Search Ads versus Display Ads: Which is Better For Your Business?

Digital industry is always advancing, presenting a ton of unignorable elements that go into online advertising. Nowadays, there’re lots of different advertising formats to choose from depending on the geographic and demographic factors.

But when picking up from the two biggest contenders, we’ve none other than Search and Display. But then which one’s better and how both of them are different? Is it possible to maximise your online advertising campaign by using both? Read on to find out.

Display & Search: Difference & Strengths

When executed in a proper way, both search and display ads are dynamic to get amazing results in comparison to using each as solo. Still, it’s always better to know more about each before incorporating them in the marketing strategy.

Search Engine Advertising

No matter how incredibly powerful a business, how well optimised a website or how much the customers love you, lacking a digital presence wouldn’t show you anywhere on the search engine results page (SERP).

This is true when a business is struggling to gain competitive edge on the searches against specific products or services. Keeping this in mind, it’s absolutely crucial to optimise the website for search.

Also known as PPC, search engine advertising is paid form of online ad that gives your business a visibility on the search engine result pages. It’s an amazing way to monopolise the target demographic on leading search engines such as Google and Bing, used frequently by customers to look for products and services over the web.

In simple terms, the search network works just like the old yellow pages whereas advertising on the digital platform is a much simpler process.

If your ad is creatively crafted with a perfect combination of compelling text and high-quality images, it’s likely to appeal a typical online user in clicking the ad and even make a purchase, which is termed as conversion.

This mode of online advertising gives visibility on the search page and is cost effective. Tons of added benefits include:

• Increased competition and better chance of ranking on the search engine
• Effective optimisation of the marketing campaigns
• Advertising based on intent, interest, geographic and demographics
• Quick to test and filter the results based on effectiveness and ineffectiveness of the website as well as use of call-to-action
• Allow taking informed decisions based on data and statistics to ensure the spend is actually driving revenue

Search advertisements are quick answers to quick problems and questions users search for online. For direct solutions, search network is the best option.

Now, to gauge if it’s a good fit for your online advertising campaign, here’re a few things worth considering:

A Limited Budget: When clients are limited to smaller budget, search network is the best to begin with because format of the advertisement drives direct conversions that can be easily tracked. On mastering your ability on search ads, you can leap for display to further boost your visibility.

The Truth about Organic Traffic: It’s most unfortunate and an undeniable fact that businesses simply couldn’t rely on organic traffic anymore because the result is focused on comparative content only whereas ads present a direct solution to people.

Service or Product: Even the type of business matters when it comes to decide on the advertising campaign. Take for instance businesses that are highly considered for search are those selling a particular product or service and ‘when-in-need’. Take for instance a locksmith, lawyer and/or a plumber that need to be found at a specific time, search network advertising is the best.

Quality Leads: Search ads are amazing to get real time conversions as well as to identify audience that’s actually willing to buy.

Display Advertising

On the contrary, Google Display Network advertisements work within the AdWords interface. The nature of operations is very different as compared to the paid search counterpart with the biggest variance is visibility of the ad that isn’t limited anymore to a single platform but now extends to many different websites that users crawl frequently.

Display ads allow direct placement of the ads, targeting the audience that’s ready and active to find you. It powers you up in the discovery phase of the sales funnel which let your product gets all the exposure to the audience.

As for the difference, display ads don’t work for intent as they’re primed for online brand awareness. That said, display advertisements aren’t confined only to the website but can appear in the formats as outlined below:

• Text: Headline followed by two descriptions and a URL; that usually appear in the sidebars of the website
• Banner: A combination of images and rich media that include animation as well as custom layout
• Email: Directly lands in personal inbox
• Applications: Ads set to target particular mobile app categories

When a customer’s online, it’s important to give the brand as much exposure as possible. Remember, not all ads are intent targeted, sometimes the best approach is reaching people when they’re performing a particular activity such as reading a celebrity gossip, checking the latest sports stats and so on.

It’s a soft push to explore the business brand! Here’s when display advertisement is the right fit:

• Brand Awareness: Many digital marketers and advertisers leverage display ads to familiarise people to a specific brand. As Google Display Network is massive, there’re a lot of online platforms and places where people can advertise and target the right audience.
• No Immediate Sale Product: There’re times when a business doesn’t have a particular product or service for immediate sale, rather to create an awareness or just as a reminder. This is where Google Display Network is best used for retargeting.
• More Visuals: The gist of using Google Display Network is creatively using images and animations to advertise other than just a block of written text.
• Keyword Coverage: Advertisers can quickly fill the hollow between the keyword coverage and product inventory using display ads.

Now that you’re well aware of both Display and Search ads, use the information to power up your online advertisement campaign for optimum performance.