Display campaigns can be a really useful part of your larger digital marketing strategy. They consist of visual assets — static images, videos, GIFs — and are great for “top of the funnel” efforts: awareness, brand recognition, general reach, and, a step deeper in the funnel, retargeting. 

It’s not a proven method for deeper-funnel purposes like leads or conversions, but display’s vast targeting capabilities are great for improving awareness — all with a relatively inexpensive cost per impression. 

Below, we’re going to talk about some best practices, including targeting, creative, budget recommendations, and effective testing. 

Targeting 

With most display DSPs — demand side platforms — there are a variety of targeting abilities. For example: 

• In-market 

• Lookalike 

• Remarketing 

• Custom segments 

Best practices for display targeting 

Here are a few things to keep in mind regarding your targeting for display ads: 

1. Layered audiences allow you to be more precise. For example, choosing the right area, ages, and other details together can more-finely tune your in-market audiences. 

2. Remember exclusions! Setting up exclusions plays an essential role in ensuring you’re spending your budget efficiently — otherwise, you can accidentally end up spending money on targeting users that aren’t actually your target market. For example, if your goal is to acquire new customers, you can choose to exclude site visitors — after all, site visitors are by definition not new customers, so anyone under that category would be wasted spend for this particular goal. The money you save by excluding site visitors can then be put towards users who don’t know the brand or have not yet engaged. 

3. Retargeting is your friend. You’re able to retarget audiences based on who has visited your site, or on their previous, intent-based actions on your site if you want to be more specific. Retargeting acts deeper within the funnel since, among other reasons, it means you’re targeting those who are already familiar with your brand. This means it’s more likely to drive conversions or other meaningful actions, and can be useful in conjunction with display campaigns that are more focused on the top of the funnel. 

4. Remember geofencing and geoframing are helpful tools. Geofencing is putting a virtual perimeter around a specific area; geoframing is targeting historical data from people’s devices to identify those who’ve been in a specific place in a certain time frame. These are helpful tools for defining your audiences based on location — especially useful for brick-and-mortar business or others that are particularly impacted by location. 

Display creative best practices 

First thing’s first when it comes to creative (and which shouldn’t need to be said): Quality is critical. No phoning it in on autopilot! 

Unlike with paid social, with display ads you don’t get a caption allowing you to provide further context for your images (not that you should phone it in on paid social either, but you get it). 

Just like the name implies, display ads’ visual nature makes the imagery especially important along with any accompanying messaging within it. 

Focus on clear, compelling elements. And critically, alongside that you need to make sure your creative aligns strongly with your branding and that the CTA is just as strong. 

The branding aspect of this is especially important given the context of how display ads are used — as we discussed above, for top-of-the-funnel, awareness and brand recognition purposes. Eye-catching is good, but eye-catching alone isn’t enough — you want it memorable! 

Essentially: Display ads are often served among other types as well; make sure yours stand out so they’re working together. 

Budget recommendations 

While the CPM — cost per mille — is lower for display ads than many other types, you’ll usually need a notable budget to drive meaningful results. 

Because of this, one thing worth noting is the value of retargeting. This can help you maintain a smaller budget by giving you a smaller but more in-tune audience who already has at least a little bit of familiarity with your brand. 

One tool that can be quite useful is the forecasting tool provided by your demand side platform. This can estimate the potential ranges of results you could see from different budgets and targeting — insights which help make sure you’re not going in blind, but have a realistic, practical approach. 

Really, a good rule of thumb is that display campaigns aren’t effective as a single short burst — on the contrary, you should be sure to have enough budget for at least a three-month test. 

Testing 

It wouldn’t be a Fujisan blog post without talking about testing! 

With display ads, you can test the following: 

• Creative 
• Audience segments 
• Site list 
• Placement testing display versus native 
• Ad schedule 

This is all important because the alternative “set it and forget it” approach is basically the equivalent of flipping some switches and crossing your fingers that it works out. 

Contrarily, controlled variable testing allows you to see which variables are having which impacts on a campaign’s success, which responding variables they’re impacting, and so on. This lets you then fine tune your campaigns further by understanding better which aspects of them have which impacts. 

All this together leads to reduced costs, improved efficiency, and insight upon which you can build future campaigns. It can also show you when certain creative aspects have run their course and need to be refreshed. 

In the end, display ads are just one of many media you can use in conjunction with each other. With strategic targeting, strong, well-thought-out creative, and a purposeful budget — and testing! — display campaigns can become an efficient way to expand your audience and keep them interested. 

Of course, if these are steps you want to take but you feel you could use some professional help, don’t hesitate to reach out to Fujisan! We have experience managing display campaigns for both B2B and B2C businesses on a variety of DSPs, and would love to help guide your display campaigns to support your full-funnel digital strategy.