Definition and Description of the Display Network (GDN)

Definition and Description of the Display Network (GDN)

Google Display Network (GDN) is an advertising network that consists of more than 600,000 apps and over 3 million sites. It reaches over 90% of internet users globally. GDN helps you target the right audience outside the google search network. Using this, Google offers an option for marketers and organizations to promote products and services using the internet.

Google Display Networks is different from Google Search Network. The latter works on a pay-per-click basis. That means you pay for the ad when it’s clicked on. Google Search Network displays your ad after the users search for it using specific keywords or phrases. GDN on the other hand works passively. It is mostly used as a tool for creating brand awareness.

GDN is part of Google AdWords. It displays ads on platforms or websites visited by the target audience. Using this way, you can reach your audience while they watch videos, as they are using a gaming application or reading emails in their Gmail.

You can show your ads using a variety of formats provided. They include texts, videos, or images. Display Network is sometimes called ‘Interruption Marketing’ since the ads interrupt the target audience as they navigate through the million websites in the Display Network.

To know that the ads are from Google Display Network, check the top right corner of the ad for a blue exclamation mark. Clicking on the exclamation mark will show you why you are viewing the ad.

GDN ad Formats

The common types of ad formats that are run by GDN are image ads, responsive display ads, Gmail ads, and engagement ads.

• Image ads- these can be either HTML5 files or images. The ads can be in a static or dynamic format.
• Gmail ads- these are messages that are displayed in the user’s inbox. The ads are customized such that customers can open, save, and forward the ads.
• Engagement ads- they are in form of captivating video or image ads run on YouTube and across the whole Display Network.
• Responsive Display ads- these allow you to add text, logos, and images in one ad. Their responsive layout is a major advantage to them as they adjust the format, length, and size to fit any given website. Advertisers can also upload many images, descriptions, and text simultaneously. Google then chooses the best combination to display. This ad is easy to make, and it requires minimal manual optimization.

How Does GDN Work?

The Google Display Network (GDN) comprises websites, mobile apps, and video properties.

Now, simply put, the system takes visitors to your website, people who have installed an application on their phone device, or videos that are placed in YouTube players or sites with video players in front of them (or some combinations of these groupings).

But there’s a premium service you can use to ensure your message goes straight to the right consumer!

How does it work? Select “interest segments” using categories on Google platforms. For example: Earned, owned, and paid keyword ads.

An adverting campaign in the Display Network is targeted by using a certain geo-location (country) and like age.

Such a strategy allows small businesses to access local and national targeted traffic that would be otherwise unavailable if you were running paid search campaigns without geographic targeting only utilizing geo-targeting methods.

Thanks to geo and device targeting, your ad will appear for mobile users and desktop searchers on many global sites, including famous search engines like google.com or yahoo.com.

Organic results within paid search would only appear for relevant searches from searchers with unbiased and non-personalized positive odds on each ad, paid search uses, and analytics: Remarketing – Paid Leads or not with 90% similarity. You buy follow-ups, watch conversions, and detailed statistics of impressions, clicks, and leads with organic ranking once.

Why Should You Choose Google Display Network?

GDN has a variety of benefits that makes it favorable for you to use to market your products. These benefits include:

• Large access of users

GDN has a comprehensive wide coverage. There are 3 million-plus websites registered for running GND ads. This large network allows the target population to be reached easily.

If you use GDN, network users see your ads without having to search any specific keywords. This is unlike when using the normal Google ads because for these you must search for specific keywords to view the ads.

• Reduced CPC cost

The CPC (Cost Per Click) on GDN is cheaper compared to that of Google Search. You can therefore reach many customers without spending a lot of money. This helps you achieve your objective and still save money.

• Offers many prices options

Pay-per-click (PPC) is the common way of paying. This is where the advertisers pay per click. When using Google Display Network, you get to change the paying option to Cost Per Mile (CPM).

This option is profitable to advertisers as the cost is per 1,000 views as opposed to per click. This allows you to save on the cost.

• Remarketing ads

GDN has a feature known as retargeting ads. This is also called Remarketing ads. It provides an opportunity for converting visitors to your site into customers. It also targets users that have been previously on the website. It is cheap.

• Visual ads

Google search ads appear in textual form. GDN however allows the use of other displaying methods such as images and videos. These have a higher appealing advantage over text ads. To create appealing videos for your site and use them in your ads, use Cinema8 to learn more

Disadvantages of Using Google Display Network

• You have no control over which websites will display your ads. Google tries to show the ads on sites related to the ad but sometimes it’s not accurate. The ads may sometimes get displayed on harmful sites. This affects the image of the brand which in turn brings low-quality traffic.
• Ads may sometimes not be associated with the site. This can only be prevented by removing the irrelevant sites from the campaign settings manually. This is a hard task since the sites are over 3 million.
• It’s hard to target a certain population of customers. This is because GDN ads will show to any user whether they are interested in the product or not.

GDN Prospecting and Remarketing

You can target the audience for GDN in two different ways. First, you could target prospects with no prior knowledge about your website, products, brand, or services. Secondly, you remarket to the users who engaged with the website previously.

Targeting in GDN is used to reach prospective customers of different groups at their different levels of purchase. Different companies will use different targeting strategies. Whether its remarketing or prospecting

GDN Audience Targeting

In-market segment

In-market segments are the Google users who have an interest in large categories of services and products e.g., Education, sports, home, real estate, fitness, etc. Google uses the user’s historical activity on previous content to define the segments. Google then defines sub-categories for each segment.

To control the size of the population for the in-market segments you need to compare with the Google Analytics data provided by Google. Google Analytics shows which in-market segments have higher conversion rates on your site. Google Analytics builds data-driven audiences. This ensures your ads are reaching the right audience

Topic targeting

If you choose a specific theme, the ads will display on the websites that have this theme. It’s an alternative to selecting and researching website placements for interest without knowledge of the impact of the placements.

Affinity audience

Google users who have similar interests are the affinity audiences. The categories are so huge, and a targeting criterion is used to narrow them down. Google Analytics offers great help in determining the affinity audiences yielding the most conversion rates for your website.

Placement targeting

Ads are placed on a mobile app or website. The method offers controlled targeting. This is because the option limits ad placement to custom websites specified by the advertiser.

Demographic targeting

Advertisers get to target the ads to people of diverse ages, gender, income, countries, and other factors.

Interest targeting

This is based on the browsing habits of audiences. Advertisers can display ads to people with known interests.

Custom intent audience

Google uses machine learning to understand the behavior of online audiences. This ensures the advertisers get audiences with preferences for their services and products.

Audience Building Factors

After creating an audience for your Google Display Network, you need to keep the right audience tight. Here are some of the factors to help you tighten audience targeting.

• Select the devices to run your GDN ads on. Here you consider what devices the audience will be using your product on. This means if your products and services are used on a computer, it’s more efficient to run your ads on computer devices rather than mobile phones.
• Choosing the right locations and demographics. You can customize the demographics to fit your campaign. You can target specific age groups, certain income classes, certain geographical locations, and many more.
• You should select the content exclusions option. This ensures your ads will not run-on websites with sensitive social issues, sexual content, and more. These are not excluded by default and therefore, you must exclude them manually.

To maximize your results when using GDN, you need to constantly check the demographic performance and recalibrate if needed. You also need to find out which location and ad style yields more results. The major styles available are responsive ads and standard-image ads. You should also assess the placement performance and then use this information to improve the results.

How do you set up your Google Display Ads?

1. Sign in to your Google-ads account.
2. Click the button with “+ Campaign” and then choose the option, “Display Network Only”
3. In the Campaign Name Box, give a name to the Campaign.
4. Choose the option providing the no-marketing objective and then enable “All Features Option”. The no-marketing objective allows you to decide the campaign settings e.g., the location.
5. Set how much you want to spend each day on your advertisement. You can also use the Bid Strategy option. For beginners, however, it’s better to start with “Manual CPC”. You can switch to other options as you gain experience.
6. Give a group name for your ad. You also choose the CPC bid and set your price. It is advisable to start with a low price as a beginner and then adjust the price later depending on your AdWords.
7. Click on the “keywords” option. This option allows you to specify the keywords related to your audience. Use the placement option for targeting your ads. This sets the ads to appear on specified websites.
8. After setting your ads, you can view the available weekly impression. This feature shows you how much of the advertising amount that Google is offering is left. You can raise the budget if the impression is a large number. Your impressions will be few when you specifically target your audience.
9. This is where you create your ad. You fill in your display URL, headline, description, and more. You can get ideas and references for the website from Google. This is done by entering the website URL into the section named, “Enter the page your ad will link to”

Click Save.

Conclusion

Google Display Network (GDN) is one of the best advertising tools for your brand. The wide target audience coverage and its flexibility to fit with any website makes GDN one of the options you need to go for when considering creating brand awareness

Don’t just sit and wait for customers to come looking for your products. You can get a very influential reach on Google Display Network with the right audience targeting. However, it needs more than ads to put your brand out there. Learn more reasons why ads alone can’t buy your brand love.

This article walks you through all the necessary information you need to know about GDN, optimization factors, audience building, and much more. Hopefully, after reading this review, you have enough knowledge about GDN, and you are ready to create your GDN ads for advertising your products and services. If you are already using GDN, then you can use the tips shown to improve your advertisement and increase the results.