Targeted display advertising gives you the opportunity to control who sees your display ads in most of the advertising platforms such as Google Ads.
Display targeting in Google ads or Google Adwords is just a fantastic way to control who can see your display ad campaigns on the Google display network.
This helps makes a more precise targeting so that your ads reach only people who are interested in your products or services.
This makes your display ads more effective and helps drive more conversions when used with remarketing campaigns.
In this post, I will explain the display targeting options and the advantages of display targeting and how to effectively use display ads to benefit your business.
First, we will like to answer the main question that motivated this post which is “What is targeted display advertising?”.
Targeted display advertising is simply a way of controlling where your ads are displayed on the Google display network which gives the advertiser the opportunity to have better control over their targeting options during display campaigns.
Let’s move to see how you can actually use these targeting options to enhance your display advertising campaigns results.
Pros of display targeting campaigns
Here are the benefits of using display ads to increase reach and sales.
#1. You have the opportunity to reach a wider audience while creating brand awareness. This is because people who are not actively searching for your brand, product or services are still able to see your ads improving your overall online visibility.
Just opposite of search ad campaigns where someone has to actively search for keywords or phrases related to your business, products or services, with display ads, you can reach a massive audience while they simply browse the internet.
#2. Display ads also give advertisers the opportunity to reach potential customers throughout the buying cycle with various targeting methods. This helps ads reach people who are looking to purchase a certain product or service.
#3. It is also possible to use branded keywords to precisely target display ad campaigns. These limited opportunities are provided by branded keywords advertisers use in their search campaigns.
#4. Targeted display advertising campaigns can be created using multiple ad formats such as responsive ads, Image ads, Text ads and HTML5 Ads.
This provides the advertiser with the opportunity to-
reach a wider audience with various ads formats on various display networks.
Cons of display targeting campaigns
Displays ads major disadvantage is that these ads are less likely to lead to direct action such as conversion. However, if you can use remarketing campaigns combined with display ads campaigns, the chances of your potential customers converting will increase dramatically.
This is why it is recommended that you create remarketing campaigns if you are new to online advertising.
Also, we recommend creating multiple ad formats while running a display campaign.
Targeting options
Targeted Display advertising campaigns have multiple targeting options as we mentioned above will we will discuss them below.
Display keywords
Using keywords targeting allows advertisers to target display ads to specific content related to their keywords.
For example, Targeted ads to blog posts related to health and fitness content on Google display networks.
- Keywords targeting allow the ads to display on content related keywords
- This is contextual targeting meaning these ads will target people who are browsing the internet and not searching for your brand, products or services.
Audience targeting
Audience targeting allows you to target an audience based on their past behaviour. This includes pages they have visited and their search queries etc. This can be done through:
- Affinity: Targeting based on areas of interest during browsing.
- In-Market: What people are actively researching online.
- Remarketing: Targeting people that have already engaged with your previous ads.
Demographics targeting
This allows the advertiser to target people based on their age, gender, relationship and parental status, income levels, education and many more.
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Demographics can be inferred or actual. For example. Google uses two ways to generate and use demographic data. The inferred methods collect data of people based on the websites or blogs they visited or web pages they have interacted with to determine their age, gender and other demographic features.
The actual data on demographics is simply the actual data provided by users during account creation. Google uses this data to target people since they provided it.
Topics Targeting
Topics in Google Ads works similar to display keywords but they are broader. Topics allow Google networks to display ads based on website content.
Google has classified websites based on topics in Google display networks which allows display ads to be displayed on web pages based on their topic classification.
For Example: If an advertiser chooses to display ads on sports topics, those ads will automatically be displayed on websites that have sports content.
This makes display targeting more precise as ads are shown to people who are interested in the same topic and may also be interested in your product or services.
Placement targeting
Placement targeting allows advertisers to target ads on a specific website or App of their choice provided they win the bid, those ads will be displayed on their choice of website and Apps in Google display networks.
In many cases, the advertisers also have the opportunity to display ads on particular sections of the website such as the top header or the side widget.
Mobile Apps are also included in this placement which allows advertisers to target a specific audience based on their interest in that particular app or website.
Making display targeting more effective
Display ads are structured differently compared to search ads.
You have the ability to choose various targeting options discussed above here.
However, to make these ads more effective, it is important you combine your display campaign with remarketing campaigns.
It is advised you combine two targeting options in a single ad group such as topic and placements. This will also increase the chances of conversions as it shows you are more specific about where you want your ads to be displayed.
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For example, You can target an entire website such as the New York Times but specifically instruct your ads to be displayed only on pages with sports content on the same New York Times.
This gives your ads a boost and ensures more accurate targeting.
Wrapping up
So there you have it when it comes to targeted display advertising or display targeting.
It’s all about using the right tools in the correct ways. If you invest a little bit of time researching and creating quality display ads and used all the available targeting options, you will stand a chance of getting better results.
strategically structure your display ad campaigns for better performance and more effective ad campaigns.
This will definitely increase or deliver a higher ROI on your display ad campaign.
Let us know if this makes sense or if you would want us to add more to this post.
