Display campaign

Suppose Search Campaigns allow you to reach your target audience when they are conducting search queries. In that case, Display Campaigns help you connect with relevant audiences through visually appealing and engaging ads across Google’s Display Network. This enables you to attract customers, enhance brand awareness, drive increased traffic, and generate new conversions. In today’s article, let’s join Ad Support to explore this campaign type!

What is GDN Advertising?

The Google Display Network (GDN) is where your display ads appear. It consists of millions of websites and apps, allowing businesses to reach over 90% of internet users worldwide. Google Display Ads enable you to capture users’ attention earlier by showing ads to people before they even start researching your products or services. Moreover, you can implement remarketing campaigns to remind them to explore products or services they’re interested in, leveraging collected data. Through this, you can re-engage individuals who have visited your website or app, significantly boosting traffic and potential leads.

A Display Campaign delivers ads to audiences viewing content on YouTube, Gmail, and the Google Display Network. Its flexibility and targeting capabilities, combined with AI-driven smart settings, help improve campaign performance. The Google Display Network empowers businesses to reach the right audience with tailored targeting criteria, delivering messages to the right customers at the right time.

When you create a new campaign, the default settings and recommendations leverage AI to boost performance effectively.

Smart bidding is recommended based on your advertising objectives to achieve the best results.

By default, display ads are set to responsive ads. This means you upload various assets into Google Ads, and Google’s AI optimizes and matches the most effective combination to fit the available ad space in the best-performing format.

Optimized targeting uses data, including keywords from your landing page, to help your business reach new and relevant audiences who are more likely to convert.

Why should you run Google display ads?

Reach users across various platforms

By running display ads, businesses can connect with a vast number of users worldwide through millions of websites and apps, including Google-owned platforms such as YouTube and Gmail. This allows businesses to expand their reach to a broader audience of potential customers. When your ads appear in multiple locations, it significantly enhances brand recognition as well as product and service visibility.

Achieve goals quickly

Through Display Campaigns, your ads are served across various websites, apps, and Google’s Display Network. This approach not only boosts brand awareness for your products and services but also drives traffic from genuinely interested customers. Users who click these ads can become new leads, increase conversion rates, and boost sales.
Display ads are a powerful tool that helps businesses expand their audience reach while effectively achieving their marketing goals.

Easy setup and optimization

The integration of AI into audience targeting, bid strategy selection, and ad format optimization simplifies the process of reaching new audiences. This enables businesses to set up campaigns quickly and effortlessly, saving valuable time. Optimized targeting features allow businesses to pinpoint high-performing audience segments, ensuring campaigns achieve the best results. Additionally, Smart Bidding strategies maximize performance by increasing conversions or conversion value while reducing time spent on management.

Once advertisers input ad components such as headlines, images, and logos, Google’s AI works to deliver the maximum number of customers within the set budget and CPA bid. Campaign optimization usually takes a few days, during which Google AI identifies the most effective combinations of ad components to ensure the best performance for the campaign.

Cost-Effective advertising

Display ads not only offer extensive reach to enhance brand recognition but are also significantly more affordable compared to search ads. While other ad types charge based on clicks, display ads primarily use cost-per-impression (CPM) pricing. By creating visually engaging and attention-grabbing ads, businesses can boost visibility and clicks, achieving better cost efficiency while enhancing results.

How to create a display campaign from A to Z

It’s advisable to create a display campaign a few days before launching and schedule the start date. Changes within the display network typically require 12-24 hours to take effect, and ads may not display immediately. During the planning stage, it is crucial to clearly define your goals, allocate a suitable budget, select an appropriate bidding strategy, outline your target audience’s profile, and explore performance management tools and features. Here’s a step-by-step guide to setting up a new campaign:

Create a new campaign

To create a new campaign, you need to access your Google Ads account and choose a goal that matches the business results you want to achieve. In your Google Ads account, select Campaign with the speaker icon.

Click on the Campaign drop-down menu and select Campaign. Next, click (+) select New Campaign, and select the desired goal including Sales, Leads, Web Traffic, Reach, and Brand Awareness. Or you can Create a Campaign without any goal guidance.

Now, select the campaign type as Display and select Standard Display Campaign as the sub-campaign type. Next, enter the business website URL, enter the campaign name, and select Continue. 

Set Campaign Settings

Campaign settings allow you to choose the location and language for your ads. Target languages that match the content of your advertisements. Additionally, use the Exclude option to target a larger area while excluding specific locations within that area. Other options include controlling ad frequency for individual customers and restricting ads from appearing in content inappropriate for your brand. Here are the campaign settings you can configure:

• Ad rotation: Show ads that will get the most clicks or conversions. You can optimize the rotation for your best performing ads or rotate indefinitely.
• Ad schedule: Limit the times your ads can run.
• Devices: Device targeting lets you choose the types of devices your ads will appear on.
• Campaign Url Options: If you use a third-party click tracker or have your own click tracking, add a custom tracking template. This will provide information on the URL to identify the source of individual ad clicks.
• Content Exclusion Options: Opt out of showing ads on content that isn’t relevant to your brand.
• Content Exclusion Options: Opt out of showing ads on content that isn’t relevant to your brand.
• Dynamic Ads: Add a product feed to your campaign to show personalized content based on what users have viewed on your website or app.
• Conversions: This setting controls which conversions are reported in the “Conversions” column in the applicable campaign when smart bidding is selected.

Setting a budget and bid strategy

While the budget determines how often your ads are displayed, the bidding strategy defines how your budget is spent. When setting up the budget, enter a daily budget, which represents the average amount you want to spend per day. For Display campaigns, recommended bidding strategies are based on your campaign objectives. If you prefer not to use the suggested bidding strategy, you can opt for automated bidding, smart bidding, or manual bidding based on your preferences and goals.

Select a targeting strategy

With display advertising campaigns, businesses have many ways to reach users. Let Google find highly effective audience segments with optimized targeting. Add criteria such as audience segments and keywords to optimize targeting. You can also turn off optimized targeting and choose the appropriate targeting signals.

To add targeting signals, select Add targeting and select the targeting signals. If you want to turn off targeting optimization, add targeting signals, expand Targeting optimization, uncheck Use targeting optimization, and select Next.

Create responsive display ads

Display campaigns support responsive display ads by default. With responsive display ads, you can upload elements including images, headlines, logos, videos, descriptions, and more. Google’s AI then generates a variety of ad combinations for websites, apps, YouTube, and Gmail.

If you want to improve your ad performance, upload at least 5 images, 2 logos, 5 headlines, 5 descriptions, and 1 video. Once completed, click Add to Ad Group. You can also choose to add another responsive display ad to the campaign and then select Next to finalize the campaign.

Review and publish the campaign

On the Review page, carefully check your settings and address any potential issues highlighted in the warning notifications. Click on Resolve Issues within the notifications to fix these problems. Once everything is ready, select Publish Campaign to complete the process.

Once the campaign is set up, you will need to wait a few days for your ads to be displayed. The ad approval process usually takes about one business day, but it could take longer. For Display campaigns, reporting can take up to 72 hours to appear in your Google Ads account.

Regarding the bidding strategy, it may take some time to fully optimize and improve performance. If you haven’t achieved the desired results within 14 days of running the campaign, consider increasing your bid or updating your bidding strategy to Maximize Conversions.

How to optimize a display campaign

Set up campaign settings

Set up conversion tracking to allow advertisers to accurately track conversions for their website and app. Regularly monitor conversion activities. Additionally, verify the conversion tracking by creating a conversion action and checking if it is recorded in Google Ads and Google Analytics. Choose a campaign goal that aligns with business objectives, and combine it with the use of a Smart Bidding strategy to automatically optimize bids.

Reach the right audience at the right time

Use the targeting optimization feature to identify customers who are more likely to convert within the campaign’s target range. This feature helps to reach the highest-value audience. Additionally, consider manually segmenting your audience to find new, relevant groups to achieve campaign objectives. Add signals such as audience segments or keywords when using the targeting optimization feature.

Create high-performance ads

Upload and maximize components

Include images, logos, videos, etc., in responsive ads to create suitable automatic ad combinations.

For promotional text, keep it up-to-date and consistent with attractive offers or unique promotions. Be specific and clear in describing the offers provided to customers, avoiding repetitive or overly exaggerated content. For headlines, be creative, incorporating brand messaging. You can add up to 5 short headlines containing a maximum of 30 characters, avoid using periods at the end of short headlines, and refrain from using the business name or repeating content.

Ads must include images with a maximum of 15 marketing images and 5 logos. Images can be cropped in landscape and square formats, with separate images for each size ratio. Upload images from Google’s professional image library, your website, or recently used images. Landscape images should have an aspect ratio of 1.91:1, a size greater than 600 x 314 pixels, and a file size of 5MB. Square images must be at least 300 x 300 pixels with a 5MB file size. Always ensure the text in images doesn’t exceed 20% of the image area.

For logos, you may use copyrighted icons, and the whitespace or padding should occupy 1/16 of the logo’s size. Upload both square and landscape logo sizes. A square logo should have a 1:1 aspect ratio, with a recommended size of 1200×1200 pixels, and a minimum size of 128 x 128 pixels. A landscape logo should have a 4:1 aspect ratio, with a size of 512 x 128 pixels and a recommended size of 1200 x 300 pixels. If you don’t provide a logo, the system will use the business name.

Use advanced formats

Includes advanced component features, auto-generated videos, and native formats.

Provide product catalog information

Add relevant pricing, title, and image information to your entire product catalog.

Test and optimize

It’s important to regularly test and optimize your display ads with new images and ad copy.

Measuring the effectiveness of display campaigns

When evaluating performance, consider all conversions by optimizing the campaign through tracking conversions from views (EVC) and conversions from completed views (VTC). This helps measure the impact of the display campaign and the types of conversions in the “Conversions” column.

Review the stages of conversions, EVC, and VTC being tracked. Depending on the type of business and product lifecycle, adjust the settings accordingly.

Enable the automatic GA4 tagging feature to ensure you receive the most detailed Google Ads data.

Contact a Google ads consultant

Setting up and implementing a Display campaign can be challenging because you need to design content tailored to each website and app within Google’s Display Network. Additionally, user needs and behaviors on these websites vary significantly.

If you are running display ads on Google and are unsure about how to set up, manage, and optimize them for the best results to increase traffic and improve conversion rates, reach out to Google Ads experts. By scheduling a free consultation, the experts will offer useful advice on how to set up campaigns, configure budgets, and optimize performance.

Through the information shared above, you have gained valuable insights into this type of Google Ads campaign. Now that you understand how it works and how to create a Display campaign, we hope you can successfully apply these strategies and achieve your goals.

Frequently Asked Questions