Display Advertising

Display advertising forms one of the channels of an online marketing campaign. Typically presented in the form of banners or tower ads, online displays aim to increase brand recognition, deliver messages, promote a product or service, engage with prospects or trigger a specific response from new or existing customers.

According to figures published by the Internet Advertising Bureau UK, British brands spent £1.3 billion on display advertising in 2012, up from £1.1 billion in 2011 and £0.9 billion in 2010. The market appears to be growing at a steady rate regardless of wider economic concerns, suggesting that the full potential of display advertising is far from being realised.

Businesses in the UK are evidently willing to spend a lot on display advertising, but what is it exactly that makes this type of marketing so attractive to firms?

One reason why online display advertising is becoming more popular for brands is that it produces measurable results. Unlike advertising on the television or radio, for example, display marketing can have a direct effect on a company's bottom line. When viewers watch an ad on television or listen to it on the radio, they may be encouraged to buy immediately or at some point in the future. But how can business owners know whether an increase in sales is the result of another marketing campaign? Display advertising does not suffer from this problem to the same extent.

Platforms such as Google AdWords provide business owners with a way to measure the performance of display advertising through their Display Network (on-site ads). This enables advertisers to reach a targeted, non-search-based audience with relevant ads that are displayed on websites that have signed up to Google AdSense. With remarketing, you can target users who have previously visited your website or specific landing page.

AdWords users can measure the performance of campaigns. Companies are charged each time a user clicks on one of their ads. How much depends on the bid price set by the account manager, who can monitor impressions (how many times an ad is displayed), click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost-per-click (CPC) or cost per thousand impressions (CPM) and cost-per-acquisition (CPA) metrics. Analysing this data is essential for measuring performance.

Serving relevant, cost-effective ads to a targeted audience is certainly the aim of most advertisers, but there is another benefit of display advertising that is often overlooked. Ads do not need to sell a product or service directly to be considered a success. Display advertising is still cheap enough for businesses to use it as an effective method of increasing brand recognition among prospects. And that is essentially what display advertising is all about: making a brand known to as many people as possible.