Optimise your Display campaigns

Official guide to Display campaigns.

Illustration of a woman viewing an ad on a phone and a man viewing an ad on a laptop.

 

Best Practices logo

This guide offers display campaign best practices for connecting customers with relevant ads across the web and apps. Get tips for setting up your campaign with effective ads, reaching the right audiences and optimising for performance.

On this page 

 

Gear icon

Set your display campaigns up for success

  • Set up conversion tracking to ensure that you're accurately tracking website and app conversions. 
    • We recommend that you check your conversion tracking regularly. You can also test conversion tracking by generating conversions and checking to see if they registered across Google Ads, Google Analytics or your third-party platform.
  • Select a campaign goal based on your objectives.
  • Use Smart Bidding to automate and optimise your bids.
    • Dynamic bids tailored to each individual auction can lead to better results.

Tip

Display advertisers already using AI-powered features can now multiply results even further across channels with Performance Max. Advertisers who upgrade Google display campaigns to Performance Max see an average increase of over 20% in conversions at a similar or lower CPA.1 This performance holds even if they have existing Performance Max campaigns. Performance Max will help you reach valuable audiences more effectively across channels – including Display and beyond.

 

Conversion tracking icon

Reach the right audience at the right moment

  • Use optimised targeting to discover which customers are more likely to convert within your campaign goals. 
  • Optimised targeting is a privacy-safe tool that can help you reach your highest-value audience. By looking beyond manually-selected audience segments, optimised targeting finds relevant new users to help meet your campaign goals.
    • Add optional signals like audience segments or keywords when using optimised targeting.

    Tip

    To re-engage existing customers with optimised targeting, include audience segments built with your data, like previous site visitors or repeat buyers.

 

Star icon

Create high-performing ads

  • Upload and maximise your assets (images, logos, videos, etc.) into responsive display ads for automatically generated ad combinations.

    Tip

    Advertisers see 2x conversions, on average, when adding a responsive display ad to an ad group with a static display ad.2

    Case study

    Bloomberg Media logo

    By adopting responsive display ads, Bloomberg Media lowered their cost-per-action by 8% and cost-per-site-visit by 81%.

    Responsive display ads by Bloomberg Media

  • Use advanced format options including asset enhancements, auto-generated videos and native formats.
  • Include your full catalogue of products with relevant images, titles and prices.
  • Test and optimise your display ads frequently with fresh creative assets and images.

 

Bar chart

Measure the full value of Display

  • Consider all conversions while optimising your campaigns by including engaged-view conversions (EVCs) and view-through conversions (VTCs) when evaluating performance.
    • These conversion types tell you when users see, but don’t interact with your ad, and then later complete a conversion on your site. This can be particularly helpful for measuring the influence of display campaigns and can be viewed in the 'Conversions' column. 
  • Check the look-back windows used by the conversions, VTCs or EVCs you’re tracking. Depending on your business or product buying cycle, you might decide to adjust these settings from the default.
  • Enable GA4 auto-tagging to ensure that you get the most detailed Google Ads data.

View your campaigns to get started today.

 

1.  Google data, Global, Ads, February – May 2023. 
2. Google data, Global, All advertisers, Feb – Mar 2022.

 

Mail iconWant advanced Google Ads tips and updates sent right to your inbox? Sign up for the Best Practices newsletter.

Was this helpful?

How can we improve it?
Search
Clear search
Close search
Google apps
Main menu
86953158482911424
true
Search Help Centre
true
true
true
true
true
73067
false
false
false