The Google Display Network, (or “GDN” as many advertisers call it), is one of the two networks available for businesses to advertise on through Google AdWords. Touting a coverage of “90% of the internet” spanning across more than 2 million publisher websites and counting, it has remained one of the most valuable networks for advertisers to reach and engage potential customers.
Display advertising on GDN has traditionally been known as a brand awareness machine, being able to carefully select specific audience demographics and interests to reach potential customers who may be interested in your companies offerings. With an abundance of targeting options such as defining audiences by age, gender, interests, affinity audiences, specific websites, apps, videos and even within Gmail.
But with such an expansive reach and multitude of targeting methods to choose from, it’s easy to see why many find themselves lost in the weeds, wondering how in the world did they manage to max out their budgets for two weeks straight, and how did 70% wind up on “catmemes2016-animalfriendz.net.”
We asked our team of Google AdWords experts with over a decade of experience to provide a few helpful tips to avoid some of the more common mistakes we’ve seen when advertising on Google Display Network.
Targeting Is Everything
With millions of websites, blogs, news outlets, videos, apps in a constantly expanding digital space, having a thoughtfully designed targeting strategy is imperative to ensuring businesses are utilizing their marketing spend as efficiently as possible. Having a clear understanding of your target demographic will help establish a strong foundation on which you can continue to dial-in and refine to ensure you’re maximizing your ROI.
Relentless Analysis & Management
With so many available targeting methods, it’s imperative to ensure that all aspects of your display campaigns targeting methods are regularly analyzed from: placements, topics, interests, gender, age, and parental status. This in combination with specific device-type targeting, scheduling, days of week, being relentless about ensuring your targeting methods are continually optimized will help ensure that you’re making the most out of your display efforts and consistently driving improved ROI and ROAS.
Remarketing
Arguably the most valuable aspect of advertising on Google’s Display Network is harnessing the power of remarketing. While incredibly powerful on search network as well, there’s really no comparison as far as reach goes for being able to re-engage potential customers where and when they are browsing online. This highly targeted feature enables businesses not only to reach highly-qualified traffic, but also deliver personalized ads based on the products and/or services they have viewed on your website. Unlike traditional display ads, they also eliminate the need to do more intensive customization and optimizations with targeting, as you’ll be reaching only customers who have visited your websites content.
Regardless of what industry your business may be in, there’s a wealth of opportunity with Google Display Ads that far too often go underutilized, or poorly developed due to it’s added complexity in comparison to search ads.
But remember, the Google Display Network is just a first step in the world of digital display advertising. At ESB, we propel our client’s display efforts by taking it a step further, utilizing sophisticated demand-side platforms (DSPs) that programmatically place display banner ads across several ad networks. This expands our campaign’s ad reach, and allows for even more granular audience targeting. Want to learn more? Contact the team at ESB today!
