Display ad pain points are something you can’t just put aside to deal with later. You must address them before they further weaken your B2B advertising strategies. 

Display ads have been taking the advertising domain by storm since the 1990s. Google Ads click-through rates (CTR) across all industries hover around 3.52%; industries like Arts & Entertainment have high CTRs like 9%, hinting at personalization features and OTT platforms as great examples of growth drivers.

Fierce competition and digital Darwinism trigger faster adtech evolution, but confusion and pain points related to driving clicks to conversions crop up. You’ve got to overcome these pain points to reach your next customers and close more deals as you go along.

How to Dodge Five Display Ad Pain Points

Let’s get on with some obvious pain points, and how you can dodge the bullets affecting your business.

1. Pain Point: Your paid  search ad isn’t ranking well. It’s sometimes challenging to reach profitable keywords and get the spotlight you want for your display ads.

Solution: Raise your bids, as it’s one of the fastest and effective ways to rank well on Google. It can be a bit of a pocket pinch. You can improve quality score, landing page user experience, and work on making your ad content more relevant to the demand generation.

2. Pain Point: Your ad CTR is tanking. Is your display ad creative, relevant and eye-catching? Are you targeting the right set of audiences?

Solution: Double-check the network for spam networks, as it might bring down your traffic quality. Use actionable intent data insights to target the right audience segments, find accurate keywords, use extensions for clickable paid ads, use bright colors and motion for your ads.

3. Pain Point: Your display ads don’t align with website theme and context. The display ad content is way different than landing page design, thus confusing users.

Solution: Follow the “congruence rule.” For example, if your display ad banner is about SEO building, and the landing page is about website audit, it doesn’t make any sense to a reader expecting SEO. Your ad must give a hint to the users about what they are going to see once they reach the landing page and you have to deliver on that promise.

4. Pain Point: Your ad content is off, and not completting enough to drive users’ attention. Miscommunication and misinformation are fatal for your business.

Solution: To make display ad strategies from fatal to fabulous, use the right ad content type. Display ad content can be videos, images or audio files. Choose the appropriate type based on your market. For B2B content marketing, opt for a video format of storytelling, or minimalistic ,but on-point image ads. For example, in this display ad by Apple, there are just four words, an image of what users can get, and eye-catching color all at the same time.

5. Pain Point: Your ad is solely company-specific. Not knowing or not talking about users’ pain points does not serve the purpose.

Solution: The whole idea of content marketing revolves around solving customers’ problems and storytelling. The audience might not find the ad content relevant if you address only the products or the service. Make a creative cocktail of both brand and user interest to drive higher CTR.

Display Ads Done Right

Make sure you consider these tips while designing your “perfect”, highly functioning display ad content.

• Don’t stick to one type of content. Play around with images, audio and video files, keeping them relevant to your business and personalized to a buyer problem.  
• Add humor, but don’t overdo it. Evaluate how much is too much. To make your ad stand out, make it witty, not farcical.
• Use the company logo in your ad content to strengthen brand awareness. Users tend to identify ads by the company logo.
• Communicate a sense of urgency, to drive your target audience to click and take fast action. Use words like “today”, “now” or “ends soon” to push people to click.
• Decide the size and positioning of ad content. Make sure the ad is accessible from all kinds of devices like phones, laptops, desktops and tablets.

If you ever think that a display ad isn’t right for your business, you might want to give it a shot. Display ads drive website traffic, no matter what size your business is. Display ads work like a poster, which is visually appealing to digital users across multiple platforms. 

Keep 4 C’s in mind while designing display ads: consistent, comprehensive, company and customers. You can learn more about personalization and content marketing from these articles:

• Be Done With These 5 Content Marketing Myths
• Quick Tour of 8 Targeting Tactics for Programmatic Display
• 3 Risks of Over-Personalization in B2B Lead Generation