In this blog post, we’re going to look at Google Display Advertising and what it can do for your Kitchen, Bedroom or Bathroom business.
Google Display Advertising works on the ‘Google Display Network’ which although sounds technical, is actually something that most internet users see on a daily basis. The Google Display Network is made up of millions of websites where advertisers can place adverts in many different formats. These ads can be targeted to very specific audiences based on segments such as location, age and browsing interests.
Display Advertising is set up and managed from inside your Google Ad account (the same account that hosts your normal Google Search Ads), and studies by advertising specialists Wordstream show that Display Advertising accounts for 20% of all Google Ads traffic, so it has a big part to play.
Where Do My Display Ads Appear?
Google Display Ads will appear on websites that your customers visit, whether that be the Daily Mail or other high traffic websites. They appear in varying locations on the page depending on the website layout and the size of the advert. We’ll talk more about advert sizes later.
So Why Should You Be Using Display Advertising?
According to Google, the Display Network covers over 90% of all the internet’s users, so it’s a fantastic way to get in front of people on a large scale. Obviously, getting in front of someone is one thing, but for your marketing to make a good return on investment, you need to be talking to the right people, and that’s where the Display Network really comes into its own.
The list of targeting features that are available to be segmented and filtered are only rivalled by that of Facebook Ads. There are a variety of ways that you can target in-market consumers for Kitchen, Bedrooms, Bathrooms and other interiors, and we’ll come onto that a little later.
Mixing Up Your Ads
Display ads are often thought of as images, but you can do much more than static imagery. Display Ads can run as text ads as well as images, but if you’re really looking to ramp up your CTR (click through rate), you’ll want to start using the animated images or the video feature, where you can display videos to in-market consumers.
Google Display Ads Come In A Range Of Sizes…
Because of the variations in websites that the ads appear on, ads come in a range of different sizes. Every website uses a slightly different layout, and that means that you need to create a range of ad sizes (up to 20) to make sure that an ad is available to fit into the slot on the particular site your target audience are on. Sure, you can just choose the most popular sizes of ad, but you’ll be missing out on serving your creatives to 100% of your audience.
Here are all of the ad sizes, for your reference. The 10 most popular sizes are shown in bold below…
Square and Rectangle
250 x 250 – Square
200 x 200 – Small Square
300 x 250 – Inline Rectangle
336 x 280 – Large Rectangle
240 x 400 – Vertical Rectangle
250 x 360 – Triple Widescreen
580 x 400 – Netboard
Skyscraper
120 x 600 – Skyscraper
160 x 600 – Wide Skyscraper
300 x 600 – Half-Page Ad
300 x 1050 – Portrait
Leaderboard
468 x 60 – Banner
728 x 90 – Leaderboard
970 x 90 – Large Leaderboard
930 x 180 – Top Banner
970 x 250 – Billboard
980 x 120 – Panorama
Mobile
300 x 50 – Mobile Banner
320 x 50 – Mobile Banner
320 x 100 – Large Mobile Banner
At this point it’s important to note that all display ads have to comply to a strict format, otherwise they won’t work. Each image file size needs to be less than 150KB and can be in either GIF, JPG, PNG SWF or ZIP formats.
So, What Is Display Advertising Good For?
Display advertising comes into its own on two different fronts, and is an incredibly cheap and effective way to do both…
Strength #1: Driving new traffic to your website
Strength #2: Driving return visits to your website
Driving New Traffic To Your Site
When it comes to driving traffic to your site on a large scale, cheaply, Display Ads are unrivalled. Yes, they may have lower click-through rates than ads on other channels, but the cost per click is very cheap and the targeting options sublime.
Driving Return Visitors To Your Site
One of the key metrics that we judge ourselves on here at Flo is the number of return visitors we can get back to our clients’ websites, and there’s good reason for that. Kitchens, Bedrooms and Bathrooms are among the biggest purchases someone will make in their lifetime, and for that reason there’s a long and considered buying journey. It can often take a year or more for a client to finally finish their research and log an enquiry.
First-time visitors don’t convert as well as returning visitors (and we have the data to prove it), so getting more people back to the website equals more website enquiries, hence why we measure ourselves against this stat.
Display advertising plays a huge role in driving return visits to your site. You get the power to build remarketing audiences that you can run ads to in order to stay in front of prospects that you’ve already worked so hard to drive to your website for a first visit.
Targeting Your Display Ads
There a host of ways that you can target your ads on the Google Display Network, and here are all of the targeting methods explained so that you can get a good idea of exactly how to target in-market consumers.
Placement Targeting – The Display Network gives you the option to place your ads on specific websites that your target audience will be spending time on. This can be great for targeting browsers of websites like Ideal Homes, for example.
Contextual Targeting – Contextual Targeting is the most common and well-used targeting method as it relates to the keywords used in the services you offer. To use Contextual Targeting, first you need to provide Google with a list of keywords and Google will start to optimise your targeting by serving ads to anyone browsing on websites where these keywords appear. Instead of providing search queries like you might do for your search ads, you simply need to list 6 to 20 keywords that are very relative to the ads you are displaying.
Google will provide a report for the sort of sites you are appearing on, and it’s important that you keep a close eye on this as you’ll want to eradicate any websites that aren’t relevant.
Target by Topic – This targeting feature allows you to choose a list of page topics for your ads to appear on. This isn’t the most detailed way of targeting, as there’s always a risk that the categories are too broad and that your ads will be showing to people who are in the market for DIY goods, for example, even though they fall under the category of ‘Home Improvement’ or ‘Interior Design’, say.
Target By Interests – If you choose to target by interests, you’ll be presented with a list similar to that of the topic targeting feature but targeting by interests can be far more powerful. Interest targeting means that you have the ability to target what the user is interested in, not the content of the page they are on. For example, they could be on a completely unrelated site, but because they have previously shown signs of being interested in a Kitchen, Bathroom or Bedroom, your advert will serve to them.
Remarketing – One of the most modern and powerful marketing techniques, remarketing is great for driving return visitors to your site who convert much better than first-time visitors. There are a range of options when it comes to targeting through remarketing. Your ads can be as broad as targeting every single one of your website visitors, or you can just show ads to people who viewed a certain page or took a specific action, such as viewing a video on your ‘About Us’ page.
What Results Should You Expect to See From Your Google Display Campaigns?
If you’ve ever run any online marketing campaigns, you’ll know that it’s easy to rack up a bill without getting the results you want, and that’s why it’s important to know what you can achieve through Display Advertising.
Across all industries, the average click-through rate (CTR) is 0.35%, and, although this is lower than you’d expect to see from Google Search Ads, you’ll be paying much less for the clicks (an average of £0.45). With the margins and average spends of customers in our Kitchen, Bathroom and Bedroom industry, Display Advertising should be an absolute ‘no-brainer’ for business owners in this industry.
We appreciate that getting stuck into advertising on Google can be complex to the uninitiated, so if you need some help in setting up your first campaign, let us know by dropping us an email on info@flo-marketing.co.uk or by calling us on 0121 405 6780 and we can schedule some time to help you master it.