and advertisers automatically bid for display space based on how well the user matches the target criteria you defined.
Although programmatic can be complex to set up and manage, it offers extreme options for boosting brand visibility with targeted customers, and significantly reduces the amount of labour required.
Manual vs. Automatic
- Variety: Whilst the Google Display Network provides access to a wide range of websites, its ability to handle videos, rich-media ads, and HTML5 is often limited. Programmatic services can generally offer access to a greater number of content types, including digital out-of-home to increase sales away from web-based interfaces.
- Reach: Whilst programmatic services tend to offer access to more sites than the 2 million offered by Google Ads, the quality of these sites is variable. What’s more, if you to target your brand message and customers through YouTube or Google search results, you will need to go through the GDN.
- Pricing: Through Google Ads, you can choose between multiple pricing options, including cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM), and cost-per-action (CPA); with programmatic advertising, you will be restricted to CPM only.
- Cost-Efficiency: To gain fee-free access to most programmatic advertising platforms, you will be required to spend a monthly minimum of up to £5,000 – £10,000. With the Google Display Network, you won’t face these kinds of financial restrictions. If your business has a limited budget for display advertising services, GDN may be a more appropriate option for you.
The Bank: Your New Display Advertising Agency
Display advertising can be a highly lucrative, cost-effective method of digital marketing.
Campaign Strategy
At The Bank, we take a data-driven, strategic approach to display advertising, and we begin every project by collaborating closely with our clients to define their specific goals. Whether you want to increase brand awareness or increase sales, we’ll create a plan of action that is tailored to the needs of your brand.
Budgeting
Like most internet marketing, it is incredibly easy to overspend when it comes to display advertising. Our PPC team will help map out a spending plan that will achieve your business goals, without affecting the financial health of the business itself.
Audience Targeting
One of the best things about display advertising is its ability to target a very specific audience. We use extensive data and market research techniques to build a picture of your ideal target customer, and create targeted ad campaigns to which they’re likely to be receptive, no matter where they are in the sales funnel.
Paid Search Auditing
As your digital display advertising agency, our team can provide in-depth paid search and paid social audits that will help you fine-tune your advertising campaigns for even better results. We’ll analyse your existing campaigns and make detailed recommendations for improvement, including changes to ad copy, creative media, targeting, and more.
Website Optimisation
For your display advertising campaigns to be truly effective, your website will need to be optimised for generating sales and conversions. Our SEO and web services team can help you make sure that your site is doing everything it can to turn interested visitors into paying customers, whilst also providing ongoing maintenance and support to keep things running smoothly.
Content Creation
High-quality, relevant content is essential for any successful display advertising campaign. Our team of copywriters, designers, and developers can create custom ad units that are designed to capture attention and drive conversions.
Implementation and Optimisation
Once your campaign is live, we’ll monitor it closely and make ongoing adjustments to ensure it is performing as efficiently as possible. We’ll provide detailed reports on campaign progress, along with recommendations for further improvement.
Performance Monitoring and Reporting
At The Bank, we believe that transparency is key to any successful client-agency relationship. We’ll provide you with regular reports on campaign progress, as well as detailed analyses of the data so that you can see exactly what’s working and what isn’t.
What Are You Waiting For?
If you’re looking for a display advertising agency that can help you achieve your business goals, get in touch with us today to discuss how we can help your brand.
