Statista reports that digital display advertising stood at $63 billion in the US in 2022, resulting in 1/3rd of the digital ad revenue from display advertising.
Learning about the display advertising trends and tactics for 2024 is crucial if you are a marketer, advertiser, or small business owner.
It is your ticket to informed decision-making about ad formats and digital ad budget allocation.
You can find the latest display advertising trends and how to make the most of them in our blog.
What is Display Advertising?
Display advertising is a form of online advertising that utilizes visual elements such as images, videos, and graphics to convey marketing messages on Google Display Network (and other display networks) to target audiences.
These ads are displayed on various websites, social media platforms, mobile apps, and other digital channels where users are likely to encounter them while browsing the internet.
With 71.5% of the desktop display ads viewed in the first half of 2022, it is a prominent component of digital marketing strategies thanks to its wider reach and ability to grab attention.
Get in touch to learn about Analytico’s Digital Analytics Audit services or GA4 audit services.
Types of Display Ads
Before we get into the latest display advertising trends, let us review the types of display ads available for your ad campaigns.
1. Traditional Display Ads
These are the cornerstones of display advertising, and their typical formats include squares, banners, or skyscrapers.
Traditional display ads usually feature images, text, and a call-to-action (CTA) to entice users to click through.
2. Static Ads
Static ads are traditional display ads where the text and images remain stationary without any movement.
They are effective in delivering a straightforward message to the audience without distractions.
3. Responsive Display Ads
Responsive display ads are dynamic ads where the ad platform determines the most advantageous format based on placement, size, orientation, text, and images.
This adaptive approach ensures optimal display across various devices and screen sizes, maximizing the ad's visibility and effectiveness.
4. Retargeting Ads
Retargeting ads target users based on previous actions, such as visiting your website without buying something.
By retargeting these users with relevant ads, businesses aim to re-engage them and encourage conversion.
5. Social Ads
Social ads appear on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram.
Leveraging the extensive user base and targeting options of social media platforms, social ads help businesses reach their target audience effectively.
6. Interstitial Ads
Interstitial ads, also known as "pop-up ads," are interactive full-screen ads that cover the interface of the platform on which they appear.
These ads demand users' attention as they temporarily interrupt the user's experience, making them ideal for promoting significant messages or offers.
7. Lightbox Ads
Lightbox ads are interactive ads that users can expand to full size, providing an immersive experience.
Users can interact with the ad by scrolling through text and images or watching videos, enhancing engagement and brand awareness.
8. In-feed Video Ads
In-feed video ads, formerly known as "video discovery ads," are video ads that appear within YouTube videos and other Google video partners.
These ads seamlessly integrate with the content, capturing users' attention as they engage with video content online.
9. Expandable Ads
Expandable ads expand beyond the initial ad dimensions by design every time a user clicks or hovers their mouse over them.
This interactive feature allows advertisers to deliver more content and information within the ad, increasing user engagement and interaction.
Display Advertising Trends for 2024
1. Personalization in Display Advertising
Tailoring ads to the preferences, demographics, and interests of an audience segment is called ad personalization.
As marketing messages increasingly inundate consumers, advertisements tailored to individual preferences and behaviors are essential to capture attention and drive conversions.
Like other media, personalization is on the rise in display advertising. It aims to deliver relevant content that resonates with the users on a deeper level.
By leveraging data insights, marketers can segment their audience based on demographics, interests, browsing history, and purchase behavior, allowing for highly targeted and relevant ad placements.
By serving customized ads based on the user's past actions, such as products viewed or abandoned carts, marketers can nurture leads and guide them through the purchase journey.
2. Video Display Ads
Video ads are all the rage, captivating audiences and driving unprecedented engagement. Wyzowl reports video convinced 82% of the surveyed users to buy a product or service.
Elements like compelling visuals, music, and captivating storytelling grab the audiences’ attention and evoke emotions, facilitating brand recall and purchase intent.
The video display ads’ gains are reflected in performance metrics like impressions, engagement, and click-through rates, boasting a significant rise.
Wyzowl reports that 90% of the surveyed marketers believe video marketing results in a good ROI, with 87% saying it has directly promoted sales.
3. Interactive and Immersive Ads
Technologies like augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) band give rise to a breed of ads called immersive ads that offer interactive personal experiences to the users.
Businesses could use these for virtually showcasing their product or services to interested users.
Virtual tours of travel destinations, staying options, automobiles, and virtual trial rooms to see how an outfit looks on a user before purchase are some examples of immersive ads.
Such experiences create excitement and buzz around a business or product, amplifying an ad campaign’s engagement and reach.
4. Contextual Advertising
Contextual advertising is one marketing trend that resolves privacy requirements and gets the ads in front of the audience most likely to engage.
Instead of relying on tracking user behavior to place the ads, contextual advertising displays ads on websites with content relevant to the content of your ads.
You just select the topics, subtopics, and keywords to direct the ads on websites with similar keywords.
It saves ad spend by focusing the ads on an already interested audience, bypasses the need for customer data platforms, ensures compliance with privacy regulations, and likely higher click-through rates.
5. Native Advertising
Native advertising is riding the popularity wave thanks to its ability to deliver the message without seeming too intrusive.
Native ads take on the website or app’s UI they appear in, besides serving ad content contextually similar to the content of the website or app.
So, when the users look at these ads that do not look much like ads, it improves the chances of engagement and conversion.
6. Programmatic Advertising
Last but not least, programmatic advertising is getting increasingly popular due to its automated ad real-estate purchase and lower costs.
In 2022, display programmatic advertising accounted for 64% of the programmatic advertising in the US. It is handy for small to medium-sized businesses where advertisers strive to increase ROI on limited ad budget allocations.
Using programmatic advertising for display ads across multi-channels to increase a brand’s reach and visibility is another popular choice among marketers.
Learn how you can maximize ROI on programmatic advertising here.
Using Data Analytics to Enhance Display Ads Campaign Performance
In digital display advertising, businesses strive to get the audience's attention. Leveraging data analytics has become imperative for optimizing display ad campaigns. But first, what exactly is data analytics for ads?
Data Analytics for Ads
Data analytics for ads involves systematically analyzing various metrics and data points related to advertising campaigns.
It includes collecting, interpreting, and applying insights derived from user behavior, engagement patterns, and campaign performance metrics.
This process enables advertisers to make informed decisions to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of their ad campaigns.
Information provided by data analytics tools offers advertisers valuable insights into the performance of their display ads across different platforms and audiences.
These insights empower them to refine targeting strategies, improve ad placement, optimize ad creatives, and allocate resources more effectively, ultimately driving better results and ROI.
Unveiling the Power of Data Analytics
1. Understanding Audience Behavior
Connecting Google Analytics 4 with Google Ads offers data analytics for ad campaigns, including display ads, and provides advertisers with comprehensive insights into user behavior.
It tracks metrics like website visits, page views, bounce rates, and conversion rates, offering a holistic view of audience engagement.
Analyzing these metrics offers advertisers insights into their target audience's preferences, interests, and online behaviors.
Learn about Google Ads offline conversion tracking here.
2. Optimizing Ad Performance
Leveraging data analytics, advertisers can meticulously assess the performance of their display ads campaigns and identify areas for improvement. Google Ads' built-in analytics feature enables advertisers to track key metrics such as click-through rates (CTR), conversion rates, and cost-per-acquisition (CPA).
By analyzing these metrics, advertisers can identify underperforming ads or targeting strategies and make data-driven adjustments to optimize campaign performance.
3. Refining Targeting Strategies
Data analytics empowers advertisers to refine their targeting strategies and reach the most relevant audience segments.
Google Ads offers sophisticated targeting options based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and remarketing lists.
Analyzing demographic data and user interests helps advertisers tailor their ad content to resonate with specific audience segments, maximizing engagement and conversions.
Opting for ad placement based on user interests allows advertisers to reach the audiences they are most likely to engage with. This reliance on first-party data ensures privacy regulations-compliant targeting, eliminating the need for third-party data.
4. Allocating Resources Effectively
Data analytics facilitates advertisers to make data-driven decisions for allocating their advertising budget and resources more effectively, ensuring optimal ROI.
Analyzing the performance of different ad placements, devices, and targeting criteria helps them identify high-performing channels and allocate budgets accordingly.
This data-driven approach helps advertisers maximize the impact of their display ads campaigns while minimizing wasteful spending.
Conclusion
This blog discusses the display advertising trends and tactics for 2024. Display ads are visual and video ads shown in the display networks.
The top trends in display advertising include personalization, video display ads including various responsive ad formats, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) powered immersive ads, and contextual, native, and programmatic ads.
Advertisers can rely on data analytics to improve the campaign performance of display ads.
Use cases include first-party data analysis to understand user demographics, interests, and behavior and using built-in analytics to optimize ad performance.
Other tactics for using data analytics for optimizing ad performance include refining targeting /retargeting strategies based on user interactions and making data-driven budgets and resource allocations for display ad campaigns.
Do you like what you read? Learn more about Digital Analytics on our blog here.