The visual nature of the ads can attract the attention of the audience and all display advertising tends to serve one of three purposes:

1. Brand awareness – to increase and maintain your company’s online visibility
2. Acquisition – to encourage a direct action, like ‘buy now’ or ‘click here’
3. Retargeting – reaching back out to people who have already visited your site, inspiring them to return.

Display ads can generally be bought on a cost-per-impression (CPM) basis where you pay every time the ad is shown, or on a cost-per-click (CPC) model where you only pay when someone clicks on your banner ad.

Cookies across the internet collect data on how web users are browsing, where they’re based, what their interests are and so much more.

Display advertising uses this information to target your ideal audience with your ads – you just need to set up a campaign and select the options that best suit your business. Then you can show the right kinds of adverts to your ideal audience in the places on the web they’re most likely to visit, whether that’s editorial or news sites and blogs.

There’s a host of different types of display ads you can use to reach potential customers. For example:

1. Banner ads – usually image-heavy ads that tend to sit across the top or down the sides of a web page
2. Rich media – often requiring a level of user participation, your audience can interact with the advert as well as clicking through to your site
3. Native ads – these fit to blend seamlessly with the websites they appear on, often looking like part of the original site

So why might display ads be the best approach to promote your business or drive traffic to your site? Here are just a few of the benefits:

1. Flexibility: choose the format and style that best suits your company – the opportunities are endless and you can be as creative as you’d like
2. Targeting: make sure only the right people are seeing your ads with careful targeting – it means it’s useful to your audience and you’re less likely to waste ad spend
3. Reach: you can access people across a number of popular sites and in a variety of different ways
4. Measurability: review your campaigns as regularly as you like to gain an understanding of which ads are performing well and tweak any that aren’t providing results
5. Awareness – don’t wait for people to search for you or your products, but create awareness and desire with your target audience