Why Display Ads Are a Waste - The Data That Made Us Stop

Why Display Ads Are a Waste - The Data That Made Us Stop

Hey folks ??, I'm Kenneth Burke. #BurkeBits is where I share stories, data, and frameworks to help you become a better marketer. Subscribe for free to level-up.


We’ve done display ads for years as a marketing “best practice.”

To be clear, display ads are those ads that follow you around the web after you’ve been to a particular site or viewed a specific product. E.g. you go to nike.com and then start seeing ads for running shoes on your local news site.

I’m sure these ads are very successful for some brands and products, but as a business texting service, we saw mixed results at best and eventually pulled enough data to tell us to stop.

Here’s the story.

Our First Shot at Display Ads

We started with AdRoll as a platform for retargeting viewers who’d already been to our website, and for finding net new prospects to market to.

We didn’t have a designer on staff at the time, so we outsourced the image ads. They were okay.

Our performance on AdRoll seemed promising, with better results coming from retargeting than from prospecting ads. Except, it was tough to tell the full impact (or lack thereof).

Eventually we paused display ads because other channels were more clearly and consistently bringing us returns. But we’d be back.

The Power of Good Creative

Sometime later we started using Google’s network for display ads, primarily for retargeting people who’d already visited our website. We also hired our first full-time product designer, who helped with marketing assets.

They created new ads for us that were much more appealing, and ad engagement went up 30-40% pretty much instantly.

Pro Tip: Great creative matters. If you’re going to invest in any marketing channel, the creative—the content, the visual, etc.—is the most important part.

We still had trouble clearly attributing leads and sales to display ads, but there were enough positive signals that we kept going.

In general, display ads are low-risk with high-reward potential. They’re so cheap, you might as well use them until you find a reason not to.

The Big Experiment

We’ve run experiments forever, and now we wanted to see if display ads were worth it. So here’s what we did:

View the experiment and results on burkebits.com.

Melissa Anne, CHC, CPT

Fractional Marketer | Holistic Health & Performance Coach | From Grief to Gold Podcast Host | Self-Published Author

1 年

This is why I find marketing so fascinating. A “tried and true” method doesn’t mean it will work for every business. Oftentimes you don’t know until you experiment, check the data, then decide for yourself (or company) if it’s actually the right method for you and your offer.

Kate Izell??????

[AI-Generated Headline]

1 年

Display ads aren't really for lead generation, so if that's the expected outcome then you'll be disappointed. Display (outside of retargeting) is primarily for building awareness, so it needs to be measured differently. Without it, you're losing a channel that can build the top of the funnel. I get it, though. Companies want to pay for ads that drive qualified leads. We usually start with BoFu campaigns and then gradually build campaigns that reach further up the funnel. We keep spend maxed out at the bottom and then allocate smaller proportions to the middle and top.

Roman Krs

Linkedin Ads & Google Ads for B2B SaaS companies | Founder & Performance Marketer at Grouts Online

1 年

yeah, they don't make sense. there is much better opportunity on social media than bad placements where people ignore it even more.

Angela W.

HubSpot Certified Marketer | WYRE Technology

1 年

Curious: at what point in your company's lifespan did you delve into Google ads?

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