What Display Marketing Network Type is Best for Your Company?
All the tech giants have their proprietary platforms for advertising, often highly sophisticated with KPI-rich dashboards that provide insights into how your campaigns are performing. Whether its Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Apple, or independent platforms like AdRoll or AdForm, these networks all have the same basic sell:
- Easy yet sophisticated campaign generation
- Trackable marketing performance
- Potentially huge market penetration
- Low eCPM (effective cost per thousand impressions)
It’s an intoxicating offer, provided the platform can deliver for its not inconsiderable fees. If you’re a small to medium sized business, you may not have the marketing budget to splash out. You might want to partner with just one or two of these display advertising networks and test the waters.
To help you decide, we’ve looked at the basics of each network, what they can do for you, howe much it will cost and what the downsides are, if any. There’s no doubt that social media and content marketing is essential in today’s hyper-connected online environment. The question is simply one of choice and prioritization.
The Top Seven Marketing Networks in 2020s
Google Display Network
As the world’s biggest search engine, its not surprising that Google can leverage the most user data to place your ad exactly where it needs to be. The sponsored links that appear at the top of Google searches are clicked on by less than 10% of users but if you compare that to the 0.89% click-through rate of Facebook ads, that’s a potentially huge reach.
And it’s not just about searches either. The Google Display Network is the service that will show your ads to users while they browse, or even earlier. Consider this piece of seeming witchcraft from Google’s own guidance: “You can put your ads in front of people before they start searching for what you offer, which can be key for your overall advertising strategy.” Of course, they mean leveraging the search histories of users, data you won’t get from any other network.
Google also owns YouTube and will post video content there too (see below). You can have Google automate the ad content creation from elements you supply, which will be optimized across a range of platforms and device types. Alternatively, you can retain more control over the look and placement of your campaigns by designing them from scratch.
Google’s Display Network currently has over 2 million participating sites and locations in addition to a superb understanding of user behavior. Its ad pricing is a little intricate however, since Google ranks your ads according to the bids you place for positioning and something called a Quality Score, which is a combination of your keyword choices and overall user experience.
To make best use of GDN therefore, make sure your keywords are fully researched for your target audience and that your content is of the highest possible quality. You’ll then score a higher ad ranking, get better placements and a better ROI.
Average CPC: Under $1
Potential Reach: 4.2 billion users
Types of Ad: Responsive display ads, image ads, video ads (YouTube), Gmail ads
Pros: Huge reach, very clever placement, across all platforms
Cons: Slightly opaque costing and ranking of ads could prove pricey
Best For: Reach
Facebook Audience Network
One of the other big giants on the scene is Facebook, which includes Instagram, a huge platform for ad content. Reach is also profound here, if not quite as universal as that offered by Google. At the end of 2020, Facebook boasted an ad audience of 2.14 billon users, although this skews heavily towards the US and Canada (47%).
They have compiled their own collective of third-party sites which run ads from the Facebook Audience Network. You thereby benefit from your campaigns hitting your target audience whether they are on Facebook, Instagram, or other sites. Effectively, you have multiple chances to hit home.
However, in April 2020, the company announced that it would no longer be placing ads via its network on mobile sites. In part this may be in response to Google and Apple’s moves to limiting third party cookies, creating technical difficulties. Some think this may lead to Facebook consolidating its ad offering within its own platforms.
Still, with 2.7 billion monthly Facebook users and over one billion users of Instagram in 2021, that’s still a significant audience of potential customers to draw upon, even without the extended network.
Ads on Facebook are targeted by objective (engagement, site visits, conversions) and by demographics, which can include location, gender, age, and interests. The whole process is quite rigorously controlled by Facebook and fees are very transparent. A/B testing is supported, and analytics are reasonably sophisticated. A good variety of ad types are available, including carousel-style ads on Instagram, videos on Facebook and full-screen interactive mobile ads.
Average CPC: $0.33 (Facebook) and $0.89 (Instagram)
Potential Reach: 2.7 billion users (Facebook)
Types of Ad: Photo, Slideshow, Video, Carousel, Canvas, Dynamic
Pros: Good automation and creative possibilities
Cons: Targeting can be hit and miss, larger mobile network no longer supported.
Best For: Social Media Feeds
YouTube Ads
For video advertising, there simply is no better location to display your content. TikTok is fast coming up behind with 689 million users but its advertising skews towards younger viewers. YouTube boasts over a billion and a half monthly users and a demographic that stretches widely across age categories, although it still leans slightly towards male visitors (56%).
YouTube is the second most visited website (after parent Google) and the second biggest social media platform after Facebook. YouTube advertising has the benefit of auto-playing (we all know the frustration of waiting for “Skip Ad” to pop up), meaning that at least the first five seconds of your finely-honed pitch will be heard. You’re also not charged per view unless viewers allow your ads to play on.
In fact, the average click-through rate is around half a percent. That may not sound like much, but Google search results have an average CTR of a little over 1.5% and those are generated in response to active user interest. Your ads will also display on any website which embeds YouTube content, at no additional cost to you.
You can target ads at specific topics, channels, or pieces of content but Google provides the following caveat: “Your ad can appear on any YouTube or Display Network placements that match your other targeting. Add specific placements to narrow your targeting. If a specific website you target has an equivalent app, your ads can also show there.” This means that if you don’t achieve your first-choice placements, perhaps due to an excess of competition, your ads may appear elsewhere, perhaps in less-than-ideal locations.
Remember also that you can leverage well-crafted YouTube content, as opposed to ads placed around it, and stand a much better chance of achieving views. Many SaaS businesses use this approach, producing “how to” videos that offer real, free value to potential customers, building loyalty and interest. The average CTR of all YouTube content is between 4 and 5%.
Small downsides include the slightly inscrutable placement policies for YouTube video content, as well as the rather unsophisticated automated positioning of mid-roll ads (those which interrupt video content).
Average CPC: $0.49
Potential Reach: 1.5 billion users
Types of Ad: Video Ads and Video Content
Pros: Potentially high click-through ratio, cost-effective, embedding in third party sites
Cons: Low CTR for ads, no control over mid-roll positioning, unpredictable placement
Best For: Video Content
LinkedIn Display Network
If you’re offering SaaS or other business to business products, you couldn’t find a more laser-targeted platform than LinkedIn. By its very nature, LinkedIn appeals to proactive career-focused professionals across a range of tech-savvy industries.
By using their Audience Network, LinkedIn say you’ll increase your campaign performance by 25%, presumably over simply displaying your ads on their platform alone. It’s a little hard to find out exactly how many websites LinkedIn will display your content upon, and it states merely “thousands”. However, it’s likely a case of quality over quantity since LinkedIn stress their vetting procedures and advertisers’ ability to block certain publishers from displaying your ads.
The audience examples LinkedIn gives as its Top 5 market segments are enterprise VPs, individual contributors (with and without bachelor’s degrees), SMB directors and educated young professionals. If your products and campaigns suit this demographic, LinkedIn’s network could be a well-targeted choice.
You can target ads with over 100 categories, unsurprising given the amount of personal career and education data LinkedIn users supply. Want to target female college educated, STEM qualified, VPs between 25 and 35 living in the USA? That’s not a problem with LinkedIn Audience Network.
LinkedIn’s average CTR is around 0.39% and its ad placement isn’t cheap, so it may be wise to try a small-scale test campaign before you commit to anything more elaborate. That said, a far higher percentage of those click-throughs should lead to sales than the rather scattergun approach of more mass-market networks.
CPC: $7 to $11
Potential Reach: 780 million users and network users
Types of Ad: Single Image, Video
Pros: Great B2B targeting, good conversation rates
Cons: Limited content possibilities, smaller reach, expensive
Best For: B2B Sales
Apple Ad Network
Apple may be developing its own in-device ad network. Currently, through Search Ads, you can advertise an app in the App Store, which displays when users search for a particular type of app. This works rather like Google’s sponsored search ads, showing promoted apps alongside pure search results. Ads can also be displayed to iPhone or iPad users in other proprietorial apps such as Stocks and News.
Apple has always positioned itself as the one tech giant who hold user privacy as a primary brand value. This makes it difficult for the company to develop a maximally flexible advertising network, which tends to depend on user data being shared across platforms. Apple devices jealously guard their user’s data.
From 2021, ios14 and above will include two key privacy stipulations for all apps available from the app store. Firstly, users will be able to see a “privacy nutrition label”, giving a summary of the developer’s data practices. Secondly, according to Apple’s own news release “App Tracking Transparency will require apps to get the user’s permission before tracking their data across apps or websites owned by other companies”.
In addition, certain technical changes to Apple’s Ad Attribution API will make it harder for off-platform advertisers to track their marketing campaigns. Much has been written about how this might unfairly advantage Apple’s own advertising service.
All you need to know is that if you do advertise an app through Apple’s Search Ads, you may achieve a more accurate reach than doing so via Google or Facebook. Look out, therefore, for Apple expanding its in-device advertising offerings.
CPT: (cost per tap) $0.84
Potential Reach: 728 million + iPhone users worldwide
Types of Ad: Image + Text (proprietorial format)
Pros: Specialized reach, good targetability for app users
Cons: No impressions outside iOS, limited tracking data
Best For: Apple Apps
AdRoll
AdRoll is a digital marketing platform that lets you create and track campaigns across multiple social media and shopping channels, including Google, Facebook, Instagram and 500 other sites. It uses machine learning to predict shopper behavior and make ad placement recommendations.
Its big advantage lies in its sophisticated manipulation of trillions of data points and allows you, for instance, to pursue customers who have abandoned shopping carts. In March 2020, Statista found that an astonishing 88% of shopping carts were abandoned at the check-out. That’s a potential goldmine if even a fraction of those customers could be converted to an eventual sale.
Retargeting is another key technique AdRoll uses, by tracking visitors to your sales site who do not make a purchase and then targeting them on other platforms, or with an email campaign.
AdRoll also adds things like email campaigns to the mix, helping you reach potential customers when they are off the internet. It’s a sophisticated suite of tools and analytics that you can use for mass-marketing campaigns and laser-focused niche sales efforts alike.
Fees for the platform itself as low (as well as a free version, there’s a $19 a month subscription for up to 50,000 monthly emails). You’ll pay separate fees for ads triggered on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. They estimate a budget of $430 per day to reach 100K visitors over a 90-day campaign. For more on AdRoll ad campaign pricing, see here.
CPC: N/A — $19 per month plus CPC of relevant platforms
Potential Reach: Billions, depending on platforms / targeting specs
Types of Ad: Web ads, dynamic web ads, native ads, email campaigns
Pros: A great all-in-one suite, fantastic targeting, and conversion abilities
Cons: Could be costly, complex, and time-consuming
Best For: Retargeting, sales support
AdForm FLOW
The last platform we’ll look at is another popular suite of marketing and advertising tools. Since developments in privacy awareness are eradicating third party cookie use, AdForm is just one of the competing sites leveraging AI to track customers. AdForm have termed their mixture of AI and user knowhow as “augmented intelligence” and they have a product handout and explanatory video on their site.
Their Ad Server is just part of the FLOW offering. Troels Jensen, AdForm’s CEO says, “as the only independent fully integrated marketing platform, AdForm offers transparency, privacy, and ownership of data.” All well and good, but their website is high on hyperbole and low on concrete information. However, their products are very well-reviewed, and they have almost 20 years’ experience.
From the limited information we could glean from their glossy brochure, this solution would not suit a small business. It seems better suited to marketers and advertisers are the upper end of the scale. AdForm score highly for customer service, so perhaps give them a call if you’re considering this platform.
CPC: N/A — contact supplier for costing
Potential Reach: Potentially huge
Types of Ad: Platform dependant
Pros: Leverage AI and professional expertise, a fully integrated suite of analytics
Cons: May prove overkill for a small business
Best For: Larger advertisers
