What are Display Ads in Digital Marketing?

Learn all about digital marketing, we have built this glossary to help you understand everything to thrive in online marketing and promoting your website or business.

What are Display Ads?
Display ads are online advertisements that combine text, images, or video to encourage the audience to take certain actions. These ads could be seen on numerous platforms, including social media, mobile apps, and websites.
Typically, display ads are run through networks like Google Ads, making them reach wider audiences. Being visually appealing, they efficiently draw users’ attention and inspire them to engage with the content.
They are incredibly useful in driving leads, promoting products or services, and improving brand awareness. These are set up to target specific audience demographics like location, age, interests, etc.
Display ads' role in digital marketing
Display ads play a significant role in digital marketing. They're more than just simple promotional tools. They're primarily used for brand awareness and recognition, as they occupy a large area on the page and are highly noticeable.
These ads help to effectively target those who have already visited your site or are part of your customer database (through retargeting strategies), thus improving ROI. They also help in driving traffic to your website by serving clickable ads to the prospective audience.
Furthermore, with advanced tools and techniques, display ads can be hyper-targeted to reach your audience based on their online behavior, demographic information, and more. This helps in personalizing the ad experience and enhances the chances of conversion.
Display ad examples
There are several types of display ads, each with unique characteristics and benefits. They include banner ads, which are probably the most popular format. Banner ads are placed on top, bottom, or sides of the web content, visible clearly to the users.
Interstitial ads are those that appear as a popup covering the full mobile device screen. Usually, these ads offer a 'skip' option and are highly interactive and engaging.
Native ads are designed to blend in with their surrounding content, making them less intrusive but highly effective for conversion. Similarly, rich media ads allow users to interact with them in multiple ways and often include video or audio, thus leading to higher engagement rates.