Display Advertising: Formats, Targeting, Costs, and Results
Display advertising uses visual ads to promote a brand, product, or service online. According to Amazon Ads’ display advertising guide, these ads combine images or other visual elements, copy, and a call to action that links to a landing page. Common placements include the top, side, or middle of a web page.
Display also extends beyond website banners. Google’s Display Network overview describes ads across websites, apps, YouTube, and Gmail, with campaign goals that include awareness, consideration, traffic, leads, and sales. Choosing a display campaign involves deciding where the ads appear, whom they reach, what the creative communicates, and which outcome to measure.
Common display advertising formats
Display ads can use a finished design or assets that a platform assembles into different layouts. The main options include:
- Image and banner ads. A banner is one display format. Amazon’s guide to display sizes lists a 300 × 250 pixel medium rectangle, a 728 × 90 pixel leaderboard, and a 160 × 600 pixel wide skyscraper among common dimensions. Check the specifications of the inventory being purchased before producing files.
- Responsive display ads. Advertisers supply images, headlines, descriptions, logos, and optional videos. Google’s responsive display documentation explains that the system combines these assets and adjusts the ad’s size, appearance, and format to fit available spaces.
- Dynamic display ads. A connected feed supplies content for ads, including products previously viewed on a website or app. Google describes feed-based responsive ads as supporting both dynamic and static presentations.
- Display ads with video assets. Responsive display ads can include videos that appear instead of images when the platform selects them, as described in Google’s video asset guidance. Video is therefore available within some display formats, rather than being limited to a separate video campaign.
Uploaded image ads offer more control over the finished design; responsive ads adapt the supplied assets to different spaces. Google distinguishes these production options, so choose the format according to the required layout control and available creative assets.
Display advertising versus search, native, and programmatic
Search advertising reaches people while they search for particular products or services. Display advertising reaches people while they browse other content and can also reconnect with previous visitors. Google’s comparison of Search and Display identifies this difference in the moment of exposure. Display does not require a matching search query at the time the ad appears.
Native advertising describes how an ad fits its surrounding content. Display and native formats can overlap: Google’s display overview notes that responsive display ads can take on a native appearance that matches a publisher’s fonts and visual style.
Programmatic advertising describes the buying process. The IAB’s Mobile Programmatic Playbook defines it as automated buying and selling of digital ad inventory and distinguishes open auctions, private auctions, and automated guaranteed transactions. Display inventory can be bought programmatically; programmatic buying also covers other ad formats. A guaranteed transaction reserves specified inventory under agreed terms, while an auction involves competition for available impressions.
These terms describe different aspects of an ad: its placement and presentation, its fit with surrounding content, or the way inventory is purchased.
How display ad targeting works
Display targeting can focus on the content around an ad, selected placements, or information about the audience.
Contextual and placement targeting
Contextual targeting matches ads to page content. Google’s contextual targeting documentation describes matching based on keywords or topics, alongside other factors. It also groups topics, placements, keywords, and exclusions within content controls.
A topic selects a content category; a placement specifies a location for delivery. Treat those as separate buying choices. In Google Ads, content can match any of the selected topics, placements, or content keywords, according to the same contextual targeting guidance. Adding several content selections does not necessarily require an impression to satisfy all of them.
Audience targeting and remarketing
Audience targeting selects groups based on characteristics or previous interactions. Google’s audience targeting guide describes these options:
| Audience option | Basis for selection |
|---|---|
| Affinity audiences | Interests associated with potential customers |
| In-market audiences | Signals that people are researching and considering relevant products or services |
| Demographic targeting | Categories such as age range or gender |
| Remarketing | Previous visits to a website or interactions with a business |
| Customer Match | Customer data supplied by the advertiser |
Google’s remarketing explanation covers showing ads again to previous visitors across sites and apps. This serves a different audience from a campaign intended to reach people with no prior interaction. Keep that distinction visible in campaign reporting when evaluating new reach and returning visitors.
For placement control, review the available exclusions as well as inclusions. Google’s content controls include exclusions, which let advertisers restrict eligible content or placements.
Creating display ads and landing pages
The ad and its destination should communicate the same offer. Google’s creative best practices recommend clear, simple headlines, relevant landing pages, and imagery that makes the product or service easy to identify.
For responsive display assets, that guidance translates into specific checks:
- Use sharp, clear images with an identifiable subject.
- Supply logos separately rather than overlaying them on image assets.
- Avoid embedded promotional text that may become unreadable in smaller layouts.
- Avoid button graphics that imply functionality the image does not provide.
- Make the landing page reflect the ad’s wording and call to action.
These recommendations come from Google’s responsive display creative guide; they apply to responsive asset production rather than every possible uploaded banner design. Because responsive assets are combined automatically, review how the headlines, descriptions, and images work together across the available previews.
How much does display advertising cost?
For auction-based buying, cost depends on the auction and campaign settings. Google’s Display Network auction explanation describes ad selection and ranking in relation to bids, campaign targets, budget, and quality. A quoted rate therefore needs a defined buying method and billing unit.
The main cost measures are:
| Measure | Calculation or meaning | Use |
|---|---|---|
| CPM: cost per thousand impressions | Cost ÷ impressions × 1,000 | Compare the cost of delivering ad impressions |
| Average CPC: cost per click | Total click cost ÷ clicks | Compare the average amount charged for a click |
| Average CPA: cost per action | Total conversion cost ÷ conversions | Compare cost against the defined conversion action |
Viewable CPM bidding uses viewable impressions as the payment basis. Distinguish it from a CPM calculated using all served impressions when comparing rates.
Average CPA is also distinct from a target CPA: the former is a reported result, while the latter is a desired average specified for bidding, as explained in Google’s CPA definition. Record whether the conversion being priced is a purchase, sign-up, call, or another action before comparing campaigns.
Measuring impressions, reach, frequency, and viewability
Delivery metrics answer different questions about where the budget went.
Impressions, reach, and frequency
An impression counts an ad being served, as defined in Google’s Active View reporting documentation. It is an exposure count, so repeated appearances to the same person can produce multiple impressions.
Unique reach estimates distinct people reached, while frequency describes repeated exposure. Google’s reach and frequency documentation explains that its statistical models deduplicate audiences across browsers, devices, formats, and networks. Its reporting includes unique users and average impression frequency per user.
Read reach and frequency for the same reporting period. A growing impression total can reflect additional people, repeated exposure, or both; the reach and frequency measures separate those dimensions. They are modeled audience measures rather than a direct count of individual people observed by the advertiser.
A frequency cap limits repeated delivery. Google’s frequency capping documentation describes limits per day, week, or month at campaign, ad-group, or ad level for Display. It also notes that cookies are used to approximate exposure, so the control should be interpreted alongside measured reach and frequency.
Viewability
A standard display impression is viewable when at least 50% of the ad’s area is visible on screen for at least one second. Google’s Active View reporting guidance also identifies a 30% visibility threshold for large display ads of at least 242,500 pixels.
The same Active View documentation defines viewable rate as the proportion of measurable impressions that were viewable. Its denominator is measurable impressions. Measurable rate instead compares measurable impressions with total impressions.
Viewability establishes an opportunity for an ad to be seen. Google explicitly cautions that Active View cannot guarantee someone was looking at the screen. A viewable impression therefore does not establish reading, attention, or recall.
Measuring clicks and conversions
Click-through rate, or CTR, is clicks divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage. Google’s CTR definition also notes that a useful CTR depends on what is being advertised and the network. Compare the same measure across relevant placements, audiences, and creative rather than applying one universal target.
Conversions are defined actions that matter to the advertiser. Google’s conversion measurement guide includes purchases, sign-ups, and phone calls, with measurement methods that depend on the action’s source. Name the action in the report so a page interaction and a completed sale are not treated as equivalent results.
View-through conversions record conversions after an ad impression without an interaction with that ad. Google’s view-through conversion documentation explains that the conversion window determines how long after an impression a conversion can receive this credit. A longer window usually increases the number recorded.
Report the conversion action, interaction type, and attribution window together. Google also describes browser-related limits on view-through reporting, including the inability to report these conversions from browsers that block cross-site cookies. Those limits matter when interpreting a dashboard’s totals.
Attributed conversions and incremental results
Attribution assigns conversion credit according to reporting rules. Incremental measurement asks how much the advertising changed outcomes. Google’s lift study explanation describes controlled comparisons between a treatment group shown ads and a control group withheld from exposure.
Lift studies can examine brand awareness, brand-related searches, conversions, or conversion value. The difference between groups estimates the advertising’s effect on the chosen outcome. This provides a basis for an incremental claim that an ordinary list of post-impression conversions does not supply.
For a claim about additional sales, request the study’s outcome definition, treatment and control design, and uncertainty around the estimate. Google distinguishes user-based and geographic Conversion Lift methods, with the choice depending on campaign types and measurement goals. Use the experiment’s actual scope when describing the result.
Benefits, limitations, and campaign planning
Display advertising offers visual formats, delivery across online content, and ways to reach selected audiences or previous visitors. Those capabilities support the awareness, traffic, and conversion goals described in Google’s display overview.
The delivery and response measures above also have practical limits. Reach is modeled, viewability measures screen exposure, and conversion credit follows attribution rules. Traffic quality is another consideration: Google’s invalid traffic documentation lists bots, accidental clicks, fraudulent placements, and other interactions that do not represent genuine interest. Under its invalid traffic billing process, Google removes activity detected before the billing cycle closes from reports and billing, and may issue credits for activity detected later.
Use these checks when preparing a display campaign:
- Choose the outcome. Specify awareness, traffic, a named conversion, or another measurable goal before selecting ads and placements.
- Define the delivery approach. Record the audience or content selections and exclusions using the available targeting controls.
- Prepare the creative and destination. Check file specifications, asset combinations, and whether the landing page reflects the ad’s promise.
- Confirm conversion measurement. Verify that the chosen action can be recorded; Google’s measurement guide recommends checking implementation and conversion status when tracking is not producing expected data.
- Set the reporting terms. Record the period, billing basis, conversion action, and attribution window. Evaluate delivery, response, and incremental results using their respective measures.