Digital Marketing - Study Notes:
Purpose of Google Display Network
The Google Display Network (GDN) is a display and video channel that allows advertisers to serve native and display ads to their target audience using the Google Ads interface. With the GDN, advertisers can connect with customers and potential customers and create demand with a variety of ad formats, including text, image, rich media, and video ads.
The Google Display Network has phenomenal reach. It reaches over 90% of all people on the internet globally, across more than two million websites. It can help you reach people while they’re browsing websites, reading the news or their favorite blog, looking for shopping or travel inspiration, watching a YouTube video, and in many other ways.
You can use targeting to show your ads in particular contexts, such as ‘outdoor lifestyles’ or ‘cnn.com’. You can also show ads to specific audiences, like ‘young moms’ or ‘people shopping for a new car’, as well as to people in particular locations. On the GDN, you can remarket to people who have been on your website before and may or may not have converted. You can show them a tailored ad to increase your conversions and brand awareness.
At the outset, it's important to choose the right objective or goal for your campaign. For search campaigns, your aim is probably to generate sales, leads, or website traffic. After that, you can choose your campaign type.
GDN campaign types
There are many campaign types available to generate demand using the GDN and Google Ads. It's important to choose the right campaign type to meet your objectives and goals, showcase your creative assets, and optimize performance.
Some of the options available are:
- Display: Use banner ads, MPUs, leaderboards, skyscrapers, mobile formats, interstitials, and responsive display ads to create demand by making your target audience aware of your products and services.
- Video: Use skippable, non-skippable, and video sequences to tell a story and create demand through audio visual formats.
- Performance Max: Use fully automated ad serving and bidding to find converting customers across all of Google's channels such as YouTube, Display, Search, Discover, Gmail, Shopping, and Maps.
- Demand Generation: Show video and image ads created, edited, and powered by AI as native advertising on key touchpoints across the GDN, YouTube (shorts, in-stream, and in-feed), Gmail, and Google Discover.
Benefits of the GDN
Here are some of the benefits of using the GDN in your search campaigns:
- Access to over 2 million websites and YouTube, centrally managed through the Google Ads platform
- Variety of different static, animated, native, and video ad formats
- Advanced audience targeting and retargeting, with machine learning capabilities
- Transparency and easy-to-track performance metrics, clicks, impressions, cost, and so on
- Ability to pause and activate campaigns and ads in real time, and
- Use of Google Ads Editor to make bulk changes to your campaign and upload when ready
Drawbacks of the GDN
The GDN isn’t a perfect platform, however. Here are some of the limitations associated with its use:
- There’s less scope for highly creative formats, such as homepage takeovers (HPTO), embedded forms in banners, interactive video, JavaScript functionality, and so on.
- Inventory and websites can be low value and less impactful. And
- Mobile and app display targeting can skew results.
Brooke Hess
Digital Marketing Strategist and VP of Paid Media (NP Digital)
Brooke Hess is a highly skilled and passionate digital marketer with an extensive background in the paid media space. While leading a team of Directors across strategy, paid social, paid search, and programmatic media, Brooke oversees paid media strategy for priority clients and develops effective strategies for new clients. Brooke is also recognized as a high achiever in providing effective educational opportunities for paid media professionals to ensure they get the most from their paid media strategies.
Neil Patel
Neil Patel is the co-founder of NP Digital. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies. Neil is a New York Times bestselling author and was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 35 by the United Nations.
Clark Boyd
Clark Boyd is CEO and founder of marketing simulations company Novela. He is also a digital strategy consultant, author, and trainer. Over the last 12 years, he has devised and implemented international marketing strategies for brands including American Express, Adidas, and General Motors.
Today, Clark works with business schools at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and Columbia University to design and deliver their executive-education courses on data analytics and digital marketing.
Clark is a certified Google trainer and runs Google workshops across Europe and the Middle East. This year, he has delivered keynote speeches at leadership events in Latin America, Europe, and the US. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter), LinkedIn, and Slideshare. He writes regularly on Medium and you can subscribe to his email newsletter, hi, tech.
