How to Sell With Display Advertising

What is display advertising and how to show it to those users who are highly likely to buy a product? Alexey Lyakh, co-founder of the digital agency newage explains more.

What is Display Advertising

Display advertising creates demand and forms an image of a product or brand in the audience. Various tools are used for this, most often banners, promotional videos, branding, PR, Rich Media, etc. 

Display campaigns are used in the following situations:

1. Market launch of a new product or brand

2. Scaling the business, entering new markets

Display advertising works with a cold and neutral audience. It tells potential buyers about the existence of the product and makes them want to buy it.

Should I Launch Display Advertising Or Performance First?

Display advertising is often contrasted with performance marketing (working with a hot audience – those who are ready to buy). The following tools are commonly used here:

• Search ads;

• SEO;

• teaser ads;

• SMM;

• email marketing, etc.

First, you need to run performance. And run display advertising only if you are already able to close the existing demand. That is when you have merchandising set up, and online – context, SEO, and other tools that will bring the consumer to the basket with your product.

Imagine you are running an ad for a BMW i3. Thanks to the campaign, the target audience knows about this car and its advantages. A person googles a specific model…and clicks on another dealer’s listing because they are higher in the search results.

Without proper performance, display advertising becomes a gift to a competitor.

How to launch a display ad campaign

We start with the strategy, definition of the target audience, promotion format, and campaign KPI. Then, under this strategy, we create communication – creative. Do not forget to set up analytics before the start, and during the campaign, we look at fraud and possible low-quality placements. And the last step is optimization.

But this is what the ideal workflow looks like. And now let's look at how this process is superimposed on the realities of the market.

Step 1. Creative

Clients come to the agency with a request: “I have a cool idea, I came up with a message, help me place and distribute it correctly.”

The advantage of digital is that here you can quickly launch and test several creatives; to evaluate how each video or banner works. This is not TV or billboards, which are long and expensive to edit. But there are still general recommendations.

Video Creatives

Often, agencies come with television creative, but it is usually not suitable for digital, because each media has its own consumer culture. There are 15-minute commercials on TV, and a person most often sees the entire video. On the Internet, you can close the tab at any time and go to another site, rewind or just click ”Skip”. The user himself chooses what to watch, and we must adapt to this.

It is advisable not to adapt TV commercials, but to make creatives for digital from scratch. For example, on YouTube, after 5 seconds, the “Skip” button appears, and the person holds the cursor on it in advance. So in these five seconds, you need to have time to convey what kind of company you are and what offer you have.

Banners

The first important thing to know is don't make story banners, no one watches them from start to finish. They don't look the same on the website as they do on the designer's monitor. A person can see a banner at any time, so each slide should give an understanding of what exactly you are advertising.

Often, banners are used as “closers”. In the video, we show the plot and introduce the brand, but the person does not click. And then he sees a banner in a more suitable place – he remembers the video and comes to watch it. If the campaigns run in parallel, then the same elements that are used in the video should be included in the banners. They should be read as a whole to achieve the best media effect.

Step 2. Strategy

In media advertising, we work with a funnel: “Cold audience – Neutral – Hot”. For each of them, you need to choose the format, targeting, and KPI.

Format and targeting

Let's take the example of the BMW i3. 

To define a cold audience, it is enough to take into account common interests, demographics, and custom audiences. These people need to be shown that such a model exists and what it looks like.

For a neutral audience, narrower targeting is used: here we focus on competitors, certain URLs, and people who interacted with the first videos. The format will also be different – you need to demonstrate the advantages of the car and show it from the inside. Tell those who are interested in electric cars about the electric motor, and tell parents about the security system.

And with a hot audience, we will use retargeting and more specific product benefit reviews. For example, on YouTube, we can target people who were looking for a specific model or analogues of competitors.

KPI 

For each audience, you need to set your own KPI. Let's take for example the promotion of the client "Allo".

In working with a cold audience, it is important that a person finds out that there is “Allo”: a large store, it has a lot of goods – and Xiaomi phones are among them.

When a person is not yet sure which phone he wants, you need to tell him about the advantages of a particular model. Our goal is to make sure he gets to this phone and looks at it. But don't expect an instant purchase.

If we advertise Xiaomi in Allo stores for a hot audience, we will use the most narrow targeting of interested consumers (including remarketing) to close the conversion. In this case, the goal becomes a purchase: showing Thank-you page or adding to the cart.

Step 3. Audience Segmentation

Advertising systems allow you to target very, very narrowly. Google alone has over 700 segmentation options. If you combine them and make them custom, you get an almost infinite number of modifications.

You can segment the audience and communicate with it separately, and create different display scenarios:

• the user watched the video, let's show him another;

• user didn't watch the video, let's show it again;

• the user was on the site and clicked somewhere, let's show him this banner.

The myth of display advertising. It is believed that display advertising is hard because you need to use a lot of channels. But now Google Ads or Display&Video 360 plus Facebook is enough for a good flight. Spreading to other sites makes sense if there are few coverages. But, in our experience, even for the largest advertisers, this is enough.

I often face this situation. After the launch of the campaign, a marketer or business owner comes in and says: “Great, but you should also measure this.” In most cases, the new metric can still be tracked, everything is logged. But you need to think about the indicators before the start of the campaign.

In the construction of analytics, we use the author's method of Comprehensive Analysis of Display Advertising. The essence of the approach is that the effect of the campaign is measured not only by the number of those who clicked on the advertisement.

Display advertising often works with an audience that is interested in the offer, but not relevant at the time of viewing. Few people will go and make a conversion when they are already tuned in to watch an interview. However, the user remembers the brand and returns within 1-2 days.

It is necessary to keep track of such delayed contacts. To do this, we use post-view and cross-device metrics, which make up a significant part of the audience.

Step 5. Optimisation

The final stage of working on a display campaign is its iterative improvement.

Optimisation of platforms, targeting, and audience segments. Determine what works better and what works worse. Do not count on the bare CTR.

Creative efficiency optimisation. Their performance is always different, and it can be measured.

Determining the optimal frequency. It depends on many factors: product, audience, communication method, platforms, etc. This indicator is unique for each campaign and is revealed in the course of work.

Determination of the duration of the media impact. How often it is worth showing ads. If post-view and cross-device conversions reach 5 days after the first view, you need to set up the campaign so that during this time the user will be remembered, but not bored.