Display Advertising: What It Is, Formats, Types, How It Works, Tools, and Best Practices

Display advertising is an essential element of digital marketing, serving as a cost-effective tool to build brand awareness and support conversion goals. It is an online advertisement that combines image, text, and a good CTA across numerous applications, websites, and online platforms.

Display ads have evolved beyond traditional banners into video ads, rich media, and programmatic ad formats. This has made them a marketing staple that is used to connect with the target audience across multiple channels. With global digital advertising spending projected to reach $836 billion by 2026, this is the perfect time to understand the usefulness of this online ads display advertising format. This article will tell you all you need to know about this ad format and the best practices to make it work.

What Are Display Ads?

Display ads are clickable visual ads that appear on third-party sites, social media platforms, and mobile apps. They are a form of digital advertising that combines copy, visual elements, a CTA (Call To Action), and a link to a landing page.

Examples of display advertising are images (banner ads), videos, or the changing text called rich media ads. These site placed ads are flexible, so advertisers can play around with their shapes and sizes to create engaging content. That’s why you see a wide variety of GIFs, texts, videos, or images on the top, bottom, side, or middle of websites. Regardless of how they appear, most display marketing campaigns are used to build awareness, to engage users through games and puzzles, or to educate.

What Are the Common Display Ad Sizes?

The Interactive Advertising Bureau(IAB) has created a Display Standard Ad Unit Portfolio that acts as a guide for advertisers. Of course, these are only the standard formats of ad sizes, and different online platforms may have their own specs. Nevertheless, the most popular formats you’ll find online include:

• 300x250
• 728x90
• 160x600
• 300x600
• 320x50

1. 300x250

The 300x250 is a medium rectangle banner, and it usually appears at the bottom of the screen or integrates into the content. It’s a size that works well on mobile and desktop and can be adapted to most ad formats like text ads and video ads. For mobile websites, this ad size also works well as a page break.

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2. 728x90

Known as the leaderboard banner or horizontal banner, this ad size is large and very noticeable. It usually sits at the top of publisher sites and is the first ad users see. As such, it is great for engaging users and increasing brand awareness.

3. 160x600

This is the wide skyscraper banner (or standing banner), and you’ll find it on the sides of web pages. Since it can cover the side of a full page vertically, users will notice it more easily. With this ad size, advertisements can be animated with multiple images or appear as image ads that can capture a reader’s attention.

4. 300x600

This is the large skyscraper-size display advertising, and it occupies a half page (180,000 pixels). With such a large size, advertisers can combine images, videos, and text, leading to attention-grabbing multimedia content.

5. 320x50

This is the mobile leaderboard, a common banner size that appears at the top of the screen or within the content on mobile platforms. It is one of the best sizes for digital advertising display ads that appear on mobile phones. It offers fast load times and easy file size optimization.

These ad sizes can be used to create the popular types of display ads seen today, which include rich media, expandables, overlays, and interstitials. Nevertheless, online display advertising is still evolving to battle ad fatigue and banner blindness.

As such, in 2017, the IAB introduced new ad guidelines to reflect this. They introduced guides for Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), 360-degree video ads, mobile video ads, and more.

Types of Display Advertising (With Examples)

Display ads vary greatly, but some of the formats that brands can use are:

• Banner ads
• Rich media ads
• Video ads
• Interstitials
• Contextual and native-like formats

According to a paper from the Amsterdam School of Communication Research, user perception varies based on format. This shows how important the right display ad format is to convey the needed information and align with the host website's overarching theme.

Banner Ads

These are the traditional static or animated ads. They are used for brand awareness and general promotions. Banner ads lead to better brand visibility and work well on desktops, mobile devices, and tablets. The first banner ad was run in 1994 by AT&T on HotWired.

Rich Media Ads

These online advertisements are perfect for engaging users with their interactive elements, and they can be used on both mobile devices and desktops. These ads convey your message as floating or expandable interactive media, often called rich media ads. Some of the rich media advertising you see today appears as games or puzzles.

Video Ads

A video ad is suitable for storytelling and releasing product demos on mobile phones, desktops, and smart TVs. This form of display ads can appear as in-stream ads, where the advertisement shows up pre-roll or mid-roll when playing videos on streaming platforms. In some cases, you’ll also find outstream video ads on websites. Video ads pop up to capture attention effectively, and Blockchain-Ads DSP video inventory is the best way to take advantage of this.  

Interstitials

These ads appear for application installation prompts or for high-impact display advertising campaigns. They appear as full-screen pop-ups on smartphone applications or mobile websites. Although interstitial ads are effective, their actions can be disruptive to user experience.

Contextual and Native-Like Formats

This comprises the likes of in-feed display ads, overlays, and sponsored placements. These display ads provide great value as they’re visually branded yet blend into the surrounding media. So, users will see them, but they won't interrupt the user experience on the platforms where they appear.

How Display Advertising Works

Below is a step-by-step guide on how display advertising campaigns are executed:

• Define your audience
• Set campaign goals and budget
• Choose display ads formats
• Create and size your creatives
• Launch and traffic the ads

Step 1: Define Your Audience

The first thing you take care of when creating a display advertising campaign is to decide who you want them displayed to. You can segment your audience based on geo, behavior, demographic, on-chain behavior (a unique feature of Blockchain-Ads), or interest.

You could even engage remarketing, known as retargeting ads, to serve your marketing efforts to individuals who have viewed your products in the past. Lookalike audiences are another option for defining your ideal audience, along with custom segmentations found on Google’s affinity, intent and in market segments, and other platforms.

Step 2: Set Campaign Goals and Budget

With your audience sorted out, you can define the goals for a successful campaign. To do this, you can choose the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that best represent the outcome you're hoping for.

So you can set the awareness (impressions and reach) that you hope to hit and the engagement (Click Through Rate (CTR) that you desire. You can also put performance indicators like conversions, Cost Per Click (CPC), Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM), and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) in place.

Choosing your KPIs early affects your creative direction and bidding strategy, allowing these elements of your campaign to align effectively. That way your marketing campaign will be better optimized to perform effectively.

Step 3: Choose Display Ad Formats

Now you must choose the ad formats in which your advertising will be displayed. The formats you choose should effectively communicate the unique benefits of your brand or product. Most advertisers usually stick with the popular IAB sizes, as most platforms support that. This is why you should use Blockchain-Ads for your advertising efforts, as the platform supports the standard 300x250, 320x100, 728x90, and 320x50 ad sizes in landscape or skyscraper formats with images.

Step 4: Create and Size Your Creatives

When creating your marketing media, emphasize clarity, simplicity, and mobile responsiveness. This means small ad formats should prioritize CTA (Call To Action), while large ones should include body copy under the headline. Other best practices are readable fonts, high-resolution images, and bold CTA buttons. A rule of thumb for CTAs is to make your CTA benefit-oriented, tying a benefit to the activity, like “Subscribe & Save,” “Watch Now,” and “Get Your Free Copy.” Avoid overwhelming users; stick with simple, clear messaging to convey your value effectively.

Step 5: Launch and Traffic the Ads

With creation done, the next step is to traffic the ads. This is to ensure they are exported to spec and sent to DSPs (Demand Side Platforms) or ad servers according to schedule. This step also includes everything from ensuring ad dimensions meet platform requirements to creating tracking pixels, conducting quality assurance tests, and ensuring full budget delivery.

Step 6: Monitor Metrics and Optimize

Now that your ad is live, it’s crucial to measure display ad performance effectively. Key metrics like CTR indicate if your ad engages users, while impressions show how often it’s displayed. CPC reveals your cost to drive traffic, and ROAS measures the revenue efficiency of your campaign.

Compared to traditional advertising networks, Blockchain-Ads provides advanced metrics such as viewability, cost per wallet transaction, audience overlap reports, and powerful audience targeting features. This platform also offers guidance on visuals, A/B testing CTAs, and headlines to avoid autoplay video ads pop, which can harm user experience.

Step 7: Analyze Learnings and Improve

Analyzing your campaign results helps identify what worked and what didn’t. The top three levers for optimization are audiences, creatives, and bidding strategy. Documenting these learnings improves future display advertising campaigns by refining audience profiles, targeting similar audience ads, and enhancing creative execution.

Display Ad Targeting Options

There are quite a few methods that advertisers use to specify who gets to see their ads, and the common choices include:

• Contextual targeting
• Audience targeting
• On-chain behavior targeting
• Remarketing and retargeting
• Placement targeting

Contextual Targeting

Instead of targeting the users directly, this method makes use of the content of the web pages that the audience visits. Contextually targeted ads involve showing this form of advertising to users based on page content, such as specific keywords and topics.

Audience Targeting

Here, display advertising target consumers based on their online behavior, psychographics, demographics, and interests. Blockchain-Ads provides this feature with its custom-built audiences.

On-Chain Behavior Targeting

This is a unique feature of Blockchain-Ads, and it allows brands to target Web3 users based on their blockchain activity. It’s like audience targeting on steroids with its pinpoint accuracy.

Remarketing and Retargeting

Brands can show ads to users who have previously interacted with their platform or their products with this option. The major forms of these similar audience ads are pixel and list-based. With pixel-based retargeting, you collect real-time data from the actions of the site visitors. List-based retargeting, on the other hand, uses the existing visitor data (like email and phone numbers).

In the end, retargeting and remarketing ads provide advertisements that reflect the user’s interests. According to research by Accenture, this is something that 91% of internet users prefer.

Placement Targeting

If you know exactly where you want your ads to appear, you can get its URL and use it. This targeting option allows advertisers to select a specific landing page, website, or YouTube channel and get their ad shown there.

Manual placement performs best when it's combined with contextual targeting. This means that you know the site where your ads will appear and can prepare your media to match the context of that platform.

What are the Top Display Ad Platforms?

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The best platforms for display advertising are:

• Blockchain-Ads
• Google Display Network
• Amazon DSP
• Other networks and tools like StackAdapt, The Trade Desk, and Meta Audience Network

Blockchain-Ads

Blockchain-Ads is the most advanced display advertising platform that manages any growth-focused brand. It is the best choice for emerging, established, and heavily regulated sectors, like the banking, adult entertainment, DeFi, iGaming, CBD, and forex trading sectors. It offers all standard banner sizes, with rich media units and interactive elements leading to high visibility. With Blockchain-Ads, brands enjoy wide audience reach (especially among the Web3 crowd), precise audience granularity, unified stack workflows, and proven performance.

Google Display Network (GDN)

This is an ad platform that encompasses the millions of websites and apps under Google, like YouTube and Gmail. With this, it’s capable of bringing display ads to more than 90% of internet users. This makes it one of the most widely used options for display ads and great for contextual and in-market targeting. Advertisers who plan to scale their ad campaigns in the future would have no trouble doing so on the GDN.

Amazon DSP

The Amazon DSP (Demand Side Platform) is a display advertising platform that allows advertisers to purchase ad placements and reach audiences on and off Amazon. Display ads from the Amazon DSP can be seen on product stores, product detail pages, and brand websites like Twitch, Prime Video, and Kindle. This site provides dynamic creative delivery and comes with built-in metrics. It provides advertisers with access to publisher services, marketing cloud, and the Amazon ad server.

Other Networks and Tools

Apart from the above options, other display advertising platforms that you can use include:

• Meta Audience Network: This is a mobile ad network from Meta (formerly Facebook) that allows developers to monetize their apps through Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and other third party websites. This platform utilizes Meta’s audience data for precise targeting and provides access to real-time performance tracking and ad placement control.
• StackAdapt: This is an AI-powered DSP that allows digital marketers to plan, execute, and optimize display ad campaigns across multiple channels. It offers advanced targeting capabilities, AI-driven optimization, and real-time insights.
• Criteo: Criteo is a global advertising company that specializes in allowing brands to connect with customers during their shopping journey. This platform offers a variety of display ad formats, including rich media, image ads, and video ads. Its advanced targeting capabilities utilize contextual signals, first-party data, and behavioral insights.
• The Trade Desk: This is a DSP that allows brands to acquire online advertising inventory across various channels through real-time bidding. With this platform, you get comprehensive analytics, AI-powered optimization, omnichannel advertising, and advanced targeting capabilities.

Benefits of Display Advertising

Display ads are the perfect hybrid of reach and performance, and their advantages are:

• Measurable and trackable
• Cost-effective and flexible
• Works across channels
• Scalable reach

Measurable and Trackable

Display marketing allows important metrics like CPC, CTR, and ROAS to be tracked in real time. With these metrics, advertisers can determine whether the ad created the desired effect upon the target audience. Brands that use Blockchain-Ads to deploy their display advertising will get this pre/post-campaign analytics at no extra cost.

Cost-Effective and Flexible

Display ads are more affordable than traditional advertising methods, and they offer great flexibility. The online ads can be deployed with multiple visuals and calls to action that can be modified mid-campaign.

Works Across Channels

Display ads are easy to combine with other ad formats. When they are combined with other ad formats, they boost ROAS and improve time-to-sale by 21%.

Scalable Reach

Display ads can be adapted across multiple formats, audiences, and devices without losing their effectiveness. This allows brands to take advantage of the precise targeting on Blockchain-Ads, the first-party ecosystems on Amazon, and the 2M+ sites on the GDN.

Common Display Ad Challenges (and How to Avoid Them)

Despite the numerous benefits it offers, display ads still harbor a few weaknesses, which will be shown below along with actionable solutions:

Display Ad Fatigue

Consumers can see a display ad too many times, causing them to lose interest or ignore it the next time they do. This is ad fatigue, one of the cons of display ads, and it can severely impact the efficacy of display advertising. As such, it’s important to use frequency capping to limit how many times a user sees an ad and to rotate the ad creatives.

Banner Blindness

Too much exposure to online ads can cause users to develop banner blindness. This is a phenomenon where they unconsciously ignore all banner-like elements on sites. To solve this, advertisers can use content that’s relevant to the users for their creatives. After all, personalized ads target consumers more successfully than generic ads. Advertisers also need to consider the context of the platform where their ad appears for a successful campaign.

Low CTR and Viewability

To improve the CTR (Click Through Rate) from display ads, brands can use high-quality images in their campaigns and segment their audience. Monitoring and adjusting keywords is also useful, along with optimizing product descriptions. A/B testing is another option to improve viewability by testing various images, titles, and descriptions to determine which ones yield high CTR.

6 Proven CTA Examples for Display Ads

To provide the best results, display ads must have the right CTA to entice users, and some of the best ones include:

• Shop Now: Encourages internet users to shop what you’re marketing
• Learn More: Provides a link to more information regarding what you’re talking about
• Watch Now: Encourages customers to watch your video
• Pre-order: Gives internet users an opportunity to get ahead of other customers
• Book an Appointment: Provides a chance to book an appointment
• Get Your Free Copy: Allows internet users to sign up for a free product

You’ll notice that all these CTAs are benefit-driven, they convey your message quickly, and they are created with a conversion-focused purpose. This is a model of what a CTA accompanying a display ad should be like.

Display Advertising vs Other Formats

Below you will see how display ads compare to other ad formats and when it’s better to use them.

Display Ads vs Native Ads

Where display ads are kept separate from the rest of the editorial content, native ads are designed to mimic editorial content display and blend in with the surrounding content. The disruptive actions of display ads make it easy for internet users to notice them, while native ads are non-disruptive and enhance the user experience. While display ads can’t reach users with ad blocking software enabled, the strategy called native advertising can overcome that. Display ads lead to better brand awareness and retargeting, while native advertising is best for content-driven ad campaigns and storytelling.

Display Ads vs Search Ads

Search ads appear on Search Engine Result Pages (SERP), while display ads appear on apps, websites, and streaming platforms. This means search advertising only appears as text, while display advertising typically uses videos, animation, or images. In terms of cost, display ads cost less than search ads. Search ads are best for conversions, while display ads reach customers at every stage of the funnel, including top-of-funnel marketing, retargeting, and brand awareness.

Display vs Video Ads

Display ads can take the form of video, images, or animated banners, while video ads appear as videos. Where banner blindness can make many users ignore display ads, video ads are built to capture attention. Viewability of video ads is high if they’re deployed on a streaming platform, while that of display ads is moderate.

Final Takeaway: How to Succeed with Display Advertising

Display ads are one of the most cost-effective digital marketing solutions of the 21st century with widespread reach. While it suffers from ad fatigue and banner blindness, advertisers can mitigate these weaknesses with creative variation, regular testing, and using the right platforms. This will bring display ads before the right audience, increase the awareness of a brand, and generate sales. Nevertheless, keep in mind that display ads work best as part of a multi-channel marketing strategy and never standalone.

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