How to Use Google Ads Display?

In today’s competitive digital marketplace, leveraging Google Ads Display Network is a crucial strategy for businesses aiming to reach a broader audience and boost their online visibility. With billions of ad impressions available daily, the Google Display Network (GDN) offers unparalleled reach across websites, YouTube, and mobile apps. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the essential steps and best practices to make the most out of Google Ads Display.

What is Google Ads Display?

The Google Ads Display Network (GDN) is a vast collection of over two million websites, videos, and apps where ads can be displayed. Unlike the Search Network, which targets users actively searching for specific terms on the Google Search Engine, the Display Network allows advertisers to reach potential customers at different stages of their buying journey through visually engaging ads.

By using Google Ads Display effectively, businesses can:

• Increase brand awareness
• Drive conversions with retargeting
• Promote products or services visually

Understanding how to optimize campaigns within this network is key to achieving a high return on investment (ROI).

Read this first if you don’t know how Google Ads works yet.

Step-by-Step Guide to Using Google Ads Display

1. Set Clear Campaign Goals

Every successful advertising campaign begins with a clear objective. In Google Ads Display, common goals include:

• Brand Awareness: Increase visibility among a broad audience.
• Lead Generation: Drive users to fill out forms or subscribe to newsletters.
• Sales: Promote products to encourage purchases.

Choose a campaign goal that aligns with your business strategy to guide all subsequent decisions.

2. Choose the Right Campaign Type

Google Ads provides multiple campaign types, but for display ads, you should select Display Campaign. Within this category, you have additional options like:

• Standard Display Campaigns: Manually control targeting, bidding, and creatives.
• Smart Display Campaigns: Use machine learning to automate optimization.

Standard Display allow you to have way more control than the Smart Display but take longer to create as you will need to have an input every step of the way. Select the campaign type that best fits your resources and expertise.

3. Define Your Target Audience

Targeting is one of the most powerful features of the Google Display Network. Use the following targeting options to reach the right users:

• Demographic Targeting: Refine by age, gender, parental status, or household income.
• Affinity Audiences: Target users based on long-term interests.
• In-Market Audiences: Reach users actively researching or considering buying products.
• Custom Audiences: Create custom segments based on keywords, URLs, or apps.
• Remarketing Audiences: Re-engage previous website visitors with tailored ads.

Accurate audience targeting improves ad relevance, leading to better click-through rates (CTR) and higher conversion rates.

4. Design Engaging Ad Creatives

The visual appeal of display ads plays a significant role in performance. Use these best practices to create compelling ads:

• Use High-Quality Images: Ensure images are clear, professional, and relevant.
• Include a Strong Call-to-Action (CTA): Guide users toward your goal with action-driven phrases like “Learn More” or “Get Started.”
• Keep Branding Consistent: Align colors, logos, and fonts with your brand identity.
• Use Responsive Display Ads: Automatically adjust size, appearance, and format to fit available ad spaces.

Below is a general idea of the dos and donts when it comes to images for Google Ads Display, keep it simple.

5. Set Your Bidding Strategy

Your bidding strategy influences how Google charges for ad interactions. Common bidding strategies for display campaigns include:

• Target CPA (Cost Per Acquisition): Ideal for optimizing conversions within a target cost.
• Maximize Conversions: Use machine learning to drive as many conversions as possible within your budget.
• Viewable CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions): Pay only for ads that are viewable.

Select the strategy that best aligns with your campaign goals.

6. Utilize Ad Placements Wisely

Control where your ads appear by managing placements effectively:

• Managed Placements: In order for your ads to be performing well, you need to integrate them into an ecosystem of relevant websites that make sense for your product or service.
• Topic Targeting: Similar to the ecosystem mentioned above, be mindful of the theme or topic of the pages where you ads will show.
• Keyword Targeting: Display ads on pages with content related to chosen keywords.

Use placement reports to analyze performance and exclude underperforming sites. It also generally a good idea to create a large exclusion list of websites that you don’t want to be associated with, such as adult content, political websites, controversial websites and so on.

7. Optimize Campaign Performance

Regular monitoring and optimization are critical for success. Implement these strategies:

• A/B Testing: Ideally, you want to be testing out new things in your campaigns, like image or ad variations, to see what works best.
• Adjust Bids: Increase bids for high-performing placements or audiences.
• Exclude Poor-Performing Sites: Remove low-converting placements to improve ROI.
• Leverage Frequency Capping: Limit how many times an ad is shown to the same user.

8. Measure Results and Refine Strategies

Google Ads provides robust reporting tools to evaluate performance:

• Impressions and Clicks: Gauge visibility and user engagement.
• Conversion Tracking: Measure actions like form submissions or sales.
• View-Through Conversions: Track users who saw your ad but converted later.

Take. thetime to work on your targeting, creatives, and bids based on data insights as this is the core of your advertising campaigns.

Best Practices for Google Display Ads

1. Align Ad Copy with Landing Pages: Ensure consistency between your ads and the destination pages to boost Quality Score.
2. Use Compelling Headlines: Capture attention with clear, benefit-driven headlines.
3. Take Advantage of Ad Extensions: Add features like sitelinks or call extensions where applicable.
4. Utilize Negative Keywords and Placements: Avoid irrelevant clicks by excluding inappropriate sites or content.
5. Monitor Competitor Strategies: Stay ahead by analyzing and improving upon competitors’ ad tactics.

Conclusion

Mastering Google Ads Display requires strategic planning, precise targeting, and continuous optimization. By following the steps outlined in this guide, your business can harness the power of display advertising to drive awareness, engagement, and conversions.

FAQ – How Does Google Ads Work