Display vs. Search Advertising: Which One Delivers Better ROI?

You might be a fresher or an advanced online advertiser but it is always difficult to choose whether you opt for display advertising or search advertising for your Google Ads campaign.

And you should take care of the fact that if you choose the wrong method, you may have a bad marketing experience and the campaign may turn unsuccessful in the long run. But you need not worry since there are factors that help you determine the best advertising campaign for your business.

1) Display advertising

You can notice display advertising almost everywhere on the web as they portray various types of products for branding and sale purposes. But have you ever tried to find out those bumps up on our social media feed?

That’s because display ads optimize their ad experiences based on user behavior and place those ads in front of the target audience.

Brand awareness

Initially, you need to comprehend the display advertising’s purpose before you start its proper implementation. Usually, it generates good value for your business as it showcases its ads mostly before niche customers.

For instance, if a customer browsing a vegetarian recipe website, he/she may see a health food store advertisement. Despite not knowing about the store he/she may become aware of such a store’s existence. Marketers usually gather this data by analyzing customer behaviors, geolocations, and previous search history.

Retargeting

Whenever you visit Amazon or Flipkart and exit them after viewing some products, you might have experienced that the products you have recently viewed, bumping up everywhere whether it’s a website or a normal gaming app in your smartphone, and that’s where you can retarget your potential audience for sales and conversion.

High Volume

Apart from showing your ads to the target audience, display ads are also shown to the general audience who may not be your target customers. Since display ads have high visibility and reaching power over the internet, they generate high traffic for your business.

2) Search advertising

Search advertising or PPC (pay per click) advertising is a significant advertising tool to reach your target audience in a low budget and easy way. Through search advertising, you can check the audience’s visibility with instant results. PPC advertisements are shown on SERPs after searching for a related or targeted keyword.

Qualified Leads

PPC campaigns are pretty effective in aggregating qualified leads, as they generate high traffic and conversions for your site. The reason behind this is the searching behavior of your target customers, who are shown the PPC ads based on their keywords or search terms. Search advertisements usually generate better click-through-rates compared to display ads because of genuine leads.

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Measurable data

Google ads is not only for setting up your advertising campaign but it also gives you complete freedom in tracking how your advertisement performs. The steps are pretty simple, just log in to your Google Ads account, and after selecting the campaign tab to choose keywords. That will give you the exact data on how well your customers are interacting with your search terms or keywords.

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Budget-Friendly

If you are planning a low-cost advertisement for generating traffic then a PPC ad is the value for your money. PPC as a term signifies that you will only be charged when someone clicks on them.

This explains, if you are selecting and bidding your keywords related to your product and services, the leads are most likely genuine and they may result in high conversion as well.

Determining factors

Now, as you have got an idea about the key differences between search and display advertising, take into account some of the following points before implementing either of the methods.

Search volume

Do you know what your target audiences are searching for? Are they really searching for the products you are marketing? This is where Google Ads help in understanding if keywords you are using are of high volume or not.

If you are finding your keywords highly competitive then a PPC campaign should be your ultimate choice.6

Awareness

Increasing the awareness of your brand is another key factor. Your first concern should be the present awareness level of your brand among the online masses. Display ads are the leader when you are focusing on improving awareness. On the other hand, a search campaign can also boost awareness if you can focus on brand-specific keywords.

Type of services or products

Particular ads may not bring you instant ROI depending on the types of products or services you are providing.

For instance, services like doctors, locksmith, and towing (also known as instant services) are all businesses that customers search for instant results. In that case, display advertisements won’t benefit you greatly as your customers are in urgent need.

That does not derail the need for display advertising as they turn dingy only at the time of your customer’s need.

Mobile First

Have you noticed that almost 60% of the total searches are made on mobile devices, and the search campaigns are more set in controlling mobile searches?

For instance, a customer may look for a service or products on their mobile devices, and they may not scroll to and fro, eventually ending up clicking on the first advertisement which will be a PPC ad. Hence, the advertisement has to be prioritized on mobile devices.

• 7 Factors that Make Mobile Marketing a Priority

Conclusion

When you are a newbie in PPC advertising, it’s unlikely an easy job to determine the best one. Parameters such as budget, search volume, and main goal are the things one needs to be careful of before selecting the final version.

Sometimes, you may have to run A/B testing by implementing both the advertisement to check and boost your ROI.

Which ad strategy has contributed to generating better ROI, search, or display? Do not forget to share your experience with us in the comment section below. Thank you and wish you all the best.