The Google Display Network (GDN) is the world’s number one ad network, reaching more than 80% of worldwide internet users and serving more than 6 billion ad impressions every day across high-quality websites, top-specific new pages and blogs.

From the very beginning, Google has continued to build new capabilities that allow advertisers to reach their goals more easily within this network. For example, last year they introduced frequency capping to enable advertisers to manage how often their campaign reaches the right users, and in order to allow brand advertisers to be more selective about where ads appear, a new feature was launched this year to filter out “below the fold” inventory. When applying this filter, advertisers have the ability to show ads only in places that appear on the user’s screen when the page loads, without requiring them to scroll down.

Remarketing is also a powerful feature that has allowed advertisers to reach people that have previously visited their website but didn’t convert. After driving traffic to their site with search ads, they can then remarket to those users who reach their site by showing them tailored ads on sites throughout the GDN.

Another interesting feature of GDN is the Campaign Insights tool. This gives reliable data about how a campaign has raised brand awareness or active user interest in a product or service. The tool is still only available for US and UK advertisers, but results so far prove that this is another brilliant Google idea.

Hair Club, specialists in hair loss treatments, hadn’t been able to hit an acceptable CPA for display advertising in any vendor and were reluctant to try. When they finally did so on the Google Display Network, the Campaign Insights feature drove a 40% uplift in search traffic.

“We track ROI from our campaigns very closely. With Google and Campaign Insights, display became measurable and allowed us to prove an acceptable CPA. We could clearly see the search traffic and view-through conversions that display generates, and we gained actionable insights on how to optimise future campaigns” says Luke Hubbard, Vice President from Hair Club.

Google Display Network Facts

The potential for using the Google Display Network to further brand awareness is already a fact. Jordan, a division of Nike, executed an innovative campaign on the Google Display Network targeting a niche basketball audience, resulting in 188M impressions and 296K clicks over 6 weeks.

Lipton was also very successful with its YouTube and Google Display Network combined strategy. The “Free Your Y” integrated campaign resulted in an increase of awareness, higher levels of intention to purchase for Lipton products, strong brand perceptions that Lipton White Tea is a healthy beverage and, on top of that, the sales uplift was in excess of 26%.

But is this network really effective when it comes to increasing sales?

American Laser Centers, an aesthetic services provider, used the Google Display Network to start a chain reaction of leads and conversions. With GDN text and image ads they increased conversion by 365% while cutting impressions in half.

“The Google Display Network has helped us get more bang for our dollar. We’ve been able to grow scale and maintain our goal costs, putting us in a strong position”, says Erik Maks, advertising director at American Laser Centers.

Don’t underestimate the Google Display Network!

Internet marketing practices are still growing each year. Experts predict that internet marketing activities in the US will have doubled from $13 billion dollars spent in 2009 to $26 billion by the year 2014.

Take Hawaiian Airlines for example. Today, Google Display Network represents more than 15% of their total paid advertising. “Display ads are now part of our core advertising initiatives”, says Reid Ichiki, senior manager of Internet Marketing at Hawaiian Airlines. When recalling the ambitious strategy they started in the summer of 2008, he confirms: “that summer was a challenging time, record-high fuel prices impacted the economy, changing the vacation mindset. We were trying to do more with less while keeping ROI as high as possible. But even in that tough climate, based on the Display Network results, we never considered pulling back our online advertising.”

What are your experiences of Google Display Network?

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