What is Display Advertising

Display Advertising is when you show ads online, but instead of showing them inside the search engines, your ads are shown on the rest of the Internet.  Display advertising is a great tool for many reasons, most notably because people spend only a few minutes a day on Google, and spend the bulk of their time on the rest of the internet.  Display ads are normally graphical in nature and more closely resemble ads that you would have used in the past in a magazine or newspaper.  These ads are very flexible and are available on many different platforms and ad networks.

Facebook Ads

Facebook is the 900 lb gorilla in Display advertising because they have the users.  People spend hours and hours every day on Facebook, so Facebook has a huge network for Advertising.  The real power of Facebook is in their targeting option.  Facebook knows A LOT about their users, and they make this information available to their advertisers.  So if you want to show your ads to females only, that are moms, at a certain income level, and have just gotten engaged you can be that specific.  This allows you to create super specific ads and get them shown to your very best prospects.  

However, keep in mind, that when someone searches for "tires" on Google, they are looking to buy tires right then, so this is almost always your best way to get ready buyer.  OTOH, when you put an ad on Facebook you are interrupting the users Facebook experience with your ad.  So even if you show your ad to people whose hobby is auto repair, and automobiles, they may not be ready to buy tires when they see your ad.  

Another issue, is that Facebook wants peoples experience to be enjoyable on Facebook so they want your ad to be relevant and informative, but not ever upsetting or off putting to their end users.  This makes is a real pain sometimes to design a great ad.  If you sell a product to help people lose weight, you can't say "Hey Chubby, get off your sofa and use our awesome stuff",  you can't even use a photo of someone that is overweight.  Since Facebook does not want to hurt anyone's feelings, you normally can't write traditional ads that would work well in a newspaper or magazine.  

Regardless of this,  Facebook has probably the largest Display network (following Google) and since they also own Instagram, they can get your ads in front of lots of potential customers.  

Niche Builders does 1000s of Facebook ads and has a lot of experience in this area, and for many of our clients they find Facebook a perfect medium to do Branding campaigns.  This type of advertising can get your name known in your community even though they may not be in the immediate need of your product or services.

Google Display Network

Google partners with millions of websites, video services, mobile apps, etc where you can showcase your display ad.  This is also how you take advantage of using Remarketing to show your ads to people that have already visited your website.  

Even though Google has more properties than Facebook, they don't have quite as many targeting options since they do now know as much about who is online using Google at the moment.  But, you still have lots of targeting options.

Management Placements is where you can pick what websites you want your ads to appear on.  You can also use keyword placement. So if you sell sporting goods, you can have Google only show your ads on websites that are about sporting goods which will show your ads to the best target users.  

The Cost Per Click will be much lower that your SEM PPC, but the conversion will be much lower too,  also you can chose to bid for Impressions instead of clicks and have you ad shown even more often for less cost.

Is Display Advertising a Good Choice for Me?

There is no set right or wrong answer on which type of advertising will work best for a particular business.  One of the reasons that we focus on niches and Niche Builders is that we know what type of advertising works best for your business.   For example, a Free Standing ER will want to have 99% of their budget going into Google Adwords, because when someone has an emergency, they are going to use Google and search for an Emergency Center.  However, if you are a Functional Medicine doctor treating diabetes or hormone issues,   Facebook will be a better medium, because people suffer from hormone issues may not be looking for immediate relief, but when they see and ad that offers them a solution, then they will naturally be interested and check it out.

The best thing to do is to consult with Niche Builders to get recommendations for your business,  we will tell you your options and help you make the right choice.  We specialize in PPC, but there are many PPC options, so we can help you do video ads on YouTube,  Display ads on Google,  Branding ads on Facebook, and much more.