Many people who advertise their brands and products online face the dilemma of whether or not they should use the Google Display Network. The fact that it comes with numerous benefits and drawbacks is what makes this a tough choice. So, should you use the Google Display Network on your PPC campaigns or not?
Continue reading to find out.
10 Benefits of the Google Display Network
Measurable, Accountable and Flexible
Traditionally, displaying an ad meant that your ad should be printed, made and posted up on a billboard or similar. Once up, it stays there for a while.
In the digital world, however, your ad could easily be swapped out. In other words, you can chop and change your whole campaign in no time. You test and trial what works and what doesn’t, and you go from there.
Benefits of the Google Display Network – Larger Audience Reach
This is one of the key benefits of the Google Display Network: the incredible reach it provides.
Google has over two million websites, both big and small, under their hood. This will greatly maximise the exposure and reach of all of your ads.
When you use the using search ads, your ads will only be shown to users who look something up on Google’s search engine. Display Network, however, allows you to place your ads in all of the corners of the world wide web.
Lower CPC
The CPC on the Display Network is almost always lower than that of the regular search ads. As a result, you can target numerous users without having to pay a lot.
Benefits of the Google Display Network – Leverage Your Videos
The Google Display Network isn’t text or image-exclusive. It allows video ads as well. With the ever-increasing popularity of video streaming websites such as Google’s YouTube, video advertising is more popular than ever.
The benefits that video ads give you are simply unparalleled. You can produce anything from a client testimony to an easy-to-understand introduction about your product or service.
Numerous Targeting Options
Yet another key benefit in the long list of benefits of the Google Display Network is the numerous targeting options that it offers. The Search Network, on the other hand, requires your target audience to be actively looking for your products or services. The Display Network doesn’t function like that.
You can simply target a specific group of audiences based on their past interests and behaviours on the internet, age, gender, demographics and more. Google enables you to create an infinite amount of custom audiences if the presets that they provide you with don’t do the job. You can start experimenting by creating different ad groups with various customisations and see what works best.
Remarket to Past Clickers
Perhaps one of the true key benefits of the Google Display Network is the ability to remarket ads uniquely to people who have clicked on your ads in the past.
Remarketing lists are created, and they contain all of those who have previously visited your website. Google provides you with these lists to whom you can serve unique ads.
Yes, you won’t get many new potential customers by doing this, but you’ll definitely get a lot of people who were at some point in the past interested in what you offer hooked again.
A Unique Pricing Model
Most online advertisers are familiar with pay-per-click; however, Google Display Network allows you to pay through CPM, short for cost-per-mile, instead. This in itself deserves a spot amongst the many benefits of the Google Display Network. After all, sometimes the cost per 1000 views can come out cheaper than the cost per individual click.
In other words, CPM can be a great way of saving money and improving your overall ROI.
Free Impressions
Another one of the benefits of the Google Display Network is the fact that, unlike most CPM-based advertising platforms, the Google Display Network doesn’t require you to pay for impressions. You only pay if someone clicks through, meaning impressions are entirely free.
This is only logical because, in the eyes of Google, anyone who goes out of their way to actually click on your ad after looking at it is someone interested, hence you having to pay for them.
Get Quicker Results Than with SEO
There is no denying that search engine optimisation is still the backbone of the most visited sites. SEO refers to the precise usage of researched keywords in the content of the website. Still, this process can take months, sometimes years, to finally work.
Creating ads through the Google Display Network is a different business, though. People will see your ads regardless of whether the website they’re on is an organic one or not.
Benefits of the Google Display Network – Maximise ROI with Different Bidding Strategies
Google’s own recommendation for bidding is CPC if your goal is to drive website traffic quickly and efficiently. CPM, on the other hand, is their recommendation if you want to build brand awareness.
As we’ve mentioned before, CPM refers to the amount of money you pay for every 1,000 people seeing your advertisement. And such a bidding method is only available on the Google Display Network.
Through CPM, Google allows you to quickly boost your brand awareness by showing ads to more people than ever. In other words, they won’t exclusively focus on people who are more likely to perform an action, in this case, clicking on the ad.
If you’re focused on conversions (sign-ups, purchases), though, CPA (cost-per-action) is the way. Google enables you to only show your ads to people who are more likely to click on the ad and perform whatever action awaits them there, be it a sign-up, a purchase and more.
Drawbacks of the Google Display Network
Like most things in life, you can’t really find a perfect, flawless service. Yes, we’ve managed to mention 10 different benefits of the Google Display Network, but it still has its drawbacks.
So, here’s a quick rundown of the most bothersome ones:
No Control of Ad Display
The main disadvantage of using the display network is your inability to control the websites on which your ads appear. Yes, Google will try their best to match the content of your ads with the right sites, but they don’t always nail it.
So, your ad can, unfortunately, appear in the wrong places, meaning you’re kind of better off not displaying it at all.
Still, it is possible to prevent certain websites from ever displaying your ads, but you will have to manually exclude them in the settings of your campaign. In other words, unless you’re willing to check over two million websites individually, there is really no way of ensuring that your ad doesn’t end up on the wrong websites.
This could drastically hurt both the quantity and the quality of traffic that your website will receive through the adverts.
Drawbacks of the Google Display Network – Ads May Be Irrelevant
In addition to not having control over the websites on which your ads are displayed, you also have to deal with the problem of relevancy. Google will try to determine what a web page’s content is about and try to match it with the appropriate ad. However, it doesn’t have the best accuracy out there, and it can display something totally irrelevant from time to time.
Sadly, there isn’t really a workaround unless you manually exclude that individual page in the settings of your campaign. So, if you want your ads to be displayed only on relevant web pages, you ought to just buy individual banners from particular websites of interest.
You Can’t Fine Tune Your Audience
Yet another drawback within the Google Display Network is the fact that it’s extremely hard to target specific groups of people. Let’s say you sell microwaves as an example; you’re more likely to get a lot of conversions if you focus on people who are looking to buy microwaves as opposed to people who are looking up information on how microwaves operate.
On the Google Ads’ search network, it is extremely easy to pull this off by simply adding the word “buy” to the keyword. However, in the case of the display network, it is more daunting to distinguish between these two kinds of people and what they’re looking for. So, don’t be surprised if your ad shows to both types of users, which isn’t always a success.
Consult an Expert Today
If you’re unsure whether the Google Display Network will work for your business or not, or simply want some help with setting up your campaign, send us a message, and a Google Ads expert will get in touch shortly.
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