Brendan Tully3 Comments
May 22, 2022
Note: I decided to put this post together as we’ve been seeing huge success with Google Display Ads in the past 6 months. I’m now explaining the Display Network to 2-3 people a day and figured a post explaining one of the ways we use the Display Network might be useful to share publicly.
If you ask most business owners today, they’ve probably heard of Google Adwords or Google Ads – those paid ads that appear in the Google search results when you do a search. (if you didn’t know the difference, here’s a short article that breaks down the structure of search results: /organic-natural-search-vs-paid-adwords-results)
What most people don’t realise is that there’s a whole other world to Google Adwords that doesn’t involve the search engines, the Google Display network. The Display Network offers another traffic source that is often much cheaper than search, has far fewer competitors and often can generate far more qualified visitors to your website than search can.
Generally speaking, I usually recommend to clients they look at Adwords for Search first because these searchers are typically 1-2 steps away from buying something or picking up the phone so they’re usually highly qualified prospects.
In some cases, the Display Network might be a much better fit, for example:
There are also a number of ways you can target ads on the Google Display Network, one way is using keyword or phrase targeting and another way is using a technique called “remarketing” where you can display ads to people who’ve previously been to your site (or choose to specifically exclude those people from your ads) – we’ve included several examples below to illustrate how this works in the real world.
We run this campaign for Didgeridoo Breath, a didgeridoo store in Perth, WA that runs a “how to play a didgeridoo” site, DidgeridooDojo.com
These ads are not restricted by geographic location so they display to anyone in the world but are restricted by language, they’ll only show to people who have their PC, smartphone or tablet language set to english.
This set of ads displays on any website that has the words “didgeridoo lessons”, “learn didgeridoo”, “how to play a didgeridoo” and similar didgeridoo learning terms on it – it makes sense that anyone looking at one of these pages wants to learn the didgeridoo or get better at playing the didgeridoo. We’re also using the remarketing feature to exclude people who’ve already been to the Didgeridoo Dojo site so the ads will only show to people who we know haven’t yet been to the site and therefore don’t know about the business.
The ads will run on various sites around the web that run Google ads and could display on websites such as Youtube, newspaper websites like the Sydney Morning Herald, The West Australian and sites like Flyingsolo.com.au and other online forums. There are multiple versions of the same ad in different sizes because different websites will display different size ads (these are sizes set by Google)
120×600 resolution format:
160×600 resolution format:
200×200 resolution format:
250×250 resolution format:
300×50 resolution format:
300×250 resolution format:
336×280 resolution format:
468×60 resolution format:
728×90 resolution format:
Here’s another example of how you can use the Google Display Network to promote an event. We run this campaign for a Sydney based train museum, Trainworks. Trainworks run a regular event called Day Out with Thomas – a Thomas the Tank Engine Day.
This set of ads will run in front of users who are geographically located in Sydney or Canberra and the ads display on any page that contains the words “thomas the tank engine”, “kids activities”, “things to do with kids” and similar terms.
Again it makes sense that people looking at pages the contain these terms are interested in Thomas the Tank Engine or are looking for activities they can do with their kids.
This is a campaign we created for Feet First Podiatry in Perth. Here we know a lot of people will do research on their foot pain or problems before picking up the phone and calling a medical professional so in this example we’re running ads on sites that contain the phrases “toenail pain”, “foot pain” and so forth.
160×600 resolution format
728×90 resolution format: (resized to fit the page)
These ads are being used in a campaign we’re running for LWP Property Group using remarketing and keyword targeting for a new land development prelaunch. Here you’ll see a strong use of high contrast and simple, effective headlines. There are some additional resolutions use here as the creative was used on other marketing platforms too.
160 x 600 resolution:
300 x 600 resolution:
120 x 600 resolution:
468 x 60 resolution:
728 x 90 resolution:
250 x 250 resolution:
300 x 50 resolution:
300 x 250 resolution:
320 x 50 resolution:
200 x 200 resolution:
336 x 280 resolution:
These ads are used in a Remarketing Campaign for Fit Online, an online retailer that sells fitness equipment such as treadmills, elliptical machines, rowing machines and exercise bikes online.
240 x 400 resolution:
300 x 1050 resolution:
320 x 100 resolution:
728 x 90 resolution
970 x 90 resolution
970 x 250 resolution
Some more ad examples are included in the gallery below:
As I often say in our workshops, Adwords is no longer a DIY platform, especially when in comes to the Display Network. An incorrect setting can burn your daily budget in minutes on the Display Network. To get started, you need to be working with an Adwords specialist and have a handful of things ready:
A variety of ad formats can be used on the Display Network. For static image ads the current ad sizes are listed below. More detailed ad specifications are available in Adwords help.
No article on the Google Display Network would be complete if we didn’t mention remarketing. Remarketing is a technique that helps you target visitors who have been to your site but didn’t complete a sale or fill in form. Perhaps they abandoned their purchases, left items in the shopping cart or forgot to subscribe to your newsletter.
Remarketing is one of the many ways you can target visitors on the Google Display network. Using the “Audience” feature you can tag visitors who’ve been to your website and then show them ads across the web. Many of our clients who run seasonal marketing campaigns tag all visitors to their site which allows them to show ads to those visitors across the web for upto 540 days from their last website visit.
The infographic below from the guys at ReMarketing.com.au explains how remarketing works in more detail
Remarketing explained in more detail – sourced from ReMarketing.com.au (click to enlarge)
There are some key points to keep in mind that when getting the ads designed will help your ads perform better to making the ads perform better:
Use real photos instead of stock photos We’re now in the age of Instagram and Smartphones with high resolution cameras, the age of stock photography is over. People hate stock photos, they’re feel fake and non-genuine and people resonate with good quality photos.
Use High Contrast Colours If you take a look at the ads above you’ll see that they all really jump off the page. They’ve been designed with high contrast, high impact colours so they really catch the eye when they appear in front of a user.
Aim for 2-3 text areas We usually have 2-3 text areas depending on the size of the ad. We normally give our designers a handful of lines of varying length for each of these three text areas which gives the designer some leeway to make the ads work in different resolutions. Often we’ll provide several images that are similar but different sizes or orientation.
The three text areas we use are:
Questions about the Display Network? Drop us a line on our contact page and we’ll be happy to discuss further.
brendan
Great informative post! Just starting out with advertising on the display network and I hope to get good conversions. Question. Should we always split test two campaigns at a time.
Brendan Tully
Thanks Brendan – split tests only make sense if you’re getting enough traffic and have enough budget. Instead of focussing on splits tests it would probably be a better idea to look at your conversion and how you can optimise that once people land on the site/page you’re pushing traffic too, tools like crazyegg can be super useful for stuff like that
Suresh Sarode
Very informative post. Clear my confusion about Remarketing.
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