Google display ads vs search ads

Display campaigns serve visually engaging ads on the Google Display Network. The Display Network helps you reach people as they browse millions of websites, apps, and Google-owned properties (such as YouTube and Gmail).

Benefits

• Reach people in multiple places: Display campaigns can reach people worldwide across 35 million websites and apps, and on Google-owned properties (YouTube and Gmail). This allows you to expand your reach beyond just Google Search.
• Build campaigns around your goals: Drive sales, leads, and website traffic or build awareness and consideration for your business, product, or service.
• Designed for ease of use: Display campaigns use machine learning solutions across targeting, bidding, and formats to reach a new or existing audience. This can help your campaign deliver the best campaign results, friction-free.
  • Optimized targeting: Find the best performing audience segments that include potential customers with the highest likelihood to help you meet your conversion goals. Learn more about optimized targeting
  • Smart bidding: Bidding that uses machine learning to optimize for conversions or conversion value in each and every auction. It helps you save time and improve performance. Learn more about Smart bidding

How the Google Display Network works

The Google Display Network helps you find the right audience with its targeting options that strategically show your message to potential customers at the right place and the right time. Here are some examples of how you can approach targeting with Display ads:

• Find new customers or engage existing customers using audience segments. Similar segments and in-market segments help you find new prospective customers by targeting people who are interested in your products. You can also use your data segments to help you re-engage people who previously visited your site.
• Drive more conversions using automation. Automated targeting increases conversions by finding high-performing audience segments based on your existing audiences and landing page. By automatically optimizing over time, Google Ads can learn which audience segments work for you. Automated bidding automatically adjusts your bid to help meet your return on investment. Smart display campaigns combine the best of automated targeting, bidding, and creatives to maximize your conversions on Google Ads.

Responsive Display ads

Display campaigns use responsive display ads. Responsive display ads automatically adjust their size, appearance, and format to fit just about any available ad space and improve performance. You upload various assets (images, headlines, logos, videos, and descriptions) in Google Ads and the optimal combination and size of assets will appear in ads across websites, apps, YouTube, and Gmail.

You can also use our library of images at no cost. Both new and advanced users benefit from responsive ads because they show as "native" adsand blend into the font and feel of the publisher's site.

Other Display ad types

• Uploaded image ads. For more control, you can create and upload ads. You can upload ads as images in different sizes or HTML5.

When Display ads show

While the Search Network can reach people while they search for specific goods or services, the Display Network can help you capture someone's attention earlier in the buying cycle. 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. You can also remind people of what they're interested in when you use your data segments to reach people who've previously visited your website or app.

Plan ahead

Changes in the Display Network can take 1224 hours to apply and may not show right away. Keep this in mind while creating a new campaign or making changes to an existing campaign. You may want to set up your campaign a few days before the launch and set the start date in the future.