A Beginner’s Guide to Google Display Ad Placements For Local Service Businesses

Google Display Ads are visual-based advertisements that can serve as a powerful tool to increase the visibility of your business. Google Display Ads, which can include image ads, text ads, rich media ads and video ads, appear on over 3 million websites, over 650,000 apps and other Google-owned properties such as Gmail and YouTube, allowing businesses to stay top of mind within their target audience. 

Strategic placements of Google Display Ads can help increase brand awareness, drive more website traffic and generate additional leads for local businesses. According to wordstream.com, 27% of consumers conduct a search for a business after seeing its display ad, and there’s a 59% boost in conversions when users conduct a search related to a display ad.

However, a thorough understanding of Google Display Ads and where they should be placed is required to find the most optimal strategy for your campaign. By understanding how placements work, choosing relevant sites and monitoring performance, you can get the most out of every marketing dollar. 

Here’s a closer look at Google Display Ads, the importance of placements, how to set up a well-placed Google Display Ads campaign and how to measure its success.

A Background of Google Display Ads and Placements

Implementing a Google Display Ads campaign can prove incredibly beneficial for your business thanks in large part to Google’s wide audience reach. Google Display Network touches a collection of millions of websites, videos and apps that reach around 90% of internet users worldwide.

Google Display Ads can be broken down into two categories, beginning with uploaded image ads. These ads are manually created by a business while choosing ad size and selecting how it’ll appear on channels within the Google Display Network. This ad creation style allows for greater control, but can also be more time consuming, particularly with having to create different-sized versions of each ad to meet specifications for particular placement channels.

Responsive display ads are more commonly used as the default ad type for display campaigns. These ads are created and optimized by Google once a business provides assets like logos, images, headlines, descriptions and videos. They automatically adjust in size, appearance and format to fit a particular space where they are placed within the Google Display Network. Google selects the optimal headline, text and images for each ad spot in order to position the ad for the best results.

Placements refer to the specific locations that your Google Display Ads will appear across the Google Display Network. Google Display Ads are visible on Google-owned properties like YouTube and Gmail, and can appear on news websites, blogs and forums, and mobile apps and games. They are designed to reach potential consumers who are browsing content that is relevant to your business.

Placements fall into two main categories, with the first being automatic placements. Automatic placements occur when Google uses machine learning to place your ads where they seem most likely to perform based on the targeting options and campaign goals that you have set. 

The other category is managed or manual placements, when you choose the specific websites, YouTube channels or apps where you want your ads to appear. While this strategy may ultimately limit exposure, it can help control traffic and reduce costs. Ultimately, both options can be effective for local service businesses when aligned with proper geographic targeting, audience interests and marketing objectives.

Benefits of Google Display Ads for Local Businesses

Paid digital advertising can be critical for local businesses that are doing all they can to spark name recognition and community trust, which should in turn increase their customer base. Google Ads campaigns offer several benefits to businesses, including flexible ad formats and creativity, being cost effective and the ability to geotarget.

More specifically, Google Display Ads give businesses the opportunity to be placed in front of potential clients who aren’t actively searching for their service during common or everyday activities like reading local news, watching YouTube videos or checking the weather. Even if a potential customer isn’t ready to make a purchase, the heightened awareness of your service can eventually help generate more leads and conversions.

A wide audience range is a significant benefit of Google Display Ads, but strategic placements remain crucial for targeting the right customers who will drive conversions. Choosing placements that align with websites or content that are relevant to your service creates brand awareness by familiarizing potential customers with your logo, name and services, and can help your business be top of mind for potential consumers when they need you. 

Increased brand awareness can also foster loyalty and trust that’s often needed to gain repeat customers. According to NerdWallet, 65% of a company’s business comes from existing customers, while 43% of consumers spend more with a brand that they are loyal to.

Meanwhile, Google Display Ads can also influence the way your brand is perceived. Ads with high-quality images, catchy headlines or strong calls to action (CTAs) can be more attractive and engaging for potential consumers when placed in the right spot. In addition, display ads are often more cost efficient compared to search ads, particularly when it comes to cost-per-click (CPC). According to wordstream.com, the average cost per click across all industries is $0.63 for Google Display Ads compared to $2.69 for Google Search Ads.

Some additional benefits of Google Display Ads include:

• Remarketing – Google Display Ads allow businesses to remarket by placing themselves in front of users who are already familiar with their brand or service and have interacted with them in the past. When potential customers click on your ad for the first time, they will likely leave your website without taking action, but retargeting can be an effective way to eventually turn them into buyers. A website visitor who’s been retargeted with a display ad is 70% more likely to convert, according to wordstream.com.

• Affinity audience targeting, in-market segmenting and custom intent audiences – Affinity audience targeting relates to how Google groups users based on general interest and search history, allowing you to find potential customers who relate to your service or niche. In-market segmenting goes deeper, as Google groups users who have shown intent toward utilizing a specific service. Custom intent audiences are users who are likely to be interested in specific keywords or website URLs.

• Audience exclusion – While businesses often want to reach as many prospects as possible, it is more cost effective to focus on targeting those who will realistically utilize your service. Excluding specific topics while setting up ad campaigns can provide a narrower focus while also keeping your brand away from potentially harmful, irrelevant or inappropriate content.

How to Set Up a Google Display Ads Campaign

Businesses should follow these steps when implementing a Google Display Ads campaign:

1. Create a new campaign 

• Connect your Google Business Profile and sign in to your Google Ads account

• Click “+ New Campaign” and choose a goal or objective from categories like sales, leads, website traffic, product and brand consideration, brand awareness and reach, app promotion, or local store visits and promotions 

• Select “Display” for the campaign type and choose a campaign subtype like standard – giving you greater control of your campaign settings – or smart – primarily automated by Google

2. Select campaign settings

• Choose a campaign name, location and language

• Set a schedule for when your ads will run and implement an ad rotation, helping showcase the ads that are expected to generate the most clicks or conversions

• Several additional settings are available to implement if desired, including device targeting, content exclusions and campaign start and end dates, among others

3. Set your budget and bidding strategy

• Decide on a daily budget influencing how often your ads are shown and how much your campaign is featured

• Google Ads uses an internal ad auction to determine which ads to submit, the order those ads will appear and how much they will cost, with your ads ranked among competitor ads based on campaign targets, budget and quality score

• Select a bidding strategy, including options such as target CPA and maximize conversions for smart bidding, maximize clicks and viewable CPM for automated bidding, and manual CPC for manual bidding

4. Define your targeting goals

• Select geographic locations such as your city or service area

• Use demographic filters to place an emphasis on your most ideal or likely customers

• Choose between automated targeting where Google decides on ad placements, or manual targeting where you choose your own ad placements

• Add things like audience segments or keywords to optimized targeting in order to find similar criteria to serve your ads on

5. Choose ad placements if using manual targeting

• Under the “Content” section, go to “Placements”

• Add specific websites, apps or YouTube channels relevant to your audience

• You can also search categories or topics related to your industry to find additional placement options

6. Create your ads

• Upload your business logo, images and write a compelling headline and descriptions

• For convenience and flexibility, businesses can use responsive display ads that allow Google to adjust the size and format depending on placement

• Preview how your ad will appear across all placements

• Review and publish your campaign

Best Practices for Placement Targeting

Several placement practices can help maximize your Google Display Ads campaign, including:

• Starting broad before refining – Google Display Network offers an abundance of options where your ad can appear, so beginning with automatic placements and analyzing where your ads work best to start out can prove beneficial. Over time, a business can target high-performing ad locations to best optimize its campaign.

• Use placement exclusions – This allows your business to block categories or specific URLs where your ads could appear that are either irrelevant to your service, or potentially not brand-safe.

• Geotarget precisely – Geotargeting is one of the greatest benefits that stems from digital ads, so it is important to do so precisely and analyze who you are best served to target and where. Adsterra notes that campaigns using location data see 50-70% higher engagement rates on average.

• Align content and context – Choosing placements that align with the type of content that your audience consumes is imperative. For example, contractors should target home improvement blogs, while pet groomers should target pet care forums.

• A/B testing – As with any marketing campaign, it’s important to explore multiple options and analyze what works best through trial and error. Businesses should try multiple ad variations to see which headlines, images and CTAs perform the best across different placements.

Do and Don’t Within Your Google Display Ads Campaign

Having a fully optimized Google Display Ads campaign requires time and experimentation to see what works. There are several steps businesses should take in order to strengthen their campaign, as well as some common pitfalls even experienced advertisers need to avoid.

Do:

• Include some specifics in your Display Ads – Google recommends adding things like prices, promotions or exclusives to an ad that can stand out to customers and help them more easily make a decision. Terms like special offers, coupons, discounts and promo codes will often catch the eyes of potential customers.

• Provide a relevant CTA and subsequent landing page – CTAs on Google Display Ads encourage potential customers to take action quickly. Listing “limited time offer” can draw customers to click on an ad, which should direct them to a subsequent landing page where that offer exists on your website.

• Create multiple ads per ad group – Google also recommends creating around three to four ads per ad group that explore different messaging and contain different images. This gives businesses options to see which ad performs best with customers, while Google can show better-performing ads within an ad group more often.

Don’t:

• Ignore mobile vs. desktop performance – Certain placements often tend to fit better on specific devices. This is something to monitor when analyzing ad results and adjust accordingly.

• Over rely on automatic placements – Allowing Google to automatically place your ads is convenient, but a campaign can often be more effective with manual placements. If you’re looking to save on your ad budget, turning to managed placements could prove beneficial.

• Run without conversion tracking – A primary goal of digital ad campaigns is to gain more customers from increased conversions. It’s important to set up conversion tracking right off the bat to ensure your campaign has the best opportunity to succeed.

• Choose the wrong creative format – Appealing and on-brand visuals that will attract the eyes of potential customers are crucial. Businesses should be sure to steer clear of text-heavy or poor-quality images that might hurt ad performance. Google recommends the use of high-quality images that bypass things like overlaid logos, text or buttons, while making sure your service is the main focus of the image. In addition, headlines should be clear and simple, while description text is easy to understand.

Measuring the Success of Your Google Display Ads Campaign

In order to fully optimize a Google Display Ads campaign, businesses must understand and analyze the performance of their placements. Through Google Ads reports and Google Analytics, businesses can track several metrics, including:

• Impressions – the amount of times your ad has been viewed by users

• Clicks – the number of times users click on your ad and are redirected to your website or another landing page

• Click-through rate (CTR) – the percentage of users who clicked, with low CTR potentially indicating poor targeting methods, an uninspiring ad look or that aspects of an ad placement need to be adjusted

• Conversions – specific actions like calls from ads, calls from your website, website form submissions and email clicks can potentially give you more insights on how an ad is performing in its specific placement

• CPC – measures the overall efficiency of your campaign by dividing total cost of your ad spend by number of generated conversions during a specific time period

A thorough campaign analysis often begins by looking at your audience. While a target audience should be defined prior to running a Google Display Ads campaign, adjustments will likely need to be made weeks or months into the campaign, whether that be expanding or narrowing your audience.

Meanwhile, businesses should also monitor the device that their target audience is most frequently using to come across their ads. Optimizing for the device that’s more frequently used between desktop and mobile can potentially help reduce advertising costs.

Finally, placements need to be monitored for success. After the campaign has been live for a good duration of time, businesses should be able to see what sites, apps or other channels are working best in relation to their ads. Placements within your Google Display Ads campaign can be analyzed by clicking “Placements” under the “Content” tab. From there, businesses can assess metrics on individual sites and apps, and adjust their strategy to exclude underperforming channels, while perhaps doubling down on successful platforms.

It is important to give your ad campaign time to deliver results. True patterns and trends may take weeks or even months to show up, with Google recommending allowing at least 14 days following the implementation of your bidding strategy for fully optimized performance.

A strong Google Display Ads campaign should become a complement to other digital marketing efforts of a business, including things like SEO, reputation management and social media marketing.

How Best Version Media Can Help With Your Google Display Ad Placements

Best Version Media can manage your Google Display Ads campaign while ensuring that your ad placement will help reach as many potential local consumers as possible. 

Through geotargeting and optimizing campaigns, BVM can help your local business increase visibility, connect with nearby customers and drive brand awareness and traffic across Google Business Network’s millions of websites and apps.

Connect with BVM today to explore the display ad campaign strategy that is the best for your business.