First, you’ll need to get a display campaign active in your AdWords account. To begin, click the red “+ Campaign” button from within the main AdWords interface, then select “Display Network only” from the options that appear.
Next, you’ll walk through configuring the campaign. You can add geographic targets and set up bids similarly to how you’d set them up in a search campaign. You will want to pay specific attention to the options under “Ad Delivery” in the setup phase.
With your campaign configured, you can now build out your ad groups. Targeting parameters are setup on the ad group level, determining who you’re reaching with display ads and where the ads will show up.
AdWords offers the following targeting options:
These targeting options can also be layered together make targeting even more precise. For example, by layering targeting options you can reach only people who both fit in an “apartments for rent” interest category and who are browsing sites within an “apartments and residential properties” category. You should test multiple forms of targeting against each other to see what performs best for your brand. Build out multiple ad groups targeting different categories, such as “interests + keywords” or “topics + remarketing,” and compare performance over time.
To set up or modify targeting on a display ad group, go to the Display Network tab from within the AdWords interface and select the red “+ Targeting” button.
Note that, for each of these categories, you can choose to reach only the targets you select (Target and Bid) or to simply bid on those targets while also reaching others that fit within your targeting criteria (Bid Only). In the example above, we’ve chosen to “Target and Bid” on the website placements, so ads will only show on the websites listed. However, we’ve chosen “Bid Only” on the audience category. With this setup, we can increase our audience bid to make ads be more likely to reach those heavily showing interest in apartment research, but still show ads to anyone visiting the selecting websites.
Remarketing is a powerful option, allowing you to target people who have previously visited your website. To take advantage, you’ll need to ensure the remarketing code is in place on your site and that you’ve built out remarketing lists relevant to the audiences you want to target. You can then add remarketing to your targeting options from the “Interests and remarketing” section.
Once you have a campaign setup with targeting options in place, you’ll need to ensure you’re reaching people with the right ad messaging.
You can run text ads, static image, or animated display ads on the Google Display Network. Each type of ad has its own pros and cons.
Note that you can use pre-built display ad templates within AdWords, which will help you save time and quickly cover a variety of ad placements. However, you also run the risk of your ads looking like the same templates countless other advertisers are using.
We’d recommend running both text ads and image ads in separate ad groups, since you can often cover more placements with text ads that may not be available with image ads alone. However, if at all possible, you should include well-designed image ads, which tend to show higher clickthrough rates and better represent your brand online.
Launching a successful Google AdWords display campaign requires a combination of the right campaign settings, ad group targeting, and ad creative. You’ll want to be sure that your campaign is setup properly to reach the audience that you desire to convert into sales or leads for your business. In addition, segment your targeting and ads to set yourself up for testing what performs best to drive traffic and conversions.