They’re everywhere! From the radios blaring in your cars down to the wrapping paper that covers your takeout food,advertisements(ads) are everywhere. There is probably no sphere of communication that ads have not used to their advantage to sell and market different products and services. Of all of them, Display Ads seem to be in kingpins, since most information gets to us when we are seeing it.

Why Display Ads?

Display Ads are usually preferred for the following reasons:

• To introduce & promote new products, which could be at lower costs or have been upgraded.
• To build awareness of the product, which focuses more on educating the masses.
• To follow up with the audiences who are already aware of business or product/services and haven’t made any decision about the purchase or are showing interest in the product.

Display ads are much cheaper than other search ads and investing here with the right targeting and
appropriate content would get the cost per acquisition at a price as low as possible. Comparatively, the display CPCs are much lesser than the search CPCs.

These ads have to be very carefully made, since mistakes can be fatal. Any wrong action in
terms of targeting and serving inappropriate/misleading content is a big loss on display and hence one needs to be wise while making the ads to get the worth of their money.

The ads don’t always have to cater to all people, there could be a particular sect of people to target. Display ads are always pushed to audiences based on some assumptions and sometimes based on their history or data available.

Targeting Categories:

• Some assumptions are purely made to create interest in product/service, educate and then sell the product with better results.
• In case of history or with data, it’s a follow up with good offers, or more good reasons for
  purchasing their product.

The following are some of the targeting modes used in reaching out to the audiences based on
assumptions and based on history/data of the audience. The objective of the business decides
on the type of targeting to be done.

Targeting Types:

• Keyword based targeting
• Placement based targeting
• Keyword + Placement based targeting
• Interest Based Targeting
• Based on browsing history
• Remarketing

Keep in mind:

• Call out statement:This includes a trigger or something that pushes a customer towards making his decision to purchase a product. It could be very generic or can also be very specific (related to particular service)
• Call to Action: Call to Action should be there in every text. Sign Up Now, Learn More, Know More, Call our experts now, Get in touch with our experts are all specific CTA’s. This CTA could vary as per the content.
• Make sure the content is to the point and short and does not have lengthy texts on image ads.

Writing display content based on Targeting:

Keyword only Targeting:

In keyword only targeting, the campaign owner makes an assumption that customer who is
reading the content related to their products/service on the internet could be interested in
purchasing or enquiring about it and hence serves information of their product/service.

Campaign owner also assumes that the user is already aware of their product and there is no
need of product/service education. In this case the display banner text will be written as follows:

Text 1– Pushing the service directly (It’s a product/service name mention)

Text 2– Call out statements

Text 3– Call to Action

Eg: Person reading an article that has SEO services related words/terms and there is a high
possibility of person already aware of what it means, hence the ad content will be as follows:

Text 1– Best SEO Agency

Text 2–

• Serving Fortune 500 Companies
• Highly Skilled professionals/Domain Experts
• Proven Track Record
• 40% Discount for first three customers

Text 3– Know More

Note: Here a specific product or service can be mentioned in the display content, there is no
need of generic content.

Here the generic content can be Digital Marketing Services, the specific one is SEO, as audience is reading about SEO and mentioning SEO would get more traction.

Placement only Targeting:

Here the targeting is purely based on an assumption that specific group of audiences browse specific types of websites and we assume that they could be also interested in the
product/service.

In this case the audience might not be completely aware of our product/service, hence the
education or creating curiosity or both of it about the product/service are very much required.

Text 1– Content to Grab Their Attention

Text 2– Content that introduces the product/Service

Text 3– Call To Action

Eg:

In case if an audience is browsing a stackoverflow website and our product/service is training
and the ad content will be as follows:

Text 1– Upskill to reach new Heights in Career

Text 2– Professional Courses Training

Text 3– Know More!

Note: Here placing a content for Specific product will not gain much traction as campaign manager will not have enough clarity on the audience interested technology/methodology. Hence, serving generic content and landing them on the multiproduct/multiservice page reaps
more benefit.

Keyword + Placement Targeting:

This targeting is a combination of both keyword targeting and placement. This particular method
allows campaign manager to serve specific content and the placement just narrows down the targeting with an advantage of better CTRs.

In this specific type of targeting, campaign manager will be able to achieve a better quality reach
by serving to more relevant audiences.

Based on Browsing History only targeting:

Here a domain/industry specific content serving can be more impactful rather than the product/service specific content, as campaign manager has information of audience who have browsed similar products or websites but not the same product and thus, product/service specific content will not gain much traction.

The ad text can be same as the placement targeting ad text.

Interests-Based targeting:

The interest’s data available cannot assure you that the audience will be knowing about your product/service and in case if he/she is aware they might not be interested in it. Serving content to this group of audiences would not fetch much returns and hence this targeting is always used in any of the above combinations or all of the above combinations and hence ad content is based on respective targeting type.

Remarketing:

In remarketing the ads are served to audiences who have visited our website prior and in this
case we will have information about the product/service which the customer has browsed. Thus, the specific product/service related ad can be served to audience.

Here the audience already knows about the product/service about the company/business providing the product/service and hence the ad text focus should be more on creating curiosity/interest, communicating brand value, posing questions or making them to pose a question along with call out statement/s.

Text 1– Curiosity/interest/ Brand value/Posing Question/Making audience to pose a
question/Reminder

Text 2– Call out statement

Text 3- Call to Action

Eg:

Text 1– What Are you Waiting For?

Text 2–

• CSM Training By Paul Michael
• Avail 30% discount, only for today
• Trained 50,000+ professionals
• For The past 10 Years in Industry
• Opt for Weekend/Weekday Batches

Text 3– Register Now!

And that is all there is to know about Display Ads. Sell well!

Manjunath Chowdary

Digital Marketing Expert, consultant, Mentor and
Director of KandraDigital Marketing
Solutions Pvt Ltd.