The Role of Placement in Display Advertising

Placement plays a key role in display advertising as it can either boost or mar your campaign. Understanding your audience will help you find the optimal location for your display ads, ensuring your campaigns perform as intended. 

If shown in places where your target audience usually doesn’t pay attention, you will likely not make conversions from display advertising. On the other hand, if done correctly, you will get engagements which could lead to conversions.

The Google Display Network (GDN) is an excellent tool that can help you get positive results. The GDN contains more than 200 million websites, as well as apps and videos. Your Google display ad can appear on each of these outlets to help give your online store the visibility it needs.

This article focuses on how important placement is in display advertising. But before we dive in, what is display advertising placement? We will answer this question below to kickstart this discussion.

Source: Pexels

Defining Display Advertising Placement

The term “display advertising placement” simply denotes where you choose your ads to appear on the screen. 

For example, when browsing a certain website on a desktop, you may see an ad as a banner above the main menu at the center of the page. At the same time, when you open the same URL on a mobile device, it may look like a much more concise banner at the bottom of the display.

Advertisers use research on user behavior to determine the optimal placement of each ad across devices and audiences. That is the art of display advertising placement.

Display ad placements can play a vital role in maximizing the impact of your campaigns. When you place ads strategically, they will likely reach your target audience. This can boost your brand awareness and generate more traffic to your online or physical store, ultimately helping you drive sales.

Types of Display Advertising

Display advertising is extremely versatile. The ad formats may vary from simple text, to text with images, all the way to videos. These various formats have their usage in different mediums. Moreover, audiences today typically use a variety of devices to browse the web, which means you should be switching up your ad structure and placements based on a user’s device preferences. 

Here are a few options for different types of display advertising:

• Banner ads are one of the most popular types of display ads. They are practically ubiquitous, and you will find them on blogs, websites, social media channels, and online forums. They come in various shapes and are a combination of texts and images.
• Native ads fit perfectly with web page content and feel like an organic part of the page. A good example of native display ads is recommended content. Another is links that redirect you to a different website.
• Video content interacts with the audience by sharing information or introducing a service or product. It is a mix of visuals, audio, and, in some instances, text. Video display ads can afford you the opportunity to cover a given topic in greater detail.
• Interactive content: These display ads are a combination of multiple elements, including images and graphics. If you want to showcase the internal features of a product, interactive content is an excellent option for you. These ads are suitable for businesses that want to give users additional insight into specific products or services.
• Infographic: This refers to a type of display ad that educates users on a specific topic using graphics and text. It helps businesses whose focus is on educating people on products or services.

Other types of display ads are animation, expanding ads, interstitial, light-box, and pop-up display ads.

Source: Pexels

Identifying Your Target Audience

Now that we have understood what display advertising placement is, we want to look at how we can make the most out of it. The first step is identifying your target audience.

This first step is crucial to run an effective campaign. You must understand who your potential customers are to create custom messages that will work for them.

You can do this by understanding your campaign goals. What do you seek to achieve with your display advertising campaign? For display ads, the possible goals are:

• Improving sales

• Lead generation
• Boosting website traffic
• Building brand reach and awareness

It is vital to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Your objectives will influence the components of your campaign, including audience segments, platforms, and ad formats, and help you identify your target audience.

To determine who your prospective clients are, you need to conduct in-depth market research. That will tell you what kinds of people are interested in your products. In addition, various software tools (e.g., Google Analytics, among others) can give you further insights into these people’s backgrounds, incomes, shopping history, and so forth. 

Analyzing Demographics and Behavior

After you identify your audience, the next step is to analyze its demographics and behavior. Understanding people’s preferences, needs, and expectations is crucial.

To determine your ideal customer profile, you need to carry out market research. Also, take a look at your existing customer data and buyer personas. You can make your decision based on various factors. These could include but are not limited to age, location, online habits, and purchase history. 

This analysis will help you identify your most relevant audience segments. This, in turn, will allow you to optimize your display advertising campaign by identifying the locations of ads each segment is likely to pay attention to.

Using Google Analytics in combination with Google Ads can help you obtain data and also gain insight into user behavior.

Key metrics such as page views, website visits, bounce rates, and conversion rates are easily obtainable with these tools. You can then study the metrics to get a holistic view of your audience engagement.

Meta Ads is another tool for accessing the Meta Audience Network. It comprises Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp and has a reach of over 2 billion users across all platforms.

Using parameters such as behavior and demographics, you can target users who have an interest in your products on each of these platforms.

Moreover, analyzing demographic data and user behavior allows you to customize your ad content to resonate with specific audience segments. This will, in turn, maximize your engagement and conversions.

Understanding User Intent and Behavior

There is always a reason why people take specific actions, such as clicking on an ad on the internet. That reason for making a particular move is known as user intent. There are three main categories of user intent:

• Informational intent: This is when a user wants to learn something new or requires an answer to a question.
• Navigational intent: This is when a user has a particular website in mind to visit.
• Transactional intent: When a user wants to purchase a product or finish a task.

You can create relevant display ads to engage and persuade your target audience when you understand their user intent. It also gives an idea of where to place your ads.

An easy way to identify user intent is the analysis of keywords and queries that users type into search engines and other platforms. These queries can give an insight into users’ goals, problems, or interests.

Tools like Google Keyword Planner, SEMrush, and Google Trends can help you identify user intent and behavior. After getting your list of keywords and queries that reflect the various user intents, you can then target your display ads to a suitable audience.

You can achieve this using contextual targeting. This involves showcasing your adverts on websites and pages that contain your keywords or related topics.

Source: Pexels

Identifying High-Traffic Websites and Platforms

If you want your display ad campaign to have maximum visibility, it’s critical to display it on high-traffic websites and platforms. Follow the steps below to identify these websites and platforms:

• Research industry-specific sites: Look for websites and platforms that are specific to your industry. These kinds of sites usually attract audiences that will be receptive to your ads due to related content.
• Check the placements of your competitors: Monitor the competition by analyzing their ad placements. Tools like Adbeat and SEMrush can help you gain insight into competitors’ ad placements.
• Employ analytic tools: Google Analytics is an excellent tool for tracking referral traffic. It makes it easier for you to identify sources with high traffic, which, in turn, allows you to find reputable sites for your display ads.
• Direct placements: This involves reaching out to high-traffic websites that are a force to reckon with in their field for ad placements. You can get more value for your money through direct placements while also exercising control over your ads.
• Review metrics: You can assess how much traffic potential websites have by using tools such as SimilarWeb and Alexa. A website with high traffic volume indicates that placing your ad on it will get good visibility.

The steps above can help you identify websites with many visitors, i.e., many potential customers.

Using Data-Driven Ad Placement

Data-driven ad placement involves using data and analytics to make decisions that optimize the marketing process.

To achieve this, you must collate data from multiple sources and analyze it to deliver effective ads that will work for the right audience.

Data-driven ad placement can boost your ecommerce business’s marketing campaigns in various ways:

• Provide valuable insights about the customer: Data-driven advertising allows you to properly understand your audience’s customer behavior. With this data on hand, you can then create a detailed buyer avatar. This will give you a clear image of who your prospective customers are and how to create marketing messages that resonate with them.
• Strengthen your online authority: Giving people what they need can boost the credibility of your website. Data-driven advertising can help you learn fine details about your audience, which allows you to create products and services that suit their preferences.
• Making better decisions: Data-driven advertising improves your decision-making abilities. Having detailed information will help you make informed decisions, which will, in turn, positively affect your campaign.
• Faster time-to-market: A shorter time-to-market means that a business can provide its products to consumers at a faster rate. This puts the business in a position to capture more revenue and market share than its competitors. When you automate tasks like market research, you reduce the time-to-market for your business.

The data-driven ad placement of display advertising is an important requirement for your campaigns’ success.

Source: Pexels

Importance of Relevancy and Context

It is essential to focus on creating relevant ads as consumers are now less tolerant of irrelevant advertising. While visually appealing ads are attractive, the context must suit your audience. 

A Marketing Charts report reveals that 63 percent of consumers are more likely to purchase from brands with relevant ads.

There are several factors that influence why contextually relevant ads are growing in preference. These include a spike in digital media consumption, the growing popularity of ad blockers, and increased customer awareness of data privacy issues. Hence, ads must be relevant to benefit the audience.

The context of an ad placement can impact its success rate. Relevant ads have a higher chance of grabbing the viewer’s attention because they are seen as helpful and valuable rather than intrusive.

For example, if a consumer is reading an article about the best Android phones and an ad for an Android phone comes up, their inclination will likely be to click on it, which might lead to a conversion. Conversely, if ads for iPhones pop up, they may be less inclined to engage with them.

Optimizing Ad Visibility and Positioning

The location of an ad can affect its visibility and the amount of attention and interaction it receives. This underscores the importance of placing your ads where visitors will most likely see and engage them without disrupting their browsing experience. 

The most eye-catching area for placement targeting is usually at the top of the page. You can gain more impressions and clicks if you place your display ads there.

However, placing multiple ads or large-sized ads in that area could distort the experience of the user. It could push the page content further down, thereby annoying the reader.

Choosing to position your ad lower down could also prove to be a great step. This is because it is more likely to capture the attention of more engaged visitors with a stronger intent to take further action. 

If you prefer to place your ads within the content (banners, native ads, or rectangles), ensure that they match the context and intent of visitors. This will prompt more clicks and could boost your revenue. 

However, try to use only a few in-content ads to avoid annoying visitors. Overdoing it could have a counteractive effect and push users away.

When optimizing your ads for more visibility, you need to also consider mobile devices, which have become increasingly popular in today’s world. 

Ensure that your banners can adapt to different screen sizes. Also, try to be strategic with placing banners within the mobile layout to catch the attention of mobile users.

Source: Pexels

Analyzing Ad Placement Performance Metrics

When you analyze your ad placement performance metrics, you will be able to decipher what is working and what isn’t.

If you wish to determine if you’re getting a positive ROI from your campaigns, you should analyze your ads regularly. For example, if you find out that your conversion rates are low or even non-existent, that is a clear sign you need to change your approach.

Your current tactic may have several problems, such as problems with your ad programming or poor audience targeting. Also, you may not be able to tell what options would work best for you until you try different ones and compare the results.

Other reasons you may see disappointing results with your ads include:

• Wrong ads and wrong messages for the right audience
• Not positioning ads correctly
• Low quality or low relevance score
• Non-specific keywords
• Inadequate campaign budget

However, these are not the only reasons your campaigns may perform poorly. Still, if you fail to analyze your ads, you will have a hard time identifying what the possible problems could be.

It is also important to analyze your campaign’s ROI. While you can launch ads for various purposes, such as increasing sales or gaining more subscribers, measuring your return is a necessity, no matter your aim.

Analyzing your ROI can help you determine whether running ads is a good marketing strategy for your brand. Measure your conversions and evaluate your ROI based on your findings. 

If you’re wondering what advertising channel is the best, it may interest you to know that according to a marketing report by Priceonomics, ads on Google have the highest conversion rate.

Source: Priceonomics

Ad Placement Best Practices for Maximum ROI

With more competition in the digital advertising space threatening income generation, businesses must maximize their return on investment (ROI). Below are some of the best practices to follow for more profit.

Utilizing Data

Relying on data to make informed decisions can lead to a successful campaign. Data helps you learn who your ads are meant for and keep track of your campaign performance. Other important data, such as customer behavior and website analytics, can help you direct your campaign properly and improve your ROI.

Testing Different Ad Formats

Since you have various ad formats to choose from, experimenting with different formats can enable you to identify the best fit for your target audience. With regular testing, you can refine and optimize your display ad strategies, securing optimal results and boosting your ROI.

Using Responsive Display Ads

With Responsive Display Ads, you can upload multiple variations of ads, including images, logos, and descriptions. After you make your upload, Google will test out different combinations for you to determine which one will perform best for different audiences.

Responsive display ads are likely to perform better than traditional static ads. This is because the system is automated by Google to produce the best combination that will work for you. Managing this type of ad is relatively easy, as Google will automatically optimize the ad to suit your budget.

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Ensure Your Display Ads and Landing Page Are Consistent

When a user clicks on your ad, that is just the first step. What will convince any potential client to eventually purchase a product is your landing page. 

Ensure that your landing page aligns with what your ad shows. All images and messages must be consistent. This will eliminate any confusion that could deter people from making a purchase.

If you have any special feature on your ad, like a discount, ensure that a visitor can find it on your landing page.

Test Keyword Targeting

You can also target keywords in your display campaign. If you use the Google Display Network, under “targeting,” upload a list of keywords related to your business. You can then decide if you want to show your ads to people who might be interested in your keywords.

In addition, you could allow your ads to appear on websites, videos, and apps that relate to your chosen keywords. If you have any top-performing keywords in your search network, they will likely work well for you on the Display Network, too.

Source: Pexels

Conclusion: The Importance of Effective Ad Placement

Placing your ads in the right place can ensure your brand enjoys a productive campaign. Consequently, this means more conversions and an improved ROI, which translates to more income for your business.