29 Oct Google Display Network: What, Why, and How

Have you ever experienced a situation where you just finished opening a website or a product in an e-commerce website, and when you open another website you are presented with an advertisement of the same product you just opened?

Sometimes it is not exactly the same product from the same brand, but a product or service from the same category that is of your interest.

That is the work of Google Display Network.

The Google Display Network is a wide web network where you can reach new audience or people who previously visited your website by displaying them either a picture or a video on their favorite websites – to be exact, the websites that are Google partners.

It is part of the Google Adwords service which also provides the Google Search Network that utilizes ads with text.

Similar to its sibling, Google Display Network also works on PPC system in which users can control the use based on their budget.

How can you leverage Google Display Network?

Just like using Google Adwords in general, the Google Display Network also allows to have specific targeting in several ways possible as follows:

Managed Placements

As generous as that sounds, Google actually lets you to pick which sites you want your ads to appear on. What’s great about this is that you are in total control of your ads, so there’s no need to worry that they are going to show up at unsuitable places.

How to make this function fully optimized is that you have to know first the habit and characters of your ideal target audience – aka customer persona. Most importantly, you need to identify what kind of websites they love to visit. Only by then you will know the exact ideal places to put on your ads.

The ‘managed placements’ also creates a possibility to gain more clicks that convert, without letting your budget got eaten up by nothing; because they are the right people at the right places, clicking the right ads.

Google Pick: Keywords & Topic

Putting up an ad can never go too far from utilizing the right keywords. By default, if you choose to use Display Network using keywords, you need to do a keyword research first to see which ones connect to your target audience the most. This option can be less of a work for you because Google will pick the placements based on the inputted keywords.

The same goes if you choose to use Topic. In Google Adwords, there are topics that you can choose as a category for your ads. You just need to choose one, and Google will do the rest of the placement.

Since this is an automated placement, you need to constantly monitor whether the placement by Google reaches the correct audience or not.

Manual Targeting: Demographic

Although the main feature of Google Display Network is its automated targeting, it does not block the possibility of targeting people based on their location, gender, age, and other demographic factors.

This can complement the Google automated pick, so if you think targeting using keywords is not accurate enough, you can help it to be more on point by using demographic targeting.

Remarketing

Earlier we have talked about getting ads from a website has been visited before. That is the result of retargeting feature on Display Network. Google collects visitors’ cookies to note down their activity, including e-commerce purchase. A customer who has left his shopping cart without finishing the purchase can be “chased down” to other websites even when they are watching Youtube.  It is quite useful as a gentle reminder and may reignite their interest in your product or service.

Other than targeting, there is one big advantage of using Google Display Network:

Beautiful Engaging Visual Display

Did you know that visual information is easier to digest than text? Apparently that is what happens according to Pixelo.net. Not only that visual is easy to process, but also people tend to lay their eyes more on content with pictures; hence higher chance to get your ads noticed.

Google Adwords has provided the space to display visual content. It is now on advertisers to push the success by creating eye-catchy visuals, and of course, with relevant message to the target audience.

Why choose Google Display Network?

Just some more additional benefits of what has been mentioned above:

Get Featured on High Traffic Websites

Popular websites, popular blogs, Youtube, and even the daily opened Gmail; these are all the places you can have your ads seen. Imagine if this is offline marketing, the popular websites are like huge billboards that are put on strategic spots and surely cost the advertisers a large amount of money. By using Display Network, you can have the same benefits of putting up a billboard; only that it is not that expensive and the result is more measurable.

Budget Friendly

As mentioned above, in addition to being displayed on popular websites, you don’t actually have to pay a high price for it because Adwords uses the PPC system. Control where you want your ads to be and for how long they are going to be there; no pressure on having to post on certain places that will rob your budget. Some tips, placement on mobile and games might cost you higher.

Reach Out to Previous Visitors

With retargeting feature, don’t let any of your visitors get away without reminding them how good your products are and why they took interest on you in the first place.

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Opting for Google Display Network can bring you a lot of benefits especially if you want to target younger audience who are bigger on visuals than text. If you have decided to go with Display Network, but need help with the process, we at Alpharus Media are at your service.

Alpharus Media is a digital marketing agency in Singapore with years of experience handling various customers in various industries to help them boost digital presence. We are more than familiar with Google Adwords, and for sure we have the capacity and capability to drive traffic and generate leads for your business.

Click here to have further discussion on how we can help you.

Also published on Medium.