Google Display Ads: The Ultimate Guide to Mastering the Google Display Network (GDN)

In the world of digital advertising, it’s easy to be immediately drawn to the importance of achieving search results. These are the text ads that pop up when you type a query into Google. However, it’s important to look at the bigger picture. We should also focus on Google Display Ads, which run alongside the organic search results and content that we’re often used to seeing when browsing online and going about our daily business. The Google Display Network gives us the ability to reach online users with colourful, engaging content. These ads can drive conversations and showcase your brand in front of new audiences. The Google Display Network encompasses millions of websites and Google-owned platforms, including YouTube and Gmail. They provide businesses with the opportunity to reach the right users when their likelihood of engaging is at its highest. Unlike search ads, which are primarily crafted to capture demand and encourage a quick conversation, display ads are about creating something more. They can create demand and build brand awareness so that users can convert when the time is right, rather than by chance or convenience. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what this means and how the Google Display Network can supercharge your marketing.

Why Use the Google Display Network?

• Broad Reach and Brand Awareness

  The scale of the Google Display Network is beyond what many people would think is possible – it’s very impressive. With over two million websites and instant access to platforms like YouTube and Gmail, it provides agencies and businesses with the opportunity to reach millions of users and generate billions of impressions every day. Display Ads allow a display advertising agency to capture the attention of users before they even know they need your products or services. This is done by consistently placing your brand assets across relevant sites, which will keep your business top-of-mind. In simple terms, this means that when the customer’s intention to convert is at its highest, your brand will be the first one they recall.

• Precise Audience Targeting & Remarketing

  Despite its massive scale, the Google Display Network is not a spray-and-pray solution. It is certainly worth taking time to optimise the content so that it’s relevant to the needs of your target audience. While some brands may benefit from a less targeted approach, this often isn’t a cost-effective or sustainable way to engage users. This is especially true if long-term success is your ultimate goal. GDN marketing allows brands and agencies alike the opportunity to target users based on their demographics, hobbies, major life events, and even their purchase intent. This makes it easier for brands to reach their target audience at the right time with the right message. It’s also possible to retarget these users (also known as remarketing) in order to engage users who may not have converted on their first visit, but still have a good chance of doing so in the future.

Getting Started: Campaign Structure and Ad Formats

• Campaign Objectives and Setup

  In order for your GDN marketing activity to have the best possible chance of success, you first need to ensure you have a clearly defined objective that’s both realistic and possible with your allocated budget.

  Here are some objectives that are most commonly used:

  • Sales: Driving purchases on your website.
  • Leads: Capturing customer information (newsletter sign-ups, demo requests).
  • Website traffic: Maximising the number of relevant visitors to your site.
  • Product and brand consideration: Encouraging users to explore your products or services.
  • Brand awareness and reach: Getting your brand name and message in front of the largest possible audience.
  The Google Ads platform will prompt you to choose a goal – your GDN marketing ads will look different depending on which direction you choose to go. This part of the setup will help you fine-tune your ads and decide how they should be targeted, exploring parameters such as target location, ideal budget spread, and desired bidding strategy.

• Responsive Display Ads (RDAs)

  Responsive Display Ads are the most common version of GDN marketing. They can be effective because they allow users to automate much of the process and reduce the amount of time needed to make many similar but unique ads. This can make Google Display Ads much more accessible and cost-effective for smaller businesses wanting a budget-friendly advertising solution. Once you’ve chosen your images, headlines, and descriptions, of which you can choose several that will be chopped and changed depending on what Google deems to be the best fit. Once you’ve done this, you can sit back and see what works best. This automation makes it easier to run A/B testing and efficiently remove poorly performing content. Then, you can test new ideas, which should result in a steady improvement over time.

• Other Ad Formats (Image & HTML5 Ads)

  While RDAs are the primary choice for many online advertisers, the GDN also supports traditional ad formats. These different formats include image-based ads that come in the form of static images that look like banners, and HTML5 ads. HTML5 ads are highly engaging and often animated, but require a higher degree of technical skill – specialist coding is often needed.

Mastering GDN Targeting Strategies

• In-Depth Audience Targeting

  In-depth audience targeting gives a GDN agency the opportunity to focus on users across multiple touchpoints, regardless of where they are in the conversion funnel. Advertisers can hone in on specific demographics and interest indicators. This makes it much easier to narrow your targeting and reduce the likelihood of budget being wasted on users that are unlikely to ever convert because they simply don’t care for the product or service. As part of this ultra-targeted approach, it’s also possible to use similar audiences to identify new customer groups that may hold value. This powerful feature uses machine learning to find new users who share the same characteristics and browsing behavior as the people already on your existing remarketing lists. It’s a great way to scale your best customer profiles without needing to go back to the drawing board.

• Context & Placement Targeting

  This strategy targets the place your ad will appear, focusing on the content of the page. A winning strategy often involves combining keywords, relevant topics, and relevant placements while also using existing data and smart placement targeting. This way of running Google Display Ads means that advertisers can reach users when it matters to them in a way that’s most likely to be effective now and also in the future.

What are the types of Display Ads Google?

Display ads provide opportunities to engage users with appealing ad formats. Here are some of the ad types you can run on the Display Network: Responsive Display Ads.

Uploaded Display ads

With uploaded display ads, you can upload images in many ads sizes.

Responsive Display ads + Video ads

With responsive display ads, you can upload your assets (logos, images, headlines, descriptions, and videos), and Google will automatically generate ad combinations for websites, apps, YouTube, and Gmail.

Crafting Compelling Ad Creative and Landing Pages

• Design Principles for High-Performing Ads

  The transition from text to visual advertising requires a shift in mindset and how we approach online advertising. The design principles for high-performing ads should focus on being straightforward and easy to digest while also being consistent with the brand and the message you want to convey. This simplicity should remain even if the headlines and descriptions differ from one ad to the next. Underpinning all of this is the need for a compelling call to action that’s simple but still compelling, such as “Shop Now” or “Learn More”.

• Optimising Your Landing Page for Conversions

  Even the best display advertising agency will struggle to get results if the landing page isn’t ready for users wanting to convert there and now. The page itself should have content that echoes the message present in the ad copy, while also being minimalist in nature. As humans, we’re incredibly lazy. This is why a sales journey that requires users to click from one page to the next is unlikely to yield positive results. While we’re on this point, your website pages should be optimised for mobile users, given that around 60% of online traffic comes from mobile devices, according to research published by DataReportal.

Effective Bidding, Budgeting, and Optimisation

• Choosing the Right Bidding Strategy

  As a specialist SEO and GDN agency, we know what it takes to succeed when targeting users using search engines. Your bidding strategy will dictate how you compete in the GDN auction. While Google’s Smart Bidding feature should make it easier to automate much of the time-intensive work, having a clear understanding of how this works is still essential. Here are a few different bidding strategies that you’ll need to understand before getting started on your GDN marketing journey:
  • Maximise Conversions: Google will automatically set bids to help you get the most conversions within your budget. This option is often better for campaigns focused purely on driving sales or leads.
  • Target CPA (Cost-Per-Acquisition): You will tell Google the average price you are willing to pay for a conversion, and the system attempts to achieve this target. This is great for scaling proven conversion campaigns.
  • Target ROAS (Return On Ad Spend): You set a target return, such as a ฿200 back for every ฿50 spent, and the system will optimise bids to achieve that ROAS. If you have a limited budget, this can be a strong choice.

• Continuous Campaign Optimisation & Automation

  The Google Display Network features incredibly powerful automation, particularly through Smart Bidding. However, it still requires the display advertising agency to carefully guide the machine learning by it with sufficient data. These campaigns should run for at least 2-4 weeks to gather conversion data before major changes are made, even if they are slow to initially get results. This early data, while potentially not significant in terms of leads or conversations, can help guide future campaigns and add a lot of value moving forward.

• Performance Analysis and Reporting

  Measurement is crucial. The first thing your business, or your chosen display advertising agency, must do is connect your Google Ads account to Google Analytics and ensure conversion tracking is accurately set up. Regular, focused performance analysis and reporting will allow you to trim the underperforming parts of your campaign and scale the successful ones. This can help you avoid wasting your budget.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

• Poor Targeting and Irrelevant Creatives

  The most frequent mistake is letting the GDN run too broadly. If you are selling a B2B SaaS tool and your ad is showing up on a celebrity gossip blog, your targeting is flawed and should be amended as soon as possible. While it can be hard knowing where to start, especially if you’re running your own ads, you need to be ruthless and cut any creative or copy that isn’t generating results. However, you should still take time to understand what went wrong so that your future iterations can be better than before.

• Neglecting Mobile Experience

  As we mentioned earlier, around 60% of online traffic originates from mobile devices. So, if your landing pages are slow or difficult to navigate, you are essentially wasting your budget and giving your potential customers a poor first impression of your brand. An easy solution is to test the speed of your landing page on Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool and then make changes accordingly. This can be as simple as reducing the sizes of your images, but you can take things further by refining any code and removing any unnecessary plug-ins.

Conclusion: Unlock Your GDN Potential

The Google Display Network offers advertisers an opportunity to build massive brand awareness, maintain persistent contact with potential customers through remarketing, and scale conversions efficiently. As a display advertising agency, we know how much work it takes to build a strategy that delivers results quickly. This approach also sets up future campaigns for sustainable success, which we’ve learned after many years of working in the industry. We’re not going to pretend that Paid Media is easy, but with a strong strategy and clearly defined goals, it’s possible to take your brand to new heights through the use of smart bidding, refined targeting, and relevant placements that reach your target users when it matters most.