Ideas For Online Businesses – Display Advertising

Display advertising, or more commonly know as banner ads, (though it is much more than that now) is not one of the newer ideas for online businesses. Banners have been around since the beginning of the internet, and you may have actually become somewhat blind to them.

But the thing is, they still work! According to a ComScore study released in May 2011 U.S. online display advertising market delivered 1.1 trillion impressions in Q1 2011! That is a nearly double increase over Q1 2010!

Also, this surge in display advertising has prompted eMarketer to nearly double its ad growth prediction for 2011. Their researcher had predicted the market would grow 10.5%, but now it “expects a 20.2% rise and projects that display will overtake search as the largest online ad spending category by 2015.”

Display advertising isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. We are a visual mob, and they way to reach us is by showing us something, whether it be video, rich media, or a simple banner ad.

That said, there are also other advantages to display advertising that need to be mentioned when it comes to getting business online.

Economical – Display advertising tends to be priced with a cost per impressions model, which results in far less cost to the advertiser. The same ad you would spend dollars for on Google’s Search Network can be had for much less on the Display Network. Of course, you still need to be mindful of things like your ad spends, ROI and more, but all in all you’ll get more bang for your buck!
Creative – You can do things visually you can’t with text only, and in fact text can play a large role in your display ad. It’s a more creative medium to begin with, and if you can manage to incorporate rich media into your ads, perhaps utilizing video for example, you can stand out from the crowd even more!
Evocative – The use of images, colors, and sound (if you use video) in your display advertising can evoke emotional responses not easily accomplished using text only.
Huge Reach – Some of the ad networks have very large reaches, with their advertising partners spanning the globe. Companies such as Facebook (346 Billion impressions) Microsoft, Yahoo Google and AOL among many others are driving this trend.

Ads can come in a variety of sizes:

Not all networks use all of these, but most have at least the major ones.

Moreover, each ad network has tools to help you in building your ads. Google’s help is very good, with tutorials and video showing you exactly how to get going.

So What’s The Best Use Of Display Advertising
For My Online Business?

Obviously, if you have products or services display advertising can go a long way in helping to get the word out. These types of ads can also be beneficial in list building, by offering some thing of value in return for their email address.

They are also useful in generating direct sales leads, and can be one of the more cost-effective ways of doing so.

They are also useful in testing out new products, ads and page designs, as you can get a lot of visitors in a relative short period of time, for not much investment.

Make sure not to ignore the message in favor of the medium. Just because it’s a display ad, your headline and text needs to communicate what you need to say to your core audience. Missing the boat on this just leaves you with a pretty picture that does nothing to further your cause!

Google, Facebook, MSN AdCenter are the major players here, though there are many others that can bring your display ads to market.

You would do well to seriously consider making display advertising part of your marketing mix. For a small investment you may be able to not only get valuable data to help in other marketing efforts, but very likely gather leads and emails at the same time!

Tags: display ads, display advertising, getting business online, ideas for online businesses, leads