Until a few years ago the 1st thing I’d do when reviewing a PPC account was to check if the campaigns were running on on the display network – if they were (& Google helpfully opted everyone in) then almost certainly the client was wasting the vast majority of the budget. Quick recommendation to client to turn it off, the client saves a lump of budget & sees efficiency jump – excellent!This aversion is decreasingly justifiable. We’ll still advise caution when using the display network but are seeing every day that when used correctly it increasingly delivers for client campaigns.Google has seen the trend towards display and programmatic and has invested significantly in upgrading their offering. There is a wealth of targeting options over & above the original contextual & site/page selections – remarketing & dynamic remarketing, similar audiences, demographics, in-market buyers & video.These targeting options allow you to maximise the real joy of display – the fact that it is cheap. Display CPMs start at around £0.40 and if you can get the targeting and creative right there are great results to be had…however without the targeting the internet is a big place and 1,000,000 impressions can disappear without traceBelow is a little guidance on how to get the best from display if you are starting out or not currently getting the results you were expecting or hoping for:1. RemarketingThis must be your first priority. I struggle to understand why any website would not run remarketing. We work to get traffic to the site & 95% of them leave without buying after 2 minutes & 4 page views. Why not advertise to these people for the next x days? You can show about 1,000 ads to these people for less than £1.00 so what is not to love2. Site Category OptionsUnless you’ve a good reason exclude all Sensitive content along with Parked Domains, Error Pages and In-game. In-game can do vast numbers of impressions and the smart money tends to avoid them…if you don’t exclude you get them. It is that poker adage of if you don’t know who the sucker in the room is then it’s you. Nothing more embarrassing than presenting results to a stair lift client and having to explain why you ran x million impressions on a kids site like www.kizi.com3. Excluding AppsAfter In-game advertising, your ads will be displayed across millions of apps, some relevant but most not and they’ll receive accidental clicks. You can exclude every app individually, but it’s a thankless task. Alternatively, you could create a Campaign Placement Exclusion list within Shared Library and drop this URL in adsenseformobileapps.com.4. Optimise Your AdsDisplay ads get stale & need refreshing. Also some are dramatically better than others so keep testing. Aim to refresh your text, image and video ads to ensure they get noticed. So many just create an Ad and run it for a year….this can be OK for search where each searcher can be a fresh eyeball but never for display5. Ignoring Text AdsDon’t just use Image ads. Text ads are unsexy but they still get billions of impressions and drive quality clicks.6. Video AdsDo video – its growing fast especially in younger audiences. Video ads are underused by most advertisers and for a strong impression the prices are still low.If you'd like to discuss your display campaigns please get in touch on 01225 583838.
