While many marketers believe Display Ads are dead, they can still be an effective method of reaching your online campaign goals. Indeed, when coupled with other marketing channels, it can even boost the performance of those activities. Like all paid marketing efforts, it’s about getting the targeting right.
Bearing in mind, without the right traffic and audience, even the most compelling ad creative and landing pages will fall flat. On the other hand, if you’re just getting started on the internet; or simply looking for ways to add new revenue streams to your business, you might be considering accepting Ads for other companies’ products on your website.
Eventually, Who wouldn’t like to make a few extra bucks without any effort? You just put up a few ads on your site and wait for the cash to roll in, right? Not necessarily. To make your site attractive to companies looking for display Ads space, you’ll need to have a great niche market, tons of traffic, and the promise of good ad placement on your site.
However, if you don’t have all these elements in place yet, there are still ways for you to make money from ads on your site.
What Are Display Ads?
Display Ads often fall under an advertising method of attracting the audience of a website, social media platform, or other digital mediums to take a specific action.
These are often made up of text-based context, images, or even video advertisements. With the main aim being encouraging the user to click-through to a landing page and take action (e.g. make a purchase).
Most display Ads and online advertising campaigns are charged on a Cost Per Click (CPC) basis. That is to say, every time the user on a search engine clicks on your ad, you’ll get charged. Especially, on an amount based on your overall bidding strategy.
They can also be used for retargeting campaigns. This is where ads are served to users who have already visited a specific website. The aim is to “retarget” them and encourage them to return to the website to take the same action. Or rather, an action at a different stage of the funnel.
Are there Other Forms of Display Ads?
Of course, the short answer is yes! Your display campaigns can come in several shapes and sizes, which include the following:
- Banner Ads: One of the oldest and traditional forms of advertising, banner ads usually appear at the top of websites in a “banner” format.
- Interstitial Ads: These ads appear as web pages that are served to users before they are directed to the original page they requested.
- Rich Media: These ads include interactive elements, such as video, audio, and clickable elements.
- Video Ads: The YouTube advertising platform, as well as social networks like Instagram and Facebook, have opened a whole new avenue for marketers. Video ads allow you to reach your audience and connect with them on a personal level and are well worth investing in.
And as is the case with all digital marketing channels, display campaigns can come with their own pros and cons. Before we get into some actionable and in-depth advice on how to apply display ads to your business, let’s look at their benefits and downsides.
First of all, the Pros:
- Diversity: Display ads come in many shapes and sizes. And as you’ve seen above, they can be presented in a number of formats, too. This means you can choose a style and advertising format that will help you achieve your goals.
- Reach: Thanks for the Google Display Network (GDN), you can access millions of sites straight from your Google Ads account.
- Targeting: Because of GDN’s extensive reach, you can also target the right audience by placing your ads on the right websites. This includes demographic and geo-targeting, along with specific interests of your target audience.
- Measurable: Clicks, impressions, and conversions can all be tracked from Google Ads, as well as Google Analytics for more granular performance and engagement tracking.
This all sounds great, but what about the cons? By the same token, there are some downsides to display Ads.
Here are the Cons;
- Banner Blindness: Because of the prolific nature of display Ads, many users have come to ignore them completely. This means a lower click-through rate. However, this can be circumvented using remarketing and rich media ads.
- Ad Blockers: Along with this, ad blockers technology has risen in popularity over the last few years. However, many brands and media outlets have tried to circumvent this. By giving users the option of allowing ads or purchasing a subscription.
But, despite these small downsides, display advertising still works – especially when you do it right.
And with that in mind, let’s explore what makes a great display Ads campaign. And also, how to put together compelling ad creative to attract your ideal audience. Some of the easiest and often the most successful to make money through your site include:
1. Promoting an affiliate product on your site
Joining another company’s affiliate program is one of the simplest ways to get started with internet advertising. While affiliate links aren’t technically ads, they allow you to make money by promoting someone else’s product.
As an affiliate, you earn a commission each time someone you’ve referred makes a purchase. To encourage sales, you might post a banner on your site that links to the affiliate site or publish a newsletter article about their product.
Different affiliate programs offer different payout options. Some might offer 10 percent commission for each sale, while others pay up to 50 percent of each sale. You’ll want to shop around for the best deal for you and the best fit for your site. To find good affiliate programs, check out the following directories:
- Associate Programs
- Affiliates Directory
- Refer-It
Some internet advertising pros are actually making all their income from signing on with multiple affiliate programs. They don’t even have a product of their own! This isn’t a strategy for beginners, however, so take some time to check out different programs before committing to this option.
2. Making use of Google AdSense for targeted advertising
Basically, the Google AdSense program allows you to make money advertising on your site by placing targeted text ads generated by Google on your pages. The ads appear in rectangular boxes running down the side or across the bottom of a web page with the words “Ads by Google” over the top.
These ads are paid for by businesses that use Google’s Pay Per Click program called Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords). Whereby, these ads reflect the content on your site. So, if your site sells a book on how to recognize authentic baseball cards, for example, the ads that appear on your site might be for baseball card retailers.
As a Google AdSense publisher, you earn money every time a visitor to your site clicks on one of the AdWords ads on your site. If you’re getting a lot of targeted traffic–and if these visitors are interested in the products being advertised–that could mean a healthy new source of extra income for you.
Best of all, Google AdSense is free to join. It’s easy, too. Google does all the work of finding relevant ads for your site–you just collect the payments. Unfortunately, Google Ads don’t work for all sites, so if you add them, be sure to test them. You don’t want to lose credibility with your target market.
3. Approaching companies directly to ask if you can advertise for them
If your site is already getting lots of traffic, try looking for sites that offer complementary products and target the same niche market as you do. For instance, if you own a bridal shop, you could approach a local florist to see if they’d like to advertise their wedding bouquets on your site.
An ad on your site would also be seen as an implicit recommendation of their product, and it could send a ton of brides to their site. And the more successful your ads are, the more you can charge for them. Be sure to contact potential internet advertising partners in a professional manner.
For instance, call them on the phone instead of just e-mailing them so your communication is more personal and professional. Be ready to supply them with information about your business and your site traffic. The more information you can give them, the more likely they’ll be to consider your offer.
And above all, make sure they have a solid reputation. For one thing, if you partner with a questionable company, their activities could reflect poorly on your business.
4. Sign up for a blog-specific display ads program
To simply put, if you have a blog, consider signing up to feature blog-specific ads on your site.
The key is to consider the kinds of ads your target audience will find valuable.
Here are some great ways to attract advertisers to your blog:
- Sign up with a context-based ad program like Google’s AdSense that will automatically generate ads for your site that you can put up within minutes of being accepted to their program. Crisp Ads offers a similar program, but only for blogs.
- Place Amazon Associates ads on your site, and feature ads for products you personally use or are happy to endorse. That way, your customers are responding to your recommendations.
- Get advertisers interested in your blog with a link they can use to contact you for rates and requirements. This link can be a simple message saying “Click here to find out how to advertise on this blog!” That way, anyone visiting your site is free to discuss advertising opportunities with you.
- Sign up with an advertiser-publisher connection program like BlogAds or AdBrite, and get listed in their publishers’ directory. One important note is that with these types of ads, the advertisers look through listings of thousands of blogs. While choosing the right people to promote their products. Unless you’re getting thousands of visitors a day, they might not be all that interested in doing business with you.
As an example,
The actual position of your Google Ads is determined by your ad rank (Maximum Bid times Quality Score). The highest ad rank gets the 1st ad position. Your actual CPC will be determined by the ad rank. Particularly, that of the next highest ad below you divided by your Quality Score.
However, the only exception of this rule is when you are the only bidder or the lowest bid in the Google Ads auction. Then you’ll pay your maximum bid per click! AdWords bidding heavily penalizes advertisers who bid with low-quality scores. Conversely, those with high-Quality Scores get higher ad ranks and lower CPC.
The auction gets run billions of times each month. The results are such that users find ads that are relevant to what they’re looking for. Advertisers connect with potential customers at the lowest possible prices and Google rakes in billions of dollars in revenue.
Summary Notes;
Making money from your site isn’t a matter of putting up a few ads and grabbing a paycheck. No! It takes a lot of research and testing on an already established site. In the end, making even the best internet advertising strategies truly pay off.
Even then, you may find that your audience resists the presence of ads. If you’re putting people off by placing ads on your pages, you could end up losing more customers. And in fact, you could also end up losing more revenue than you actually gain. To make sure this doesn’t happen, test every aspect of each new ad campaign you run.
Once you do discover the internet advertising strategies that work best for your site, you can try promoting another product. Soon, all those added revenue streams will combine to swell your profits.
Related Sources;
- Paid Search | A Beginners Guide In Online Marketing
- Google Ads | Get More Customers With Online Advertising
- AdMaven Review | Pop-up Ads Agent better than AdSense
- Blogads | Create Native, Self-Service Ads & Monetize Blogs
- AdDollars | The Advertising Marketplace You Should Know
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