What is adwords display network

But why? Google offers endless options for marketers to promote their products, so how is this network different? When industry competitors' congest search engines, the GDN can be a great alternative.

Though the audience intent is not as strong, you get a much lower cost-per-click and many more impressions. The value for GDN boils right down to reach and affordability. Prospecting, brand awareness, and remarketing can come with a hefty price tag when pursued for traditional search ads.

GDN, by comparison, bypasses a lot of costly competition from other networks. There are also endless options for customizing your audience targeting. With Google's search ads, you're essentially throwing out a wide net, which can be largely hit-or-miss, both with whom you're targeting and with how you're spending. Google's Display Network, on the other hand, allows you to define your audience in a way search engines can't. Since you can target more than just keywords, you aren't limited to the Google results page.

Instead, GDN allows you to target websites by audience affinities, in-market segments, and custom intent keywords. You can even hand-pick website placements that fit your target audience. The other differentiator is volume. Where do the fancy image ads appear when you market with GDN? Across millions of websites that your prospects are visiting every day. You need a different mentality when using Google's Display Network than when you're using the search network and others available on Google Ads.

Let's define some use cases and expectations. Your average conversion rate with GDN will be a minuscule 0. Because you're targeting users that may not be familiar with your brand at all. The Google Display Network is first and foremost a tool for prospecting and brand awareness. The standard CTR for this network is still under 0.

But, for targeting prospects outside of search engines and social networks, that's still pretty good. The next key differentiator is the fact that the user's primary interest is the website content itself -- the display ad has an indirect, secondary role in the website's appeal to the viewer.

Marketers are hoping the prospective user will view their GDN ad along their journey to fulfilling another purpose.

That makes the user intent different than when an ad appears at the top of a Google results page for a high-intent search phrase. Unlike with search, there is a variety of targeting options outside of keywords that span across a network of millions of websites. You can access the majority of internet users through website placements. Your number-one goal with GDN is finding the right audience size with strict targeting criteria.

There are ways to approach this network with tighter, more relevant targeting. Ultimately, remarketing is limitless -- but it involves audience development outside the Google Ads platform. Let's start by exploring the default prospecting options Google provides and work our way toward opportunities customized for your brand and those who have engaged with your website.

On the GDN, you can target in two ways. First, you can target prospects on the internet who may have no previous knowledge of your website, brand, products, or services. Second, you can remarket to users who have engaged with your website in some form. Option two allows you to leverage the audiences you find in Google Analytics for your website. If you don't have any Google Analytics website audiences built, doing so is incredibly easy -- simply set up an audience for a user that completes specific actions.

Remarketing and prospecting are two vastly different initiatives that you can execute through GDN. Some businesses prefer to focus only on remarketing because reaching users familiar with one's brand drives leads and sales for the most affordable cost. The Google Display Network GDN , is a collection of over 2 million partner websites, videos, and apps where your ads can appear. We dedicate an entire post to the differences between Search and Display , but the basic difference between search ads and display ads is this:.

Search ads appear at the top of search engine results pages SERPs and display ads appear everywhere else. Search ads are text ads. Display ads are graphic ads though they can be text-only in all shapes and sizes that appear as banner ads and sidebar advertisements on web pages. They are similar to newspaper ads. With Search campaigns, intent is hotter. But the Display Network captures someone's attention earlier in the funnel.

With Display campaigns, intent is cooler. At that point they might. Maybe they grab your interest for a moment; maybe not. So when you head into Display ads, make them with a different mindset than Search ads. Understand that GDN ads play in the background trying to increase brand awareness when people are engaged in some other type of activity.

Because you're targeting users [who] may not be familiar with your brand at all. The Google Display Network is first and foremost a tool for prospecting and brand awareness.

Display ads are mostly top-of-the-funnel awareness ads. But there is a type of Display ad that is warmer in intent and closer to the bottom of the funnel. Those Display ads are called Remarketing ads. They intentionally bump into a potential customer, throwing them an attractive smile as a sorry-not-sorry.

You can advertise on Google Maps with Google Ads, helping you attract local customers when they search for a business like yours. Aside from targeting customers based on their interests, you may also base your targeting on demographics. These include:. You can combine demographic targeting with affinity audiences and in-market audiences to reach a narrower, even more relevant customer base.

For example, if you own a baby boutique and want to promote your prams designed for jogging, you might focus on the "Parent" demographic group along with affinity groups based on running, fitness and athletics.

You can also exclude specific demographic groups from seeing your ads. If you know the majority of your customers are senior citizens and want to focus exclusively on this segment, you can set up your campaign to exclude all age groups except "65 or more". Bear in mind that the more specific you are with your targeting, the fewer people will see your ads.

Test various combinations of targeting to see which brings you the most conversions. To set demographic targeting in your campaign:. For those who want to grow their businesses and reach out to a wider audience, Display ads are a great solution.

Make sure you serve your ads to consumers who are likely to convert by using Google Display Network targeting, and narrow down your audience based on their interests and demographics.

If you need support for your Google Ads account, please fill in this form and we will do our best to get back to you within 2 working days. Back to all resources Reach a larger or new audience with Google Display Network targeting.

Key take-aways Display ads are ads that are shown on the articles, videos, or websites that consumers browse. Search ads vs Display ads 2. They appear where a user is browsing, outside of the Google search engine. The GDN is so powerful because it allows you to get your ads in front of targeted audiences anywhere in the world for a pretty low cost. So, how do these ads get in front of the eyes of your users? Google display ads rely on cookies and data from signed in users to keep track of the websites and searches they make.

These cookies are signals that Google uses to help advertisers reach their target audiences. There are a few ways you can target users with these cookies using Google display ads — t he most common method is retargeting, wherein you target ads toward potential buyers who have visited your website before. Most display advertisers take it a step further as well, segmenting this audience based on specific page views or how recently they visited your website.

The typical retargeting audience is broken up into a few buckets:. These are called engagement audiences. They show the level of engagement a user has with your site. They are broken out to tell you which users have been on your site within the last week, two weeks, one month, or longer.

This data allows you to market to the different segments in a unique way, based on how long it has been since they visited your website. No, not "hot" physically or temperature-wise — well, maybe the latter if they aren't feeling well — but this just means that your brand is on the top of their minds and you need to capitalize on that opportunity before they forget about you.

What display advertisers do with these buckets is bid adjust. You can also tailor your ads to these timeframes, as well. But sometimes the retargeting can be a little too effective Dave was in a relationship with a girl named Brianna. Dave and Brianna had been together for a really long time. He starts looking at engagement rings.

Initially he's just trying to get ideas, while figuring the how, the when, the what of his potential proposal. Innocent Dave heads over to BrilliantEarth. Anyone who has ever been to that site knows how aggressive they are with their retargeting ads.

I'm sure you can see where this is heading Immediately, Brianna is bombarded with ads about diamonds and rings and jewelry galore from Brilliant Earth — and the cat, as they say, was out of the bag. But this story illustrates the thought process behind a company bidding heavily on hot users to try and get them back on their site.

There is a lot more to audiences than just engagement, and the best way to explain that to you is with an example. And because I am a fan of everything tacky and dumb, we are going to pretend that these audiences are going to be based on a long-time dream of mine — opening an ostrich farm. You can call me "Farmer Dan. Yes, there I am. On my glorious ostrich farm. Ready to take the Google display ads world by storm. And, as Farmer Dan, I have a few options, as far as audiences go An in-market audience contains users who have deviated from their normal behavior patterns online.

Say someone only browses sites involving sports, news, and real estate. Then, all of a sudden that user starts looking at sites involving pets, large bird ownership, and recipes involving non-traditional chicken eggs. What Dan the Farmer can do is tell Google to show ads to those people.

They may not know they want to buy an ostrich just yet, but you have flagged those individuals as potential customers for the ostrich farm. An affinity audience is sort of the opposite of an in-market audience. These audiences are pre-defined by Google and bucket users based on their normal interests.