Display ads designed to evoke emotions. It helps to increase brand awareness or generate interest in a product. But launching it is half the battle. Crucial to analyze and optimize campaigns so that they give the maximum result. We will tell you how to inspect online display advertising.

What is display advertising?

Display advertising surrounds us from all sides. It includes different offline and online formats. Offline – outdoor advertising, advertising in transport and premises. Online – dynamic and static banners, audio, and video clips. That’s shown on various sites – from the main pages of search engines and YouTube to thematic forums. Display ads placed through Google, social networks, and specialized platforms.

It reaches a whole audience and helps:

• Increase brand awareness;
• Tell about a new product, promotions, events;
• Promote potential customers through the sales funnel at different levels.

The main goal of display ads is to grab users’ attention. But now, in the era of information overload, it is not so easy to do this. If you’ve run a display ad, our advice is to periodically analyze your campaigns for specific metrics and look for opportunities to improve them. What to start from, we will tell further.

What to look for when analyzing display ads first?

Display advertising is not designed for “here and now” sales. It is main properly to analyzed adequately and assess its effectiveness.

Here are ten key indicators:

1. Impressions;

2. Reach – the number of unique users who viewed the ad;

3. Frequency of contact – how many times one user has seen content;

4. The number of visits to the site and CTR – the ratio of the number of impressions to clicks;

5. СРМ – the price for 1000 content impressions, СРС – the cost of going to the site;

6. The number of targeted actions – how many conversions the display placement brought;

7. ROI – the ratio of the amount earned to the amount spent on advertising;

8. Searches (for video);

9. Visibility (viewability) – the actual display of content to the user;

10. Intersection of the audience – relevant when placed on several sites.

Viewability is important

How do you know if a visitor saw your ad? The customer has not yet reached the banner that might not load or locate in a part of the site. International standards have been adopted that apply to Google To assess the viewability of content. Payment for an impression is debited if the banner was in the screen’s visible area for more than 2 seconds and was loaded by more than 50%.

Information on invalid impressions and clicks is written above the statistics table. It is not taken into account, and the withdrawn funds are returned to the campaign balance.

In Google Ads, you can view visibility metrics only for videos in the Video Ads Visibility report.

Advertising media effect

Yes, display ads need to be effective. And this effect can be measured by analyzing Post-view, Post-click, and Cross-device conversions. As we already said, display advertising creates lagging demand, so this type of analysis is essential, especially if your potential customers take a long time to make a purchase decision.

• Post-view conversion – the user saw the banner but did not click on it. But went to the site later from another source and made a conversion. These statistics are available in paid services.

• Post-click conversions – the user did not go to the site but took the targeted action, not straight away but after some time. Statistics on them are available in Metrica and the services specified above.

• Cross-device – helps to track the conversions of users who came to the site from different devices. It allows you to evaluate the contribution of each of them to the change. This data is available in Metrica, Analytics, and paid services for the analysis of display advertising.

Continuing the topic of analyzing lazy conversions, let’s talk about multi-channel funnels.

Multi-channel funnels help you.

Users rarely make a purchase the first time they visit the site. More often than not, they first examine the product information and offerings of competitors. Therefore, they can go to your site from display ads. And buy later, going from a free search. But that doesn’t mean display ads don’t work. It is main to assess the contribution of each channel objectively. The Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels report will help you do this. It lets you see the user’s path from the first touch with the site to the conversion – purchase, registration, or an application. You can select the period for displaying statistics from 30 to 90 days.

The analysis of multi-channel sequences shows through which channels and how often users visit the site. This data also helps to optimize campaigns.

Brand lift

It is a free poll to analyze the impact of display ads on brand awareness and memorability. The target audience is divided into two groups – 90% of users see a banner or video, and 10% do not. In parallel, both groups are asked to answer questions that are displayed before the ad is displayed.

From user responses, you can identify the strengths and weaknesses of the display campaign. For example, if brand awareness has increased, but there is no desire to buy, you need to reconsider your targeting or creatives.

Brand Lift is available on Google, Facebook, and Instagram and provides insights:

• How much the number of users who know the brand has grown;

• Do users remember the advertisement;

• Did she influence the desire to purchase the product?

Free and paid tools and services help measure the effectiveness of display ads. We reviewed some of them and described how to analyze quantitative and qualitative indicators of creatives.