Display advertising refers to visual ads — banners, images, videos, and rich media — served across websites, apps, and other digital platforms (as opposed to text ads on search engines). The Google Display Network (GDN) reaches over 90% of internet users across millions of partner websites, news sites, and apps. Display ads are used primarily for brand awareness, remarketing, and reaching audiences who are not actively searching but match target demographic and interest profiles. Display advertising is priced on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis rather than CPC.
Display advertising serves a different function from search advertising. Search ads capture active intent; display ads create and reinforce awareness. A business can use display to reach potential customers at the top of the funnel (brand building), reconnect with website visitors who did not convert (remarketing), or maintain visibility with high-LTV customers between purchase cycles. Display advertising alone rarely drives high conversion rates — it works best in combination with search and other intent-based channels.
Display advertising formats and targeting
- Responsive Display Ads — Google assembles ads from your headlines, descriptions, images, and logos in multiple sizes
- Uploaded image ads — custom designed banner ads in specific standard sizes (300x250, 728x90, 160x600 etc.)
- Targeting options: keywords (topics related to the content of pages), placements (specific websites), topics (broad content categories), audiences (in-market, affinity, remarketing)
- Brand Safety controls — exclude sensitive content categories (news, politics) and specific websites from display placements
- Frequency capping — limit how many times the same user sees the same ad to prevent ad fatigue
- Viewable impressions — ads that appear in the visible viewport are 'viewable'; set campaigns to pay for viewable impressions only
For most small UK businesses, display advertising should be limited to remarketing (retargeting website visitors) rather than broad prospecting. Remarketing display is typically cost-effective — high-intent audiences, relatively low CPMs, and direct connection to prior website interest. Broad prospecting display for small businesses often struggles with brand safety (ads appearing alongside inappropriate content), low direct conversion rates, and difficulty measuring actual business impact. For brand building at small budget levels, social media advertising (Facebook, Instagram) typically provides better targeting precision and creative performance than GDN prospecting.
Several controls minimise low-quality placements: exclude specific categories (parked domains, error pages, sensitive content) in the 'Content Exclusions' settings, add placement exclusions for specific websites known to have poor conversion rates or brand safety issues, review the Placement Report regularly and exclude underperforming sites, use managed placements (targeting specific high-quality sites explicitly), and enable 'Optimised targeting' which allows Google to find additional converting placements beyond your explicit targets while maintaining quality controls.