Display
Advertising

Display Advertising

Do a Google search on display advertising. You’ll find a lot about the dismal click-thru rates for banners. How they don’t perform well. How everyone suffers from banner blindness. It’s almost like you did a Google search on excuses.

If a dog is bad, you don’t blame the dog. You blame the trainer. And in this case, the trainer is your display ad agency. We’re not here to tell you when it’s time to run away. But we are here to show how we get your display ads to perform every trick in the book.

Back to the Basics: Defining Display Advertising

Banner ads, display ads, they’re one and the same. But if you want to sound like you know what you’re talking about, call them display ads. They can be in the form of JPEGs, but we recommend HTML5 format because we can really bend them to our will. Plus, they can be seen on smartphones and anywhere else you don’t have Java. Display ads can be static images or dynamic motion, whichever works best for your strategy. And you’ll need a strategy. Not the throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks kind of strategy.

One thing they’re not, though, is video. Sure, there’s video display advertising but that’s a separate topic altogether. Different strategy, different deliverables, different website page.

Display Ad Placement Tools

There are a plethora of tools you can use to place your display ads on websites. A lot of them have minimums you have to meet each month and sometimes that doesn’t work for our clients’ needs. So we stick with Google Display. It gives us the in-depth data we want to target, retarget, and form the right kind of purchase strategy.

Display Ad Purchase Strategy

Now here’s where we’re going off the reservation. Click-through rates for display ads are pretty low. But if your purchase strategy is based on cost-per-click, then your ad stays up for a long time. And if your marketing strategy is to stay top-of-mind, what does it matter if the target clicks? It doesn’t. But you save a lot of money in the meantime and get a lot more eyeballs for your dollar. That’s the old win-win.

If your marketing strategy is focused on branding, then we’ll work on a cost-per-impression campaign because we want to know for certain exactly how many eyeballs were impressed. Then we’ll know how much each of those captivated people cost.

Debunking Display Advertising Failure Myths

When display ads first came out, everyone used them for branding. Like every dog does, though, they grew up. And they learned new tricks. But you still can’t turn a shitzhu into a K-9.

It’s simple: The main reason display gets a bad rap is because of the wrong expectations. If you continue to use banner ads in a way that it has historically shown to be of little value, then you will find no value. Reference: click-through rates.

At frank, we know they work. Through testing. What we’ve found is that whatever cities we target with display, conversions go up. Here, we don’t look at poor click-through rates and declare it a failure. We make sure the clicks you do get are the right clicks. That the goal behind every banner is met. And we go to all the data to do it – not just the clicks.

The frank Agency Strategy

Here’s the rub: Some display advertising agencies don’t want to admit the limitations of their bread and butter. We know those limits well, and we’ll push them only if it makes sense for our client.

At frank, our approach works like this:

• Retargeting: This is the number one way to use display ads. Really, the best way. You target users who have visited your website and didn't commit. You stay top of mind with some good creative work. You bring them back via your landing page.

• Audience Prospecting: Do you have a core demographic? We will tell Google who they are and, like a good dating profile, we'll match them up with your display ad.

• Contextual Targeting: Don't have a core demo? That's OK. We'll put your ads on similar websites to help you find each other.

Through all of this, we test. Then test again. Because we're trying to get to your highest ROI. This means making the same ad in half a dozen sizes. Because websites aren't one-size-fits-all so in order for your ads to show up at max capacity, you need every size you can get. This means using display as part of the lead funnel. It's not the only way your ads should show up online. And it means that if it isn't working for you, as your display advertising agency, we'll be frank about it.

So give us a call or fill out that form below and we'll get to work.