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Why Display Advertising?

The online ad market has grown from using static JPG image banners to GIF banners and now Flash banners, which have smooth animation, exciting effects, engaging graphics and interactivity. Content and smooth animation can be shown all together in today’s animated display ads. They take less space on the web page. You can put more text content and graphics and try different looks on the same web page.

Display ads also load quickly onto a web page unlike video ads. Viewers become impatient when the web page loads slowly and usually leave the page. Display ads make a page load quickly, so users can see the page content and ads without any hassle. Major portals like Yahoo!, MSN and AOL are using display ads for their own services and their clients, proving that display ads still have high popularity.

Display advertising accounted for around $5 billion in online advertising spend in 2009, which is a good amount (www.emarketer.com). But search advertising on Google alone was roughly 12 billion last year. These 12 billion dollars were generated on search engine results pages that represent roughly only 5% of the Internet’s page views, which means that 5% of the Internet’s page views generates more than twice the revenue of the rest of the Internet combined.




So what is the differentiating factor? Basically, targeting is the key difference between display and search advertising. Search engine marketing is one-to-one advertising where the user’s purchase intent is the primary focus. If a viewer searches for “Rayban sunglasses”, he will see ads that match this phrase. But with display advertising, advertisers broadcast their ad on a paid ad space, which is perfect for creating and promoting brand awareness. There is no campaign modification to suit the individual viewer.

However, new technologies and advancements in the industry are set to give us improved targeting. Also, the introduction of real-time bidding will soon decrease the difference between display advertising and search. Real-time bidding lets advertisers bid on one impression at a time, giving the ability to pick the right impression (viewer) at the right time on the right website just like search engine marketing.

The biggest advantage and most beneficial factor of display advertising is branding. Recent research by comScore confirmed that although it might be a delayed effect, a strong branding process definitely takes into effect when a viewer is exposed to a display ad, even when he or she doesn’t click on the ad.


The research also showed that display advertising has an effect on user behavior even at low click through rates. One hundred and thirty-nine display campaigns were monitored and the results showed that they had extensive effects on traffic, sales and branding despite a low amount of clicks. The display campaigns gave a 46% increase in websites visits and exposed viewers were 38% more likely to conduct an advertiser related branded keyword search. Twenty-seven percent were more likely to make a purchase online and 17% of viewers were more likely to make a purchase at the advertiser’s retail store.