Last updated on February 27th, 2025 at 12:10 am
Everyone is talking about ads.
But how can you use display advertising in digital marketing?
Today we are going to discuss the right way to use paid ads to grow your online business.
What is Display Advertising?
“Digital display advertising” is an umbrella term that is used to refer to various digital banner ads, including text, image, and video ads.
Interstitial ads are also considered to be display ads despite not being banner ads in the traditional sense.
The three most popular types of display ads are:
- Website ads
- Newsletter ads
- Social media ads
Let’s take a closer look at each of them:
Website Ads
Website ads are the oldest type of display ads.
Back in the day, website ads used to be fixed banner ads that would be displayed in various locations, most commonly on a sidebar.
Today website ads are usually managed through display advertising networks – businesses that use that network can advertise on websites that belong to it without negotiating with the website owners directly.
This provides opportunities for personalization and retargeting.
Have you ever seen an ad for a relatively small business on a popular website?
It’s likely that the ad was following you around the Internet because you visited the website of that small business.
Meanwhile, another person would have seen a different ad that was relevant to them.
This is the modern approach to display ads that stands in stark contrast to the old-school approach where the exact same banner ad is shown to all site visitors.
The most popular digital display network in the world is Google Display Network (GDN) which can reach 90% of Internet users worldwide.
If you want to start experimenting with website ads, GDN is probably the best place to start.
Of course, you still have the option of negotiating ad placements on relevant websites yourself if that’s what you prefer.
Newsletter Ads
Email marketing has been around for ages, but newsletters have exploded in popularity in the last five years.
Arguably, that is related to Substack’s arrival on the scene, as this platform made it easy to start a paid newsletter.
Now it seems that everyone, from bloggers to journalists to public figures, has an email newsletter.
Placing display ads in newsletters that cater to your target audience can help you reach your dream customers.
While there are several newsletter advertising networks out there, you would likely be better off negotiating ad placements directly.
Social Media Ads
You can run ads on all major social media platforms:
- YouTube
- TikTok
They all have solid targeting functionalities that allow you to zero in on your dream customers.
You can also retarget people who have previously visited your website, followed you, clicked on your ads, etc.
What are the Pros and Cons of Display Advertising?
In order to understand how to use display advertising in digital marketing, you need to first understand its advantages and disadvantages.
After all, there’s no perfect digital marketing method – they all have their pros and cons.
Display ads are no exception:
Pros:
- Best way to validate a business idea
- The fastest way to generate traffic
- Access to other people’s audiences
- Retargeting opportunities
Cons:
- Banner blindness
- Ad blockers
- Obnoxiousness
- Privacy concerns
Let’s take a closer look at each of these…
Pro: Best Way to Validate a Business Idea
The “Lean Startup” approach is the most effective way to go about product development:
- Create a minimum viable product (MVP)
- Show it to your dream customers
- See what happens
This approach allows you to quickly determine whether a business idea has potential.
It can prevent you from wasting time, energy, and money on products that were doomed from the start.
Social media advertising allows you to put your MVP in front of your dream customers immediately – it’s the best way to validate business ideas fast.
Once you are sure that there’s demand for your product, you can start investing in its development.
Pro: Fastest Way to Generate Traffic
Display advertising is also the fastest way to generate traffic. It can help you get a new business off the ground.
Typically, display advertising follows the pay-per-click (PPC) model, where you only pay if someone clicks on your ad.
This is especially beneficial when you are just starting out because it means that you are paying for actual traffic, not just for people seeing your ad.
Of course, there are other models as well – depending on the platform, you can choose to pay for ad impressions, video views, etc.
Pro: Access to Other People’s Audiences
You have probably heard that you should “build an audience”. But that takes time… And you need sales now!
Display advertising allows you to tap into other people’s audiences, which is great when you don’t have one of your own yet.
Of course, you need to make sure that the audience you are targeting is either the same as your target audience or has a significant overlap with your target audience.
Pro: Retargeting Opportunities
You can use retargeting to create ads that follow your dream customers around the Internet.
Or you can use it to show your ads repeatedly to the same people on a specific social media platform.
Say, Noah Kagan, the founder of Sumo and AppSumo, has developed this Facebook advertising strategy that takes advantage of retargeting:
- He shows potential customers an ad for a popular piece of content that they are likely to be interested in.
- He then shows people who clicked on that ad another ad that promotes his lead magnet.
This approach enabled him to get thousands of email subscribers at just $1 per lead.
Here’s a video in which he explains it:
Note that this video was published back in 2017, so some things might be different today, but the principle remains the same.
Con: Banner Blindness
Banner blindness is a web usability phenomenon where people ignore page elements that they perceive to be ads. It has been observed as early as 1997.
“Users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it’s actually an ad,” explains web usability expert Jakob Nielsen in his 2007 article on the topic.
When Nielsen Norman Group looked into it again in 2018, they found that banner blindness was alive and well.
According to Kara Pernice, the Senior Vice President of Nielsen Norman Group:
“Banner blindness has now been documented across 3 decades.
It’s a strong and robust phenomenon and, like advertisements themselves, is not likely to go away any time soon.”
This is something that you need to keep in mind because banner blindness is an obstacle that all display ads need to overcome.
Con: Add Blockers
Nearly half of global Internet users in the 16-24, 25-34, and 35-44 age groups use ad blockers.
And it’s probably safe to say that ad blockers will continue growing in popularity, which means that the effectiveness of display advertising will continue to diminish.
That being said, this trend will mostly affect companies that target tech-savvy people, especially those who cater to web developers, software engineers, etc.
The less tech-savvy your target audience, the less impact ad blockers will have on your business.
Con: Obnoxiousness
We can probably all agree that display ads are obnoxious!
In fact, the top three reasons why people use ad blockers are:
- There are too many ads on the Internet (22.3%)
- Too many ads are annoying or irrelevant (22.3%)
- Ads are too intrusive (19.9%)
No surprise there.
This presents another challenge:
Even if you are using display ads that the potential customer can’t ignore, their immediate reaction will likely be annoyance.
Think about it:
When you are watching a YouTube video and an ad interrupts it, what’s your immediate reaction?
If you are like most people, you probably get annoyed and immediately look for the “Skip Ad” button, then click it the moment it becomes available.
That means that if you are running YouTube ads, you only have a few seconds to grab the potential customer’s attention.
Con: Privacy Concerns
There’s a weird dichotomy in how people tend to view display ads:
- On the one hand, we don’t want to be bombarded with generic ads, we want to see offers that are relevant to us.
- On the other hand, this whole idea of our personal data being used to sell us stuff creeps us out, especially when we consider the implications of retargeting.
This is something that you will need to contend with if you want to use display advertising in digital marketing. Are you okay with it from an ethical perspective?
Also, if your brand image involves taking a stand for user privacy, then your target audience might see the use of personalized ads as hypocritical.
That’s why we advise privacy-conscious companies to stick to old-school banner ads that don’t rely on personal data.
Say, if you sell web analytics software and your main selling point is that you respect user privacy, then it’s okay to pay for banner ads on relevant websites or newsletters.
But you might want to avoid display networks such as GDN, social media ads, retargeting, etc.
Needless to say, this might slow you down in terms of generating new revenue, so you need to account for that.
But that is better than risking a PR disaster – being perceived as hypocritical by your dream customers can damage your brand image beyond repair.
How to Use Display Advertising to Grow Your Business
So how can you use this marketing method to grow your business?
Use Display Advertising to Validate Ideas
Have a business idea?
- Create an MVP
- Build a Value Ladder sales funnel (more on that later)
- Use social media ads to drive traffic to your lead magnet landing page
This will quickly show you whether your business idea has potential.
Use Display Advertising to Get Your Business Off The Ground
We have noticed that entrepreneurs who are just starting out are often reluctant to spend money on ads and want to focus on organic traffic instead.
That doesn’t make much sense, though. You need traffic ASAP if you want to get a new business off the ground. Meanwhile, building organic traffic takes time, think 1-2 years.
So it’s best to start with paid ads, then diversify with other traffic sources over time.
For Example:
Laure Roeder, the founder of MeetEdgar, did just that.
Here’s how she explained it In her interview on the Indie Hackers podcast:
“So what you can do from day one is pay Google and Facebook and they will put you in front of who you want to be in front of.
You don’t have to do anything clever, it doesn’t take any time. Give Facebook a dollar and they will follow your instructions (for the most part).
So that’s what we did. Right from the launch we were spending $40,000/month on Facebook ads.”
Decrease Your Reliance On Display Advertising Over Time
You don’t want to remain completely reliant on paid ads forever.
That’s why we recommend investing in building traffic-generating assets:
- A blog
- An email list
- A TikTok channel
- A YouTube channel
- A social media following
Obviously, don’t try to do everything at once.
Pick one channel to begin with, then start adding more once you are confident that you can handle it.
Realistically, it will probably take 1-2 years to get to the point where these channels start generating a significant amount of traffic.
But then you will be able to drastically reduce your marketing costs because you won’t have to pay for each and every click anymore.
So be patient and stay consistent.
How to Create a Winning Display Ad
Now let’s talk about how to create a winning display ad.
Needless to say, each advertising platform, ad type, and ad format has its own specifics. But we want to share some general principles that you should keep in mind:
Use a Pattern Interrupt Headline
A pattern interrupt is something that makes people stop in their tracks, do a double take, and pay attention. That’s the purpose of your headline.
Here are some ideas:
- A benefit-driven headline. How will your offer make the potential customer’s life better?
- A controversial headline. This should be a statement that challenges the consensus in your niche.
- A bizarre headline. This is a headline that is so wacko that it makes people go “What the…” and click on the ad just to see what it’s all about.
For Example:
The most viewed video on our YouTube channel is an ad called:
“ClickFunnels – This Gold Digger Got Rich Painting Nude Squirrels”
When it comes to YouTube video ads, the video title is less important than the first sentence of the ad copy.
Our ad starts with:
“Meet Steve – an office worker who’s about to get his first gold digger.”
This sentence serves as a pattern interrupt, so people are inclined to keep watching.
Meanwhile, the crazy video title helps us get organic views – when people see it on their subscription feed, suggested videos, or homepage, it catches their attention and piques their curiosity.
So they click on the video thumbnail to check it out.
Use a Subheadline That Introduces the Offer
If you are using a text or image ad, then you want it to have not just a headline, but also a subheadline.
While the purpose of the former is to grab the potential customer’s attention, the purpose of the latter is to explain what it is that you are offering.
Your subheadline should have these two elements:
- A description of the offer (a FREE ebook, a FREE webinar, a FREE course, etc.)
Remember, you want to drive traffic to your lead magnet landing page, not to your sales page! - An explanation of how it will help the potential customer (it will teach them how to do a pull-up, learn to code, get more traffic, whatever).
Just make sure that you set the right expectations from the start. Never make promises that you can’t keep!
Have a Call-to-Action Button That’s Impossible to Miss
You need to tell the potential customer what you want them to do next – and that is the purpose of the call-to-action button!
You want to make it large and use a color that stands out in your ad’s color scheme so that it would be impossible to miss.
You also want to use copy that emphasizes that your offer is free:
“Get Your FREE Ebook Now!”
Avoid using generic copy such as “Sign Up”, “Download”, etc.
Note that you need to have a call-to-action button even if the whole ad is clickable!
How to Maximize Display Advertising Return on Investment (ROI)
We believe that the most effective way to sell anything online is the Value Ladder sales funnel.
It was created by our co-founder Russell Brunson who then used it to take ClickFunnels from zero to $10M+ in annual revenue in just one year (it’s at $100M+ now!).
This sales funnel has four stages:
- Bait – You offer the potential customer your lead magnet in exchange for their email address.
- Frontend – You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product or service.
- Middle – You offer the customer a more expensive and more valuable product or service.
- Backend – You offer the customer your most expensive and most valuable product or service.
Ideally, you also offer a continuity program of some sort, meaning, a subscription product that generates recurring revenue.
We also recommend adding downsells, upsells, and cross sells to these core offers in order to maximize your revenue.
The reason why this sales funnel works so well is that it allows you to:
- Start the relationship with that person by offering free value
- Nurture that relationship by continuing to provide free value via email
- Build trust by providing progressively more paid value at each stage
Here’s how Russell explains it:
The best way to maximize your ad spend ROI is to create a Value Ladder sales funnel, then use display ads to drive traffic to your lead magnet landing page.
This is the single best thing that you can do to make the most out of display advertising!
Want Russell to Show You How to Build Your First Sales Funnel?
Let’s keep it real:
Building a sales funnel from scratch can seem like a daunting task.
That’s why we created our 5 Day Challenge where Russell walks you through it step-by-step.
You will learn how to:
- Generate unlimited leads
- Create your first lead magnet
- Build your first sales funnel
- Create a simple 6-email follow-up sequence
- And launch your funnel
…in just five days!
So don’t hesitate.