Your company has a Google Ads account, is running a few search campaigns, and feels good about the results so far. However, you need to find other ways to increase revenue using paid advertising, and want to try a different type of method.

Where do you go from here? 

One avenue to reach a wider, relevant audience on Google is a display campaign. Also called “banner ads” or “image ads,” display ads can be found on any website that has partnered with Google’s Display network. 

While it can be easy to view these as just an awareness tool, these types of campaigns are a great way to help grow your audience reach and revenue. Read on to discover why Google display campaigns may be right for you. 

Myth: Display Campaigns Don’t Convert

While it may seem that display campaigns are only good for brand awareness, they can convert well, too. For many of our clients, we have seen display campaigns contribute dozens of conversions a month. Display campaigns are a valuable and reliable source of high-quality traffic for lead generation and ecommerce clients. 

Brand awareness is still important to help build a valuable customer base. But, if need be, you can definitely use display campaigns for lower-funnel goals like generating conversions. 

Need help fixing your PPC campaigns? WTM can help

Display Ads Get in Front of Hard-to-Reach Users

Many users may not be looking for your products or services directly – they may be searching for reviews on other businesses, reading articles about how a service works, or debating if they should buy a product at all.

This is where you can use a display campaign to reach these users that aren’t necessarily searching by keyword for your services or products, but are in the market for them. You can reach this audience by utilizing a few different targeting methods: 

  • Topics – You can narrow your display campaign’s reach to a more specific audience by choosing what topics they may be interested in, and then choosing the “targeting” option. This will ensure that ads ONLY show on websites in the selected topic categories that this group is interested in. For example, if you choose the topic “Real Estate,” your ads will only show on websites that are under that category. 
    • Conversely, you can set your choices to “observation” to make sure all users are included, but have bid adjustments on your topic choices.
  • Placements – This feature allows you to choose which websites you would like your ads to show on. For instance, if you sell golf clubs, you can choose to put your ads on sites such as pgatour.com.
    • Just make sure that whatever website you choose is in Google’s partner network. You can do this by seeing if they have other banner ads on their website. They will have a blue triangle and “x” in the corner (see example).

A screenshot of a Google Display ad on the website pgatour.com

The eCommerce Wonder: Remarketing

Want to reach a portion of users who are close to converting? Cart abandoners, past customers, and others in your almost or already there audience can be reached through remarketing display campaigns. 

Once you have created a remarketing audience in Google Analytics, you can attach it to a display campaign and show specific ads to those on that list who visit websites in the Google Display network. 

For scale, around 90% of people on the internet see these websites. It’s a great way to reach those already interested in your products or services for a cheaper price in a way that search campaigns simply cannot achieve. 

Display Campaigns Tend to Have Cheap Cost-Per-Clicks

While you may have to pay $5, $10, or even $25 per click for search campaigns, clicks for display campaigns are much cheaper. They tend to be more in the range of $0.10 – $0.30, which means that verticals with expensive cost-per-clicks can receive more clicks from interested audiences for much cheaper.

More Visual Appeal

Display campaigns have a few text elements, but the backbone of these ads are images. Using high-quality images that are visually appealing can draw in users and present products, ideas, and more that would otherwise get lost in text. 

Trying Display Campaigns

Search campaigns are a great way to reach users and a good start for many Google Ads accounts. However, if you’re ready for the next level of advertising, display campaigns can take you there.

Want to do paid search marketing, but don’t have the bandwidth? Let our paid search strategists step in!