Personally I don’t buy the benefits of display ads for a long time. Speaking of my own experience as a consumer – I spent a lot time going to websites, reading articles or buying stuff, but I don’t feel the impact of display ads on me. I always act purposefully online and I just disregard the irrelevant messages around me. However, my recent experience and some analytics results changed my thoughts. Immersing myself in the internet marketing industry, I constantly see how evolving technology advanced the degree of relevancy that display ads could be. When the message reach to the right people, and as long as it is relevant, people clicks. A typical example is Facebook, Facebook showing ads by analyzing keywords from people’s profile and dialogs, while the ad result is not perfect, it becomes better and better. Here I summarized three reasons of “why Internet Display Ads” for advertiser after several rounds of discussion with my colleagues.
1. Reach audience that disappeared from traditional media, with increasing relevancy of messaging
I seldom watch TV and magazines/newspaper, I go to YouTube and Hulu for videos, go to websites for editorial contents-even willing to pay for it. I also manged to grab the information whenever I want from various iphone apps – and i am willing to pay for it too. I know more and more of my friends start acting like this way- probably not that extreme, but proportionally and gradually. We are the part of audience that traditional media has limitation to reach to and the segment size is just growing. For advertiser, “be where the target is” is the simplest rule, though the degree of which is varied across industries, companies or even campaigns. But I keep seeing the smarter advertisers are always more likely to act ahead and learn from their early experiences, they are willing to try new technologies, try to expand the relevancy of their display campaigns – there are growing industry participants can help with it. ranged from simple context/ site targeting (Google Adwords, adnetwork..) to complicated individual-level impression targeting (Ad exchangers, data providers and DSPs), all contributed by the beauty of technology and data.
2. Complementary to the limitation of “Search”
In the states, almost half of the online marketing budget is spent on Search, and there is a reason for the growing speed: compared with other media, Search is efficient, transparent and trackable, and advertisers love its result-oriented, data heavy and ROI favored characteristics. However, Search always performs the later funnel of a message communication process. like the famous and powerful sentence that describes its media advantage : “be there when and where your consumer want it!”. However, the sentence also hides the limitation of Search behind: that is, when advertiser, especially small-medium ones, spent their budget in search to some point, they will realize the limited impact of their campaigns due to a stable search volume and relatively constant click-through-rates – if without the help of other media. With this, display reaches a similar digital audience as search, and it helps to build the upper funnel of communication process and eventually, grow the size of later funnel – increase search volumes . Secondly, when the display creative done its job, it also enhances the click through rates of search campaigns.
3. Messaging between “action-driven” and “branding”
Though there are “Branding” campaigns in Search, in general Search is pretty much action driven, For its role in a later funnel of communication, search campaigns are calling for action, usually messaging with a deal or discount, or phrases like “buy today” or “sigh up now”-we can tell this either from the Ad title or Ad copy. However, this is not enough for any advertisers who care about branding, who wants their brand to have a sense of personality. Running branding campaigns in traditional media, such as buying good slots in prime TV time or hiring expensive creative agencies can do the job, but it is expensive and not applicable for all advertisers. Well, I think rather than an alternative, but an integrated channel, display can stand between. Generally speaking, with a combination of place, size and format differences in image, flash, video, etc… display offers rooms for media creativity and innovation. With its linkable nature and targeting technology, it could be messaging in either action driven or brand awareness, we are increasingly seeing if buying and messaging in a right way, display CPC could even outperforming Search, and growing its search volume at the same time! But still, I don’t think display media has a similar emotional impact as traditional media, not even close. esp. when compared with TV and OOH. but thinking smartly, advertisers can still apply technology and media flexibility to their favor and keep optimizing and bringing in insights that they learned from digital across channels and campaigns.
