In addition to displaying your ads in the Google search results, there is another type of contextual advertising: displaying ads in the Google Display Network (GDN).
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Google Display Network (GDN) – includes millions of websites, news pages, blogs, as well as several Google properties, such as Gmail and YouTube. Advertising in the Google Display Network allows you to actively work on generating demand.
Partner site (hereinafter referred to as search platform, thematic platform) – Only authoritative websites that undergo manual moderation to become members of GDN.
Thematic platform – a site that matches the theme of the applicant’s search query or the advertiser’s ad theme. This can be any thematic site that participates in GDN. Therefore, Google Display Network platforms are verified sites that have passed moderation.
What is the purpose of GDN? Their main advantage is that your ads are displayed on thematic platforms in addition to search results. This allows you to significantly expand your audience reach and increase traffic to your site. For example, if you are selling smartphones, you can place your ads on websites that have content (articles, videos) about smartphones. A user visits this site to read a review of a new phone and sees your ad.
The audience of thematic platforms is huge – about 55 million users who may not overlap with search users. Therefore, GDN are the only way to attract these visitors to your site. Moreover, ads in GDN are more attractive than in search results due to the presence of images. Fine-tuning your ads can provide highly targeted traffic at a lower cost per click. Savings can reach 400%-500%, which simply cannot be ignored.
Targeting Principles
Ads can be displayed based on three principles:
1. Based on the site’s theme. This means that your ads will be shown on websites of the selected theme. If you sell smartphones, your ads will be shown exclusively on sites dedicated to smartphones (of course, they will only be seen by users from the specified display region).
2. Based on user interests. This means that ads are displayed based on the collected statistics about the user: search queries, visited sites, interest in a particular product or service. For example, if a user recently showed interest in smartphones, visited relevant resources, and entered queries in search, the system will show them your ad. The difference is that the site does not necessarily have to be thematic, as it targets a specific user, not the platform. Other users will not see this ad.
3. Based on behavior. This is commonly known as remarketing – a mechanism that allows you to show your ads to users who have already been on your site, performed certain actions, or viewed specific products. This way, you are sure that the user is interested in your product and your site’s ad will follow this user within GDN. In addition to showing ads on partner sites, Google allows you to display your site in the regular search (search remarketing). You can also show ads for specific products the user has viewed and direct them to the page of that product rather than the whole site (dynamic remarketing).
Of course, you can combine all principles, but it is important to note that for setting up GDN, you will need connected systems such as Google Analytics.
It is also worth mentioning the key queries for GDN. In GDN Google, you can simply select the site’s theme, add a list of queries that appear on this site, or a list of queries that Google will understand as the interests of your target audience. Also, it is important to understand that more precise queries are needed in search advertising. While in GDN such precision is not very important, as we need to catch the thematic platform and display on it (so informational queries like “Samsung Galaxy S5 review” are suitable).
In Google Ads, besides using regular text ads, you can create banners of various formats in HTML or Flash. And very importantly, you do not need a designer’s help, as Ads has a built-in editor that will create a banner based on your site in a few clicks. You will be offered several beautiful options in the most popular sizes used on different thematic platforms (468×60, 160×600, 200×300, 728×90).
And of course, it is worth saying a few words about the effectiveness of display advertising. Many people wonder why the CTR in GDN is very low – around 1%. The answer is simple – CTR is not an indicator of campaign effectiveness; it merely shows the ratio of impressions to clicks. If in a search campaign you are working with users who already have a demand for your product or service, then in display advertising, you are more likely to be generating such demand. Given the vast number of thematic platforms, we get many ad impressions, and only those who are interested in learning more about the product will click. Therefore, a rate of around 1% for GDN is considered quite normal.
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As we can see, significant savings and the ability to attract new users who do not overlap with the search campaign are the main advantages of display advertising, which simply cannot be ignored. Good luck!