Okay let’s face it,

the demand for display advertising is dying…

Remember the times when display advertisements used to be the thing and you couldn’t wait to start creating your own banner ads and start testing out their reach, conversions, and performance?

The times where you could reach thousands of potential clients over the internet promoting your product or service and driving in those sales?

Those were the sweet times indeed! 

Well, times have changed…and it’s time to take a moment to sit down and come to a reality check, with yourself …

Users find banner ads annoying, intrusive, and interruptive. 

Well, I cannot lie, at times I have felt the same way too, and some marketers even go to the extent of saying that their rate of return is next to nothing.

Well, banner ads definitely have their purposes in the world of advertising but times are changing and so is their effectiveness. 

It is important to know and distinguish when they work and when they do not work. 

Also, what are the other ad methods out there you should use to advertise instead of banner ads?

Here are a few reasons why I believe as advertisers we need to start finding modern alternatives over traditional advertising methods.

 ∙         Our eyes are accustomed to filtering out ads automatically over time.

 Our eyes have been trained to ignore ads automatically, consciously, or subconsciously, regardless of how relevant they might be.

 Also known as banner blindness, is a concept where visitors consciously or unconsciously ignore the banner ad on a website. Stats show that over 44% of money spent on ads that go unviewed from website visitors!  

 Almost as if it has made them immune to the powers of this type of ad.

 ∙         Click through rates are at a steep decline

Beginning as a clever way of ‘tricking’ internet users into clicking.

The average click-through rate on display ads in the United States has dropped to a mere 0.8%, even though they are capable of delivering data-driven insights to advertisers, over 50 % of these clicks happen to be accidental!

I know this can be a bit hard to take in as marketers but we too need to evolve as advertisers or risk being left behind. 

∙         New technologies introduced to combat ads 

Applications such as ad-blocking tools have seen a surge in popularity and are being used by people on their smartphones and browsers to prevent pages from displaying advertisements to them.

 

With the advancement of technology and people being more aware of the things happening around them, your target audience has become smart surfing the internet.

Your audience knows when they are being sold to… Nobody wants to be sold to! Unless of course what you’re offering is too good to be true…wink ;)

People are looking for real-life testimonials of products and services. 

Mainly keeping a close eye on reviews from users who have purchased the product or service previously before jumping head-on and making that purchase. 

Brands also know this and nowadays most brands focus on getting good feedback from their customers so that they can use that as a high-value social proof to push the customer to purchase their product or service.

So if you are still not using customer reviews in your marketing campaigns, you’re missing out on a whole lot my friend!

Does that mean it is the end for display ads? No 

So pretty simple right, get a few customer reviews and use that on your display marketing campaigns? 

Let’s look into that…

Adding reviews and ratings to your Google Ads might just be your ticket to ramp up your paid search performance

With the use of reviews and rating in your Google ads, it can help your business gain trust and credibility and stand out with your target audience. 

Just Think about it for a sec…

If you saw a display ad with a picture of a product or service along with the price tag and another display ad with a product or service with reviews and ratings from a customer along with a tempting offer, which is most likely going to catch your eye? 

You will most probably click on the latter one. 

That’s how powerful using reviews in ads can be.

It all comes down to the foundational trust that you’ve built with your target audience, they should feel as if you know and care about them as individuals.

Working with their permission on social channels to retarget, send personalized emails, and help you make that foundational shift that needs to happen if we are to be successful to keep our consumers’ faith and trust in our brand.

To wrap things up there’s no doubt there is a shift in consumer’s attention in the global advertising space 

Display, programmatic, and traditional ads are not performing like how they used to anymore.

Traditional digital ad spend seems to be moving to all-time lows. 

Will display ads become completely irrelevant… if we’re not there already?

So are your marketing campaigns geared for this new shift in the consumer’s attention?

What other methods of advertising do you use in your business to combat the declining rate of display advertising?

Leave a comment down below letting us know if you think display ads are worth running and how you are adapting to this new era of advertising.