What Is Display Advertising and When Should You Use It?

Every time you see a banner ad on a news website, a sidebar image on a blog, or an interstitial ad inside a mobile app, you’re looking at display advertising. It’s one of the oldest forms of digital advertising, yet it remains a valuable tool for businesses that know when and how to use it.

Display advertising is fundamentally different from search advertising. Where search ads capture people at the moment of intent, display ads interrupt people during other activities — browsing content, reading articles, using apps. This distinction shapes when display advertising is most effective and how you should approach it.

How Display Advertising Works

Display ads are image-based (or sometimes video or animated HTML5) ads that appear on websites and apps within advertising networks. The Google Display Network (GDN) is the largest, reaching over 90% of global internet users across millions of sites. Other major display networks include The Trade Desk, Amazon DSP, and various publisher-specific ad networks.

Advertisers target display ads by audience characteristics (interests, demographics, past browsing behaviour), by context (sites or pages related to a specific topic), by placement (specific websites or apps), or by retargeting previous site visitors. The result is that your ads appear to relevant users across a huge range of digital environments.

Display ads are typically sold on a CPM basis — cost per thousand impressions — rather than cost per click. This makes display suited to awareness objectives, where the goal is exposure rather than immediate action. Click-through rates on display ads are typically low (often under 0.5%), which is normal and doesn’t mean the ads aren’t working — many users who see your ad and don’t click may still search for you later.

When to Use Display Advertising

Display advertising excels at brand awareness and top-of-funnel marketing. If you’re launching a new business, entering a new market, or trying to reach people before they’re actively searching, display can build familiarity and recognition over time. When users eventually do enter the market for your product or service, they’re more likely to choose a brand they recognise.

Display is also highly effective for remarketing — showing ads to people who have already visited your website. In this context, you’re not building awareness from scratch; you’re nudging warm prospects who already know you. Remarketing display campaigns typically outperform cold audience campaigns by a significant margin.

Where display advertising is less effective is as a direct response channel for cold audiences. If you need immediate leads or sales from people with no prior awareness of your brand, search advertising or social media conversion campaigns will usually deliver better results at comparable cost.

Creating Effective Display Ads

Display ad creative needs to communicate quickly and clearly. Users see your ad for a fraction of a second before deciding whether to engage. Your logo should be visible, your message should be legible at small sizes, and your call to action should be obvious. Avoid cluttered designs with too much text.

Google’s Responsive Display Ads simplify production significantly — you upload a selection of images, logos, headlines, and descriptions, and Google automatically assembles combinations optimised for each placement. This is ideal for businesses without a dedicated design resource.

Set frequency caps to prevent your ads showing to the same user too many times. Overexposure leads to ‘banner blindness’ and brand irritation. Refresh your creative periodically — stale ads see declining performance over time as audiences become habituated to seeing the same imagery.