When you hear the term “banner ad,” what comes to mind? If you’re thinking flashy, spammy, and primitive, you might have a skewed perception of the power of display advertising.
For years, people have said this strategy wastes time and money, often citing poor click-through rates and the attractiveness of new, innovative marketing techniques.
But display advertising isn’t broken like your last pair of earbuds. With new, efficient ways of buying banner ads and improved targeting capabilities, it has once again redeemed itself as the primary driver of ad revenue for content-driven websites.
If you don’t believe me, consider these four major benefits of display advertising.
1. Standardization at scale: Display advertising is the oldest form of digital advertising, which also makes it the most standardized and easiest to scale. Banner ads reach mass markets and niche audiences, and because they’re so pervasive, the potential to scale is enormous.
2. Creativity and branding: Banner ads are inherently visual, which presents a perfect opportunity to grab your target audience’s attention. Due to their inherent creative nature, display ads can be the perfect extension of your brand across the web.
3. Targeting capabilities: Thanks to new technologies, the ability to target your mass and niche audiences is more precise than ever — and is even comparable to social or search advertising. By focusing on demographics, page contextual targeting, frequency of views, systems, or any combination, you can home in closely on your intended audience.
4. Measurement of actionable data: Conversion attribution systems and enhanced communication among display ad servers allows you to parse, analyze, and act quickly on data from your campaign. This also makes display more nimble than almost any other digital ad option. You can usually layer on your own CRM or tracking technology so everything is seamlessly measured and optimized throughout your campaign, too.
Testing the Efficacy of Your Display Advertising
Despite the creativity and “wow” factor that display advertising offers, these initiatives still need to make money. Smart marketers measure everything and squeeze out as much return on their advertising spend as possible through these campaigns.
To effectively measure the success of your display advertising initiative, make sure you’re keeping an eye on these key elements:
- Lift: When running a campaign, pay attention to your other inbound channels. You’ll almost certainly see a rise in these areas, as well. Pay special attention to search and social connections, and make sure you have a way to measure the effects of your campaigns on these areas.
- Elements of the ad creative: Because the consumer interacts directly with the banner, it’s the most important aspect for driving sales. Plan and measure changes you make along the way to identify what’s working for your campaign.
Thanks to standardization tools and expanding technology, display-advertising metrics have become far easier to track than native advertising and other buzzworthy marketing strategies. And to obtain a high ROAS, constant tracking and adjusting is critical.
Although banner ads have received a bad rap, new technology has revamped good, ole-fashioned display advertising and its potential to generate returns. So don’t overlook the classics too fast, or you might miss a surefire opportunity to turn your ad spend into revenue.
For more on display advertising, learn how Yahoo is working to ensure that advertisers get 100% display ad viewability
