In this post, Andre Britz and Daniel Kolossa writes about the line between display media and PPC increasingly blurring. Traditionally PPC is attributed mostly to Search and text ads, but with the advent of the Google Display Network (GDN), the biggest ad networks in the world, display media has once again received some well-deserved attention. Doom prophets have all said ‘the banner is dead’ a few years ago. How wrong they were. The GDN has definitely proved them wrong. So what are the advantages of including the GDN in your marketing plan, and what new features are available? The first advantage of including the GDN in your strategy is without a doubt, reach.

In addition to reach, the GDN is also where users spend most of their time:

Google

Advertising on the GDN also generates awareness for your products when users are not proactively looking them on Search. In addition, it then drives awareness and sales along the entire spectrum of the buying cycle and life cycle of your products.

What new features are available on the Google Display Network?

One of the most interesting new developments in terms of Google’s move towards incorporating social media, is the launch of Google+. This will not only be included on organic results as +1, but will also be applied to display advertising. The idea is very similar to Facebook’s “Like” ads which are yielding great results for some advertisers when used wisely.

Here is an example:

Google Images

Another very exciting development is Multi-Channel Funnels. One of the biggest justifications for including display in a marketing strategy is that display ads often help to drive search conversions. The argument is a fairly old one for display marketers, but now it can be proved using Multi-Channel Funnels. This is also a great way to see if remarketing is working. However, it is imperative to focus on conversions and not click through rate. A highly recommended reading is Bethaney Bey’s article on PPC, ‘Hero’ which you can find here.

We are particularly excited about the developments in video from the Google perspective. Google recently announced AdWords for video. This new feature enables advertisers to use a dynamic, auction-based system to easily place and manage video ads on YouTube and the Google Display Network, helping to extend campaign reach. The basic principle is that much like pay per click, you only pay when someone views your video. In addition, set-up will be faster and reporting more extensive. 

We cannot emphasise enough how much easier this is going to make running video campaigns. Aside from a new interface another exciting feature is the TrueView InSlates (currently only TrueView InStreams are available and only Google can set these up for you). 

Targeting should (hopefully) be made much simpler as well as currently it's a bit of a nightmare differentiating PYVs between being shown as contextual ads or on the YouTube SERPs. In addition, the targeting tool is merely useful for extremely broad impression estimates. Given that we'll soon be able to target our video ads directly, Google properties and affiliates other than YouTube, we think we're in for some great changes.

We don’t want to give too much away, but this is exciting stuff. Video marketing is not just on the rise, it is here - Google says so.

On the horizon is the Contextual Dynamic Creative Template. This is still in beta but promises to be a handy time saver. Essentially, instead of making a different ad for each offer, you’ll be able to sync with Google Merchant and let Google contextually choose which of your products are best suited for the websites you decide to advertise on.