How Display Ads Can Improve Click-Throughs In The SERPs

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

Here’s a useful tip from Seth Godin, a marketing maven if there ever was one.

Being a familiar name takes you miles closer to closing a sale. People like to buy from companies they’ve heard of.

It turns out that this is an overlooked benefit of banner ads. Banner ads are fairly worthless in terms of generating clickthroughs… you have to trick too much and manipulate too much to get clicks worth much of anything. But, if you build ads with no intent of clicks, no hope for clicks… then you can focus on ads that drill your name or picture or phrase into my head. 100 impressions and you’re almost famous.

Why is this important? If display advertising doesn’t get that many clicks, then why spend money on it? Because it could help you get more clicks. Marketers call it Top of Mind Awareness.

By placing your banner ads in strategic locations to reach your target audience, you are branding yourself. Display ads may not be all that great for click-throughs, but they do wonders for brand marketing. And if you can get your brand in front of my eyes enough times, I’ll remember who you are. Then, when I am searching for what you offer and you pop up in the SERPs, guess who’s search result I’m going to click? All other things being equal, I’m going to click on the name brand I recognize. That’s how display advertising can increase your click-through rate on your SERP listings and impact your search engine marketing and optimization efforts.