Our CEO Chris Sukornyk recently moderated a panel at Search Engine Strategies in San Francisco. The conversation highlighted the key differences between display and search. And how to overcome those.
Increasingly Search Marketers are looking to expand into Display and rightfully so, they are well armed to master Display. The leap into Display isn’t as large as many think. That said, Display is a creature with it’s own peculiarities and search marketers need to understand the differences to master the skills necessary for success.
Choose your weapon: Selecting a DSP
While a search marketer might be tempted to leverage their existing adwords account to launch a display campaigns there are many good reasons not to take this easy route. For starters, using adwords limits yourself to just the Google publishers. While Google has many publishers, using a DSP means you can access all of the same inventory as Google PLUS open up at least 5 times more reach, thereby increasing your ability to test across quality sites.
Further, DSP’s (like Chango) have access to unique data that is not available through Adwords. For example, Chango connects you with billions of search terms, allowing you to do search retargeting – something which, ironically, you cannot do through Google Display.
Display is different than search
We often talk about how the new “biddable” display ecosystem, powered by RTB, as though it is similar or even identical to Search. Granted, ad exchanges and real time bidding have made Display vastly more powerful and similar to Search, however there are some significant differences.
For example, while a search marketer might fret over individual word changes in their ad copy, Display ad creative has virtually limitless combinations and possibilities. So what are the key differences between Search and Display?
A) Targeting - The most obvious difference from Search is that when running Display there are many different ways to target your audience. You can target your audience using contextual, behavioral or social. What many don’t realize is that the very concept of search engine marketing has also been mirrored in Display. Using Search Retargeting you can target your audience the exact same way as you do with search – using keywords.
The only between search retargeting and SEM is where your ad appears. So starting out, search retargeting is an obvious place to start. Display can be used at the top of the marketing funnel but also at the bottom to target intent.
B) Pricing - Most DSP’s only offer only CPM pricing. Most search marketers are familiar with just CPC pricing. Of course, at the end of the day, everything can be calculated back to an effective CPA. Therefore pricing, while different, isn’t a major barrier.
C) Creative - Display’s proverbial last mile. The type of creative you test really depends on the ultimate goal of your campaign. There is no fixed rule about what creative works best – the best advice is to test, test and test. If the goal is having someone click your ad then be sure to include a button and a call to action. Test button colors and ad copy.
There are services like cannedbanners.com that help you generate ads quickly and if you have the budget you can leverage a solution like Tumri. At Chango we can generate dyanmic flash using your existing adwords text copy or a product feed.
D) Sites - With search engine marketing your ads always appear on Google, Yahoo or Bing. The location of the ad is predictable because it is based on your quality score. The only real variable is really the ad copy and your relative position in the results page. In Display, things are more complicated. There are millions of sites available through DSP’s like Chango.
If you are running a retargeting campaign then the actual site you buy on likely does not matter as much – you just want to find your customer again. However, if you are running a brand campaign looking for a specific niche market you may want to limit yourself to sites (or pages) that match the context of your product or service.
E) Measurement/ROI - Display banners don’t have as good a click through rate (CTR) as search ads. Certainly banner blindness is one reason for a lower click through rate. However, there are countless studies indicating that the major culprit is user behavior. Search has become the default navigation mechanism for most Internet users. Think about how you navigate to a website. Do you directly enter a URL or do you search for a company name and click on their name from Google?
It is just faster and easier to search for a brand name and then click on the appropriate link from Google. The result of this behavior is that Search gets most of the credit for driving conversions and Display gets undervalued. Display ads are likely the very thing which instigates a potential customer searching for your brand name. I’m not suggesting Display should not be measured and valued relative results. However, my recommendation is to look beyond the last click model. Consider alternative approaches to measurement – like view-through attribution. Keep your search budget constant and launch a display campaign – do you see a lift in traffic from Google (both SEO and SEM)?
Special thanks to Emily Iverson at Booyah and Bill Leake at Apogee Search for making a great panel discussion.
