The festive season is upon us, and like most retailers the month of December is one where you can really up the ante and generate more sales. We prefer to call it the spending season, as who doesn’t need to buy something for someone for Christmas? So with that in mind, let’s take a look how you can leverage your online advertising efforts this coming month with responsive ads via Google’s Display Network (GDN).
The Google Display Network
It’s Google’s answer to display advertising with a network that stretches over 2 million websites. With an incredible 90% reach of people on the Internet, it’s hands down the largest display network in the world.
Unlike Google AdWords Search Network, which triggers users when they’re searching for a product or service, the GDN helps you capture the attention of users across websites that indirectly relate to your product or service. Essentially planting a seed early in their purchase decision process.
Your ads can appear in either text, image, video or even rich media formats. And there’s some really clever ways in which you can target the right audience at the right time. Such as remarketing to past site visitors, targeting similar audiences, or finding new customers through keyword targeting.
What is a responsive display ad?
Just like a responsive site, a responsive ad automatically adapts to the screen size of the device on which the content is consumed.
From an advertiser’s point of view this is absolute gold, as you realistically only ever need to create one ad. Or, as Google puts it:
‘Your responsive ad might show as a native banner ad on one site and a text ad on another, transforming itself to fit precisely where you need it to go to meet your advertising goals.’
How’s that for efficiency!
Appealing features for display advertisers
Google recently made some remarkable inroads with their responsive ad formats by introducing longer text descriptions (even longer than expanded text ads), and the ability to now add your own logo and images (previously Google would just automatically pull an image from your site).
So in essence, the advertiser now has even greater control in not only how their ads read or sound, but also how it looks. Definitely a positive branding exercise.
Why should you use AdWords Display Advertising?
● Greatest potential to reach the right audience (90% of Internet users)
● Flexible ad formats – you only need to run a single ad on different devices
● Attract attention with appealing ad formats
● Ability to select where your ads appear – the types of pages or specific websites
● No quality score issues to contend with
● Save design time as there’s no need to create multiple ad variations, and should you need to update your creative you’ll only need to apply changes once
● Cost savings – with the cost per click potential to be lower than that of the search display equivalent
If your search display campaigns are running smoothly, and you want to give this festive season a bit more grunt, why not add responsive ads to your online advertising mix?