The world of display advertising



Do you want to know how to run an effective display advertising campaign in your affiliate network? We tell you what you should pay attention to.


First to understand the importance of display advertising, you must know that advertising expenditure in the UK in 2020 amounted to 23 billion pounds. Onethird comes from paid search, followed by TV and digital display (source: statista.com).
No matter how you run the campaign, it’s relatively inexpensive to start running display ads. With only an image and some text, you can start creating display ad campaigns that will help you drive new traffic to your website or retarget website drop-outs.



How to manage your display advertising campaign in your affiliate network


advanced store, as our display partner, can’t stress enough how important it is for advertisers to create new banner sets that reflect their different promotions and are in tune with the different events in the calendar year such as Valentine’s Day, Easter, Black Friday, Christmas, etc.

They also advise you to have banner sets created specifically for brand recognition & prospecting and others for retargeting. The audience isn’t the same therefore your message should be different as well. Your banners can also be based on specific areas or products.

Ensure you create the banners and upload them in your affiliate network ahead of time so that you or your account manager can communicate this with your display partner & publisher. Your partners always need some time to get organized, especially in peak seasons.

An efficient way to have banners updated automatically by your display partner is to overwrite your image (or impression) links in your affiliate network. The banner changes but the link will be the same. This will ensure the partner displays the new image automatically.

Usually, your affiliate network will give you statistics that show which banner formats perform the best. This is usually a good way to assess the effectiveness of your ad strategy.

Another important point is to ensure your ads are placed on websites that won’t harm your brand image. Usually, display partners have a standard blacklist of negative websites where ads are not published. If there are other specific websites you want to avoid, communicate this with your display partner.



How to design your ads


The basic design principles for creating a good display ad are:

· Colour that matches your brand identity and inspires the right emotion.
· Copy that is readable and contrasts with your background.
· High quality and relevant images.
· Having a logo that is clear and stands out.
· And of course, a call-to-action (CTA) button to drive clicks.



How to make your campaign even more effective


Instead of just presenting your product, display a customer engaging/using your product/service. Users also tend to engage more with ads displaying people in a colorful and positive environment like in nature, instead of a closed environment like a room.

There is a phenomenon called “ad blindness”: visitors to a website consciously or unconsciously ignore banner-like information. This does not mean that banner ads do not influence viewers. But it means that if you want your ads to perform, they have to be eye-catching. Later we will show you that native or video ads can be one way of overcoming this.



Most effective banner formats


You should have as many banner formats as possible to be able to cover the most placements on websites but there are some banners that definitely dominate the ad world.


89% of all ad impressions are made up of these 4 sizes:

300×250 Medium Rectangle
728×90 Leaderboard
320×50 Mobile Leaderboard
160×600 Wide Skyscraper


Let’s review some of these more in detail:

300×250: The medium rectangle is definitely the most popular banner format, it has a global frequency of 40%. The reason it’s so popular is that it works well on both mobile and desktop. This banner is often embedded in content like text articles. It’s usually perceived as less intrusive than bigger formats. It has a relatively small size so you need to use the space effectively and your message needs to be straight to the point.

display advertising - medium rectangle

728×90: The leaderboard (or horizontal banner) is the 2nd most popular banner format globally with 25% frequency.
The horizontal banner is usually displayed at the very top of websites – but sometimes also shows up at the bottom. “Above the fold” ads tend to deliver better than banners at the bottom of a page – simply because fewer users scroll all the way to the bottom of a website, and when they get there they may feel like they are already done with the content and are less likely to click on something else. Mobile has passed desktop as the main device used for browsing, delivering 63% of all internet traffic in 2017. Mobile ads can be displayed both when you’re browsing the web and directly in apps.

display advertising - leaderboard


The mobile leaderboard (320×50) is by far the most widely used ad for mobile. This format is heavily used within apps, often displayed as a banner at the very bottom of the screen.

digital advertising - mobile leaderboard

160×600: The wide skyscraper banner, sometimes called a “standing banner”, is the more common of the two skyscraper banners with 12% of global inventory. It’s placed along the sidebar of a website. These are not mobile-friendly, and their reach is in decline, but are still widely used for desktop browsing.
There is a thinner version of this ad, simply called skyscraper, with the size 120×600 that is aimed at websites that cannot accommodate the Wide Skyscraper, but when choosing between the two, the Wide Skyscraper is your safest bet.

display advertising - wide skyscraper


Other types of display advertising


Native advertising:

Native ads are more seamlessly integrated into the customer experience as these ads typically are a mix of information & promotion. They blend into the content that surrounds them and are usually found on the side or bottom of a page or article.
Users tend to engage and pay more attention to these ads vs. standard display ads.

One statistic: Native ads drive 40 times higher clickthrough rate (CTR) compared to traditional display ads. More specifically, native ad CTR is particularly high in the categories of pets, food & drink, and family & parenting.
The typical formats for native ads require one square (627×627) and rectangle ad (1200×627). You will need your own text with a Head (usually 20 characters max), Body (90 characters max), and Call-to-action (15 characters)

display advertisind - native advertising

Video ads:

Video has clearly become a vital part of the advertising strategy. Advertisers will need more resources and time, but users are much more engaged.
Video ads clearly are very popular in social media but can also be found in many publisher websites and also exist in the form of native video ads.

When MediaMind analyzed over three billion ad impressions globally for six months they found that prospects are 27.4 times more likely to click-through online video ads than standard banners. Research also suggests the average user remembers 95% of a message when it is watched, compared to 10% when it is read.

display advertising - video ad


Start your display campaign with advanced store


advanced store has worked with us for years. They can support your display campaigns on a national or international level and cover all industries. They can assist you with multi-lingual native ad creation and advise you on best practices. They work purely on a cost-per-order basis to ensure you get the most return on your investment.



advanced store

Get in touch with us and start your display campaign with advances store >>

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