What is Display Advertising?

Display advertising is the digital equivalent of billboard advertising. You’ve more than likely noticed a display ad before. The ads come in a variety of sizes and are most placed near the top of a webpage, off to the side of an article, and/or near the end of an article.

Example of Display Ad

In its simplest form, you’re witnessing an advertiser paying to place an ad on a web page. However, this transaction isn’t just between a website owner and an advertiser – there is a middleman.

Generally speaking, there are two primary facilitators of this exchange – Google and Programmatic. They’ve simplified the ad buying process and enhanced ad targeting possibilities through software, making display advertising much more flexible, dynamic and successful than what would have previously been possible.

What is Programmatic Display?

While we’ve already discussed display advertising in other blog post, the basics are these: Programmatic display is based off platforms where marketers can buy ad space. These purchases happen in real time in markets that best suit their business objectives. (In some cases, this can include the Google Display Network. More on that later.)

With programmatic display, advertisers must use a display-side platform (DSP) to supply their ads, set up a bid of how much they want to spend, input targeting information, and enter an auction to buy ad space on different sites.

OK, now that we’ve covered the basics of display, let’s talk about how programmatic has changed over the years. The different platforms have added a variety of ways to identify, track, and monitor individual users on the internet. This has given them the ability to serve very specific audiences content, in a variety of ways.

What is Google Display Network (GDN)?

Back in the Paleolithic era of the internet in the year 2003, Google debuted AdSense. AdSense allows people who have a website to get paid every time someone who on their website sees an ad. This radically accelerated the size of Google’s network and gave them access to a variety of websites in almost every vertical, product, and service line.

Since then, it has become one of the largest display networks on the internet. They incorporated the interface into the Google AdWords product and Voila! an internet advertising giant was born.

So… How are They Different?

Targeting

In most use cases, programmatic advertising is superior when it comes to targeting. Some of the targeting options include: act-a-like audiences, content audiences, location targeting and interest targeting. For more on programmatic’s many targeting options, see our previous blog post “Programmatic Display Targeting and Tactics.”

With GDN, you can target by topics, keywords, placements and affinity audiences. Affinity audiences are specific audiences that Google formulates based on individual user data. Users can be placed into interest categories such as construction, banking and finance, beauty and wellness, home and garden, and lifestyle and hobbies. Google also uses in-market audiences, which are more product and service based, such as auto and vehicles, baby and children’s products, business and industrial products and consumer electronics. You can also create your own custom audiences.

Network Size

With programmatic, you have access to Google’s Display Network as well as several others. Some of those could include AppNexus, Facebook, Amazon, and Verizon. With the added coverage, certain networks can reach up to 95% of websites on the internet. Google’s Display Network reaches over 80% of all websites on the internet, since many register as a Google partner.

Budget & Bidding

DSPs used to have large monthly minimums that advertisers would need to spend to be able to use their platforms. This is still the case with some platforms. Many platforms have allowed advertisers to have much more efficient and lower spend entry points if using their self-service products. In our opinion, this has had a major impact for digital marketers with smaller budgets. GDN has always had a pay-as-you-go system. Back in the early days (Neolithic Era) this was a huge differentiator from the DSPs which all had large monthly minimums. GDN also allowed advertisers to pay for display advertising on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis or a cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) basis, which no other display network would do.

Now you can set up even more bidding options in both GDN and programmatic campaigns. We won’t go into all those ways now. (Certainly, feels like another blog post…)

Wait, But… What About Video?

Both platforms can be used in video-based ad campaigns. For programmatic video ads, third-party data is used to target audiences that best fit your business objectives. These videos are uploaded and served on websites within the DSP’s ad exchange, although programmatic ads can also be used in over-the-top (OTT) videos and Connected TV platforms, such as Hulu. Like YouTube ads, you can target users based on a variety of filters and specifications. Unlike YouTube ads, this method is typically far more in-depth than what Google allows.

Example of Connected TV Platform

For this method, machine learning does the work to determine your ads’ optimal placement. Because of this, real-time adjustments are made with an inventory that stretches much further than Google.

The main benefits of GDN are:

• YouTube is the second-largest search engine on the internet!
• As a division of Google, YouTube ads allow you to connect with users in Google’s audience network
• A variety of video-integrated ad option like 6-15 second bumpers, 30 second in-stream ads, banner overlays, and more are available
• Ads are easy to upload and implement
• You can use keywords, demographic info, affinity, topics, in-market, and custom audiences to target relevant users with your ads
• Easiest way to set up and run ads quickly and efficiently

Photo of YouTube Banner

Which is Better? (Bad Analogy Time)

OK, bad analogy time. Let’s go through some of the analogies that weren’t picked, first:

• GDN = Fast Moving Barge vs. Programmatic = Fast Powerful Yacht?
• GDN = Giant Ant Farm vs Programmatic = Pack of Praying Mantises?

What we settled on…

GDN = Water balloon vs. Programmatic = Super Soaker

So, when you use GDN, you have access to all those sites but are also limited to those sites and subsequent Google audiences. You also don’t get as specific into what type of users see and interact with your ads. It’s like hitting someone with a water balloon. Oh yeah, you hit them but if you just wanted to get their face wet, you kind of failed. 

Programmatic allows advertisers to target more than locations including; in market, affinity, and demographic targeting. You have a large pool of different data sets for audiences, as well as more in depth location targeting (such as Walmart, Home Depot, apartment complexes, etc.).  It also gives you  additional tactics and targeting that just aren’t available with GDN.

Now, say that you’re using that Super Soaker – you totally just blasted them in the face and the rest of their body is mostly dry. Winning!

In the end, you have to understand which method would best help your business or client. Are they large and expanding or is this a mom-and-pop shop trying to entice a larger customer base? Is their target demographic difficult to find or does every person in shouting distance need their product or service? You can also reach out to us. We’d love to help…

Need a helping hand with your display campaigns? Just give the Fujisan Marketing team a call at (844) FUJISAN or to request more information about our services.