Display advertising on the Google Display Network is effective in helping advertisers achieve a wide variety of goals, from branding to direct response.
Brand Advertisers
Brand advertisers are typically most concerned with ensuring their message reaches their target audience, while maintaining control of where their brand appears, and the cost per impression of their ads. The Google Display Network allows advertisers to build a custom network of sites utilizing a wide range of targeting technologies (e.g., keyword contextual, placement, and audience). This allows advertisers to find and connect with their target audience more effectively and more often, providing them with effective targeting at scale.
If you're primarily concerned with branding goals, you can manually select sites where you want your ad to appear. You can also use site and category exclusions, and negative keywords to avoid showing on certain sites and content within the network. For example, if you're selling ski boots and you decide to target the sports section of an online newspaper, you can use negative keywords, such as football, to avoid showing your ad on irrelevant content. Our auction pricing model ensures that advertisers are paying competitive prices set by the market, not by Google, and advertisers pay only what an impression is worth to them.
Direct Response Advertisers
Direct response advertisers are normally looking to drive a high volume of conversions at the lowest possible price, and therefore aren't as concerned with marketing their brand. A conversion could be a sign up, lead, purchase, or other actions that an advertiser wants a user to take.
A key driver of the Google Display Network's success in driving direct response advertisers' goals is the ability of Google's contextual targeting engine to place ads against the most relevant content across the web. This enables advertisers to connect with the most engaged audiences at the right moment. For example, if you're selling digital cameras, you can chose keywords such as "digital camera" to show your ad on web pages about camera equipment, discussion groups for camera hobbyists, or camera product review sites.
Transparent reporting on Google Ads with Placement Performance Reports helps advertisers see what is and isn't working to optimize their display campaigns accordingly. The auction pricing model ensures that advertisers are paying competitive prices set by the market. When combined with the option to pay only when a user clicks, and tools like the Display Campaign Optimizer and Conversion Optimizer which automatically manage bids to a target cost-per-action (CPA), the Google Display Network becomes an effective channel for direct response advertisers to achieve their performance goals for both display and non-display campaigns.
