Most brands’ first advertising step is to try their luck with Google search ads.

And this is with good reason, Google processes more than 40,000 search queries every second, enticing advertisers and brands with increased visibility, high-intent traffic, and targeted reach.

Though Google ads campaigns are effective and popular, you must also ask yourself how much Google ads truly cost.

Let’s take a look at the real cost of online advertising with Google and how to get the most out of your advertising dollars.

What is the cost of Google search ads?

Advertisers who are accustomed to running Google ads (previously called Google Adwords) have noticed a change year over year: paid search advertising conversion rates have decreased while the cost of generating leads through search ads continues to increase.

This means the value of your ad campaign has gone down. You’re paying more for every lead that clicks on your Google ads, but conversion rates are decreasing.

Not really what you want to hear, right?

Google, which remains the largest paid search platform attributes this YoY increase in lead price to more competition and intensified monetization of Google SERPs.

Google ads pricing can cost upwards of $10,000 per month, with most advertisers paying $0.11-$0.50 per click on average for display ads or even more than $2.00 for search ads.

Advertisers must consider not only the actual cost of the ad but also what else can affect their ad budget.

Numerous factors can influence the cost of Google ads, including competitors, services, products, and industry. Understanding these and discovering ways to optimize your ad budget is important.

What factors determine your Google search ad cost?

A Google search ad does not come with one fixed cost anytime you want to begin an ad campaign. Numerous factors related to your Google ads determine what advertisers will pay at any given time, such as:

• Industry: The industry you’re in plays a major role in Google ads pricing. Highly competitive industries like legal, insurance, and finance tend to have much higher average costs per click (CPC) of $6-20 or more. Less competitive industries, like retail and travel, have lower average CPCs, around $1-2. The reason for this variance is that advertisers in competitive industries are competing for the same audience and have to spend more to get their attention and secure a conversion.
• Customer lifetime value: A higher CPC may be justified if acquiring a customer is worth a lot to your business. High customer lifetime values likely indicate that your ad budget will be able to cover a high CPC (like $50 or more). If you’re an advertiser who provides a high-value service, then you may fall into this scenario.
• Targeting and optimization: Carefully targeting your Google ads to the right audience and optimizing your campaigns is crucial to getting a high return on ad spend (ROAS). Poorly targeted or managed campaigns will drain your advertising budget pretty quickly.
• Average CPC: Google determines your average CPC even though you have set maximum bid limits. You will not always pay the maximum bid you set. High-quality ads that receive a high-quality score (based on ad content, relevant landing page, and overall landing page experience) typically have a lower average CPC than Google ads with a lower-quality score.
• Budget: Small businesses may spend $1,000-10,000/month on Google paid search campaigns, while large brands can spend millions running Google ads. It’s important to set an advertising budget that makes sense with your company’s goals but still allows you to bid on highly competitive keywords that you know your users search for. Your PPC campaigns should produce desirable search results while keeping your daily average budget in check, which you can track by maintaining a consistent budget report.

How to optimize your Google search ads to ensure your advertising dollars aren’t wasted

To maximize the cost of Google ads, you will want to take steps to properly set up your ad campaigns for success. We recommend taking the following steps every time you begin a campaign:

Add negative keywords

Negative keywords are an important aspect of your keyword strategy. Adding negative keywords prevents your Google ads from showing up in irrelevant searches. In other words, negative keywords are search terms for which you don’t want your ads to appear in search results.

Including negative keywords can save you money because it makes your campaign more targeted and attracts the highest-value users who are likely to convert since they are finding exactly what they are looking for.

If you own a flower shop, you may use phrases like “local flower store” in your campaign. However, if you do not offer arrangements for weddings and special occasions, you probably do not want to show up when people search for “wedding flower arrangements”, so you would add “-wedding flower arrangements” as a negative keyword in your keyword strategy.

Focus on long-tail keywords

To ensure you’re attracting the most qualified leads and reducing competition, target specific, longer search terms. Pinpointing what your leads need when they need it with multi-word phrases will increase your conversion rate and will keep your spending on Google ads on track.

Our flower shop in the example above would probably want to include long-tail keywords like “local flower shop near me”, “floral delivery near me”, “same day flower arrangements”, “Mother’s Day flowers near me”, “pink roses near me” and so on.

Don’t track vanity metrics

Avoid focusing on metrics that don’t directly impact your business goals. Be extra considerate of this if you provide regular reporting to executive-level stakeholders. If it does not matter to your bottom line, it probably is not worth tracking.

You’ll be much more efficient and successful if the metrics you track help you make informed, data-driven decisions that optimize your campaigns.

Vanity metrics can be measured and may be of interest to you, but ultimately have no significant effect on ROI or ROAS. Examples of vanity metrics include:

Focusing on actionable metrics like conversion rate, engagement rate, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, and churn rate is more helpful.

Optimize campaigns regularly

With online advertising, it’s important to continuously monitor and adjust your campaigns by analyzing data, refining keywords, and improving ad copy to maintain optimal performance. Enlist the help of a Google keyword planner, a PPC agency, a Google display network, or other resources that will help you reach your goals.

You’ll also want to consider that a Google ads auction will regularly occur and will influence your chances of a favorable ad placement. When a Google ad is eligible to appear for a search, it will go through an ad auction that will determine if it will receive the highest ad rank. The ad auction process is repeated for every Google search, so it’s normal that ad placement will fluctuate over the course of your campaign.

Automated bidding can help you win a higher position, especially if you’re using highly relevant keywords and ad content.

Utilize Google Analytics

Online advertising platforms typically give access to analytics tools that help you track your campaigns. Use a tool like Google Analytics to gain insights into user behavior, track your actionable metrics, and refine your targeting strategies for better results.

With Google Analytics, you can track your Google ads costs, and your ad spend, know what your ad rank is, and so much more.

Target specific audiences

Audiences are a powerful way to get the most out of Google ads campaigns. Using your audience as your primary focus, you’ll go after a type of person versus a type of search query.

Google separates audience targeting into four categories:

• Google’s segments: includes demographics, affinity segments, in-market segments, and life events
• Your data segments: includes website remarketing, app remarketing, social media remarketing, and similar audiences
• Custom segments: includes search term-based insights, types of websites people browse, types of apps people use
• Other options include combined segments and optimized targeting

With deeper audience targeting, you’re more likely to hit your conversion goals.

Improve Quality Score

Google’s Quality Score is a tool meant to give advertisers a sense of how well their ad quality compares to competitors’ Google ads. It uses a scale of 1 to 10 and tells you how relevant your ad and landing page are to someone searching for your keyword compared with advertisers.

For flower shops competing for the search term “Mother’s Day flowers near me”, a Quality Score would indicate what your user’s experience is like when searching for that term.
A Quality Score is calculated by weighing the expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience.

Quality Score can be used as a general indicator of ads, keywords, or landing page elements that need to be improved.

Improve landing page experience

Advertisers may think that getting their ad right is the priority. However, it is crucial to create personalized, dedicated landing pages for each of your search ads so that you can increase your chances of conversion.

Google ads that have dedicated, message-matched landing pages increase the likelihood of turning ad clicks into conversions because they’re focused on specifically what your ad offers. On the other hand, ads that direct users to a product page or a homepage can confuse users and discourage them from taking a desired action.

A user who clicks on an ad from Forrester about a new research report that is available is taken to a landing page where they can preview the report and download it on the spot.
Had they been taken to Forrester’s homepage, they would have had to search for that specific report and risk downloading the wrong one or abandoning the site altogether before finding what they wanted.

Use the AdMap™ feature to keep your Google Ads costs down

We’ve learned that there are many factors that influence how much enterprises and small businesses spend on Google ads, and can agree that optimizing ad campaigns is a smart way to keep Google ads pricing down.

Instapage is a powerful landing page builder designed to drive conversions. It helps advertisers create dedicated landing pages for each of their Google ads. Beyond its ease and intuitiveness, Instapage offers a wide range of features to help advertisers visualize and optimize their campaigns.

AdMap™ provides a visual layout of the pre- and post-click stages of ad campaigns. With AdMap™, it’s easy to identify which ads and audiences are missing relevant landing pages and quickly solve the problem with personalized pages that are optimized for conversions.

You can see your campaigns, ad groups, and ads, create new pages, edit and update connected pages, and serve the best experience to the right audience at the right time.

Plus, Instapage’s AI content generator helps you scale your landing pages with AI-made headlines, paragraphs, and CTAs. You can automatically create variations for your pages so you can A/B test various elements to understand what resonates most with your audience.

And, you can create personalized experiences for different segments of your audience, offering highly-tailored content that speaks to the needs of your leads.

Get the most out of your Google ads budget by integrating with Instapage. Try before you buy with a 14-day free trial.

START 14-DAY TRIAL

Try the world's most advanced landing page platform with a risk-free trial.

One of the primary goals of all marketers is to get their brand noticed. Brand recognition increases traffic and converts customers.

And one of the most effective ways to do that is with PPC ads.

PPC ads, or pay-per-click ads, are a marketing strategy in which advertisers pay every single time a user clicks on one of their ads. Common forms of PPC ads include Google Ads, Meta Ads, and Bing Ads. The goal of the ads is to appear higher up on a search engine results page when a user types in a keyword.

PPC advertising is popular and effective because results tend to be quick, and marketers tend to see a high return on ad spend (ROAS). Its popularity can be seen in numbers – global ad spend was projected to be north of 600 billion dollars in 2023.

However, running successful campaigns requires proper PPC management, including optimizing keyword research, adjusting budgets, and performing competitive analysis.

Here, we will explore optimal PPC management techniques and specific aspects you should oversee throughout the life of your PPC campaigns.

What is PPC management?

Pay-Per-Click or PPC management refers to the strategies you use to oversee and optimize your PPC ad campaigns and includes supervising and managing the following aspects:

• Keyword analysis
• Audience research
• Ad targeting
• Ad creation
• Budget optimization and monitoring
• Landing page optimization
• Performance reporting
• Ongoing campaign optimization and testing

PPC management can be done by an expert dedicated to that role, via PPC management software, or even by hiring a digital marketing agency (or PPC management company) to manage your campaigns and other aspects of your marketing strategies. We’ll discuss this further later on in the article.

Why PPC management is important

Effective PPC management uses keyword analysis and channel strategy development and helps you gain the following advantages:

Improved ROAS and efficiency of PPC campaigns

Careful scrutiny of PPC campaigns allows you to make adjustments to optimize your campaign, effectively allowing you to improve your return on ad spend (ROAS) and to run more efficient campaigns.

The ability to gain complete control over PPC budgets and timing

PPC ads function by requiring advertisers to pay every time a user clicks their ad, right? Knowing that, it makes sense that advertisers would want to be especially conscious of their budgets and their keyword bidding strategies. The most effective way to do that is through PPC management.

Reaching highly targeted audiences and building remarketing audiences throughout the sales funnel

PPC campaigns typically help you reach the ideal audience; by properly managing campaigns, you can gain the insights needed to not only reach your target wherever they are browsing but also use remarketing strategies to meet your audience anywhere they are along their customer journey.

Faster results compared to traditional advertising tactics

Traditional advertising works, but it can take time to see favorable results, and it is challenging to get granular insights. With PPC ads, marketers can begin seeing results as quickly as the next day, with deep insights available after just a few months. Best results rely on PPC campaign management, including overseeing campaigns to see what’s working and what isn’t and adjusting budgets to favor the best ads.

Complementing SEO efforts with PPC campaign data helps you with keyword strategies and drives traffic to your SEO-optimized pages

Most marketers know that there isn’t one silver bullet that gets you all the incredible results you seek in one shot; usually it takes a combination of strategies to bring winning results to your campaigns. Using PPC campaigns in tandem with SEO efforts helps boost relevant keywords, optimize search engine results, and drive targeted traffic to SEO-optimized landing pages.

Extensive tracking and attribution capabilities allow you to accurately measure the impact of PPC campaigns

A PPC management strategy is incomplete without PPC reporting tools which give advertisers deep insights into the results of their campaigns; often, using a tool like Google Analytics helps you analyze the impact of your ad spend and make iterations where necessary, which leads to optimal results.

Opportunities for experimentation and optimization through A/B testing of ad variations

Fine-tuning any marketing strategy is a must, as advertisers learn plenty after publishing a campaign. You can test messaging, copy, ad placement, the efficacy of Bing ads versus Google ads, budget, and ad timing.

A/B testing various elements of your campaign can help you figure out which version works best so you can focus on that ad. Working with a PPC tool that allows for A/B testing and experimentation will drive far better results than just relying on intuition.

How to effectively manage your PPC account

PPC management takes expert skills and the ability to interpret and analyze many pieces of data.

As part of your PPC strategy, here are specific steps you should take to monitor and manage your own PPC campaigns to fully enjoy the advantages listed above.

Keyword analysis

Before you launch your PPC campaign, it’s important to conduct keyword research to ensure you’re bidding on the most relevant keywords (and you must continue to do so after you’ve launched your campaign). Pay-per-click ads can get pricey if you spend too much on unnecessary keywords, so you must examine your data and know which keywords and search terms are most applicable to your target audience.

Part of your keyword analysis will include assessing which negative keywords to include in your ad spend. Negative keywords are search terms and phrases for which you don’t want your ads to show up, and including them in your campaign can save money.

For example, if you are a bakery, you probably use a phrase like “cupcake shop” in your campaign. However, if you do not offer gluten-free items, you likely do not want to show up when people search “gluten-free cupcake shop”, so in your campaign, you would add “-gluten-free cupcake shop” as a negative keyword.

Keyword optimization tools and PPC management software like Google Ads, Semrush, and PPC Entourage can help you.

Audience research

Before spending money on ad campaigns, you want to know who you’re going after. Conducting audience research will help you understand the key demographics of your potential customers and will help you maximize your marketing efforts.

Audience research involves knowing information like age range, gender, and location, as well as behavior across sites. What websites are your target users visiting, and what are they interacting with on social media? By observing these behaviors, you will learn what your potential customers find valuable, what their preferences and interests are, and what they are most likely to engage with.

Google Analytics, Google Adwords Audience Insights, and social media tools like Meta’s Audience Insights can help you gather this information.

Ad targeting

Ad targeting is what happens as a result of conducting audience research. This is how advertisers focus on reaching their desired audience, which is based on demographics, psychographics, consumer behavior, and browsing insights.

When ad targeting, careful considerations should be made, such as:

• Delivering content consumers will care about
• Making your ads creative and appealing
• Avoiding bombarding your target audience with the same ad everywhere they go
• Using the right ad on the right platform (i.e., Meta versus Microsoft ads)
• Creating custom ads based on personalized customer data
• A/B testing different ad variations to see what is most captivating
• Tracking metrics to ensure you’re targeting correctly

We like this targeted ad from Slack because it is totally relatable for anyone who has ever had a job. At some point, most workers have felt that meetings are a time suck, a feeling that was exacerbated by the pandemic.

Slack is going after people who have felt that way by offering up a seemingly appealing and fun way to communicate that will result in less meetings. It is eye-catching, audience-appropriate , and delivers a value proposition in its message.

Ad creation

Once proper keyword analysis has been done, audience research has been conducted, and ad targeting is in place, the creative work begins. Putting the actual PPC ads together requires testing out various iterations of copy, design, CTAs, and ad placement.

By paying specific attention to the CTA versions used, advertisers can figure out which call-to-action gets the most clicks and use that data to optimize and get the most out of their monthly ad spend.

Sometimes, the difference between “Learn More ” and “Shop Now” is a higher ROAS.

Quip’s Meta ad uses the “Shop Now” CTA while the ad copy urges them to upgrade their brushing game.

Budget optimization and monitoring

When a PPC campaign has been turned on, constant monitoring is required to ensure you’re getting the most bang for your buck. Advertisers want to make sure each keyword they are bidding on falls within their company’s PPC ad spend budget. Their budget optimization strategy may also involve competitive analysis to understand other companies’ terms and phrases and bid on those critical keywords before someone else can get to them.

A tool like Adpulse can help marketers managing multiple campaigns see how much of their budget is allocated toward each campaign and can deliver insights and recommendations to optimize those campaigns.

Landing page optimization

Ideally, PPC ads will lead users to dedicated landing pages that match the messaging and the aesthetic of the ad they just clicked. Driving to a landing page versus a website page provides more value to audiences and helps increase conversions.

In addition to helping deliver more conversions, landing pages help marketing managers understand their customers better and track their journey after clicking on an ad.

That being said, landing page optimization is a must. If ads are adjusted due to A/B testing, budget optimization, or keyword analysis, then changes to a landing page must be made accordingly.

Quip’s landing page clearly demonstrates the product’s benefits and credibility (via reviews on Time, GQ, etc.), and it includes a CTA to purchase the product. The minimalistic approach is direct, not overwhelming, and easy to navigate.

Performance reporting

You’ll want to decide on a reporting cadence with stakeholders interested in your ad campaigns’ results. This may be weekly, monthly, or quarterly. Performance reporting is an important part of PPC management because it gives insight into what is working, helps align short-term and long-term goals with the company’s overall mission, and helps you attribute revenue and sales to specific ads and tactics.

Popular metrics to analyze in performance reporting include impressions, cost-per-click, click-through rate, conversion rate, and quality score. There are many PPC performance measurement tools on the market, including Google Analytics, Google Adwords, Spyfu, Adalysis, and Adespresso.

Ongoing campaign optimization and testing

A PPC campaign can have a long shelf life if it performs well and delivers the desired results. As long as you’re keeping your campaign running, you must continue to optimize and test to keep your ad relevant and to maximize efforts.

As part of your optimization efforts, you’ll want to set long-term goals, continue to monitor ad spend, plan long-term campaigns based on high-quality ads, create more landing pages, and continue keyword optimization strategies.

A/B tests can be valuable at any point in your ad campaign’s lifecycle, especially as consumer needs change.

PPC management – in house or with an agency?

PPC management requires focus, expertise, time, and dedication. Marketers may use an in-house advertising team to handle PPC management or they’ll hire a PPC management agency to get the job done.

A PPC management company is usually a digital marketing agency that specializes in PPC campaign management. They can offer guidance on SEO and search engine tactics, relevant keywords, budget allocation, long-term strategy, and so on. Based on data analysis, especially regarding metrics like cost-per-click and cost-per-acquisition, a PPC management agency can make financially sound recommendations that can save money in the long run.

It is wholly possible to manage PPC campaigns on your own or with an in-house advertising team as long as you’re prepared for plenty of trial and error and potential financial mistakes along the way. PPC management tools will help you be more effective, so invest in the right tech stack before you launch any digital ad campaign.

Budget can be a factor when deciding whether to use a PPC management company or handle it on your own, so be sure to clearly understand your budget allocation before getting started.

Using PPC Management Software like Instapage AdMap™

Instapage is a powerful landing page builder that helps marketers secure more conversions. But it doesn’t just stop at landing pages. Instapage AdMap™ helps PPC marketers to contextually visualize their advertising funnel and create personalized, optimized post-click landing pages that resonate with audiences.

With AdMap, advertisers can align their page experiences and ads with an easy-to-use point-and-click interface. Advertisers use AdMap to:

• Import account details from your ad platform and generate a Postclick Score to evaluate ad-to-page relevancy
• Visualize campaigns, ad groups, and ads within Instapage to figure out where personalized pages may be useful
• Create new pages using the AdMap flow and seamlessly connect each ad in a campaign to a relevant post-click landing page
• Make quick edits and updates to post-click pages that match changes made to ads
• Automatically sync ad mapping updates between the ad network and Instapage
• Deliver a custom experience in real-time to the right audience for each ad in a campaign

No other platform offers this technology, which makes Instapage a popular choice for marketers who want to create a seamless user experience between landing pages and ad campaigns. Plus, advertisers who use AdMap tend to see a higher advertising ROAS than those who don’t. Try it for yourself for free for 14 days.

START 14-DAY TRIAL

Try the world's most advanced landing page platform with a risk-free trial.

Marketing teams spend a great deal of time coming up with strategic approaches to increase engagement and campaign conversion rates. Strategies include digital marketing, omnichannel marketing, direct marketing, social media marketing, integrated marketing, and more.

In this article, we will delve into integrated marketing – what it is, why it is important to marketing teams, and how to implement an integrated marketing strategy for your campaigns.

What is integrated marketing?

Integrated marketing is a strategy that aligns all marketing channels to deliver a consistent message across all customer touchpoints. It aims to provide a seamless experience and avoid mixed messaging or a disjointed brand voice. Rather, integrated marketing campaigns have the same tone and same direction across all channels.

This marketing approach ensures that every aspect of your campaigns, including digital ads, print ads, PR tactics, blog posts, social media posts, and even TV commercials all share consistent messaging.

In 2017, the New York Times launched a campaign centered around one message: “The Truth is Hard”. Their integrated marketing strategy used multiple channels (a combination of billboards, video ads, social media posts, and print ads) but conveyed the same message—they are an organization based on integrity and that it takes a lot of work to deliver the truth.

The strategy resulted in the publication increasing their subscriber base and improving the public’s perception of them as a credible news source.

Why is an integrated marketing strategy important?

According to a recent report, 62% of business buyers feel like they are getting mixed messages from companies. Marketing leaders combat that by using customer data to personalize, optimize, and differentiate their marketing campaigns, ultimately communicating unified messages that seem to speak for their company as a whole. They do this by choosing an integrated marketing approach.

Integrated marketing works and multiple factors tell us why:

1. Brand recognition and trust: By delivering a consistent message across various platforms, you can increase brand recognition and trust with your target audience
2. Reaching more audiences: Using multiple channels, such as advertising, public relations, direct marketing, and social media, broadens your reach, helps you pull in new customers, and ensures you’re hitting your target demographic
3. Better results: As the approach ensures all marketing efforts are aligned, and various channels are working towards the same goals, you’re likely to increase customer interactions, deliver a better customer experience, and overall enjoy better campaign success
4. Cost-effective: Integrated marketing campaigns tend to be more cost-effective than traditional marketing methods, as they eliminate the need for separate campaigns on different channels; your entire campaign can use similar creative assets on all your channels
5. More collaboration: The method encourages collaboration and teamwork between different departments and brings channel managers together to meet marketing needs
6. Diversity: You can reach different demographics through various channels, ensuring that a diverse audience hears your message and feels connected to your brand

Difference between integrated marketing and integrated marketing communication

Let’s take a look at the subtle differences between integrated marketing as a whole and the more granular communications aspect of integrated marketing.

Key elements of integrated marketing campaigns

As you develop your integrated marketing strategy, you will consider various channels that will serve as your communication tools for your entire campaign.

There are six key elements in most multi-channel approaches, but please keep in mind that this list is not exhaustive, and there may be other channels you can opt to use.

1. Advertising
2. Sales Promotion
3. Personal Selling
4. Direct Marketing
5. Public Relations
6. Consistency and Complementary Use of Media

You’ll want to use a mix of channels in order to reach the widest possible audience and to identify your most effective channels. If one channel is not delivering the results you’d like, you can add new elements to the mix, A/B test your current elements or remove the element altogether.

Integrated marketing strategies and best practices

The best integrated marketing campaigns start with intention and are constantly analyzed to ensure they’re providing a positive customer experience and are delivering desired results.

Marketing teams who aim for successful integrated marketing campaigns should consider the following best practices:

1. Define goals: Determine the goals of your campaign to help focus on what you want to achieve. It’s always best to set benchmarks for your integrated marketing campaigns to help understand what success will look like for you and how well or how poorly you are meeting your goals.
2. Choose your marketing channels: Select the most effective channels for your product or service to reach your target audience and make sure your marketing messages are aligned across the different channels.
3. Craft buyer personas: Understand your target demographic’s needs and preferences to tailor your message accordingly; correctly addressing the needs of your buyer personas can go a long way in a customer’s brand loyalty and increased engagement.
4. Create a compelling Idea: Create a memorable and engaging idea that ties back to your brand values—you’re more likely to be remembered when you are authentic, loyal to your brand ethos, and focused on integrated campaigns that communicate an aligned message.
5. Align your marketing materials: Ensure all marketing activities are consistent with your brand’s message and values. Your content elements should have the same direction—use the same tone, and use similar ads across all channels to make sure your brand’s message remains consistent.
6. Use content personalized for each channel: Tailor your content to the strengths of each marketing channel to maximize impact. For example, a TV ad should focus more on visual images, whereas a print ad should emphasize copy— a billboard should quickly capture someone’s attention with bold design and copy, whereas a landing page should be optimized for SEO and conversions. There will be overlap between your channels, but be mindful about what goes where.
7. Monitor KPIs: Establish metrics to track the success of your campaign and make data-driven decisions. Key performance indicators such as traffic, engagement, top content, lead generation, and sales can provide important insights that help you make decisions that will ultimately impact your bottom line.
8. Iterate and improve: Continuously monitor and adjust your campaigns based on performance data to optimize results. This gives you an opportunity to better understand your customer’s journey and how you can best meet their needs.
9. Collaborate internally: Break down silos between teams to ensure a unified approach to marketing—meet with channel managers, align on a strategy and a main marketing message, collaborate on creative assets, and time the activation of your assets appropriately. Integrated marketing campaigns require input from all stakeholders to work.

7 successful integrated marketing campaign examples

1. Think Small by Volkswagen

Towards the end of the 1950s Volkswagen was struggling to sell its Beetle model. In the US, the trend was leaning towards sleek, stylish cars, which the Beetle was not.

VW’s ad agency DDB crafted a simple ad campaign that positioned the VW Beetle as a small, dependable car and a bold, smart choice for American consumers.

The message was simple, and it worked.

After a successful run in print ads and newspapers, they adapted the campaign for TV ads, billboards, and radio commercials, turning it into a highly successful integrated marketing campaign.

2. Microsoft and Carlsberg campaign

Few things surprise and delight users more than an unexpected pairing. The connection between Microsoft and Carlsberg, a massive beer brand, is not obvious. However, they pulled off a successful integrated marketing campaign in 2017.

Microsoft teamed up with Carlsberg to promote its AI capabilities by showing how the technology was being used to brew new beer flavors. The normally lengthy process that requires humans to physically taste samples was taken on by Microsoft’s AI technology, which was able to detect new flavors almost instantly and brew new beer.

The integrated marketing campaign included ads that were run on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and in print publications like the Financial Times.

3. Waze’s “On the Road” campaign

Waze partnered with the New York Times to create an interactive campaign that was based on real data from the app.

The campaign was centered around the fact that in 2017, Americans had driven 1.3% more than they had in 2016, and it wanted to uncover where they were driving and why.

Along with the New York Times, an interactive page was created where users could answer quiz-like questions and uncover interesting data points.

The graphics were catchy, and the content was informative, interesting, and easily shareable across multiple channels.

4. Chicago’s Field Museum campaign

In 2018, the Chicago Field Museum wanted to create a holistic marketing campaign to promote their new exhibit focused on mummies.

They used a mix of traditional advertising, like billboards with social media posts and videos showing patrons interacting with the exhibits.

The campaign was successful in generating interest and bringing people to the museum to check out the exhibits.

5. O2’s “Be more dog” campaign

O2 is a mobile network in the UK that was experiencing some tough competition from rival networks like EE, who had secured a big name like Kevin Bacon to appear in their ads.

To gain market share and captivate new and current customers, they knew they needed a successful integrated marketing campaign.

They creatively used humor as the basis for their campaign, and it paid off in a big way.

They launched a campaign featuring a cat – known for being a moody, low-energy creature—deciding to live life more like a dog (more enthusiastically). By embracing a dog’s life, the message is that people who embrace technology can get more out of life, too.

Ads were shown on YouTube, in TV spots, and in outdoor and digital apps.

It was a unique campaign, and it worked.

6. Budweiser Superbowl campaign

It was the year 2000, and people everywhere could be heard saying “Whassup” to anyone who would listen. Raise your hand if you know what we’re talking about.

The phrase was a result of a smashingly successful integrated marketing campaign by Budweiser, originally airing at the Superbowl that year. It showed friends calling each other and greeting each other by saying “Whassup” over and over again while enjoying a Budweiser.

It was so catchy and so well-received that it quickly made its way into pop culture and stayed there for quite some time, attracting hordes of people to Budweiser’s website to learn how they could say “Whassup” in more than 30 languages.

7. Wells Fargo’s “Re-Established” campaign

In 2017 through 2019, Wells Fargo, the third largest bank in the world, was hit with fraud claims and was looking to rebrand itself as a way to win back confidence with its loyal customers as well as new customers.

They decided to use an integrated marketing strategy to help sway the perception of its audience.

Their strategic approach was to show how their innovative technology and personalized experiences differentiated them from other competitors.

Using video, traditional advertising, and social posts, they highlighted their financial services and their strengths and ultimately regained the trust of their target audience.

Landing pages optimized for integrated marketing campaign strategies

Landing pages are an important component of well-rounded integrated marketing campaigns. With an intuitive drag and drop builder, near instant page loads, reusable blocks, and hundreds of ready-made templates, Instapage makes building landing pages a fantastic experience.

Learn how Instapage can help you create beautiful, conversion-optimized landing pages in minutes. Start your 14-day trial.

START 14-DAY TRIAL

Try the world's most advanced landing page platform with a risk-free trial.

Have you ever abandoned purchasing a product online because it’s a next-paycheck purchase? Only to later discover that the product is stalking you everywhere you go—you see an ad for it on Facebook, Instagram, and news websites. That’s direct response marketing in action, and here’s what it is.

What is direct response marketing?

Direct response advertising is a marketing strategy that aims to prompt immediate action from audiences, such as making a purchase, signing up for a free trial, or making a reservation.

This type of marketing is measurable, accountable, and highly targeted. It taps into what Nobel Prize laureate Daniel Kahneman called System 1 thinking—the fast, intuitive, and emotional part of our brain. Direct response ads trigger quick, spontaneous reactions to get consumers to act impulsively before their more analytical System 2 thinking can take over.

Direct response marketing vs. brand marketing

While direct marketing aims to elicit a specific immediate action that can be measured, brand marketing helps brands make long-term image and emotional connections with their audience. These two strategies work hand in hand: the trust and recognition built through brand marketing ads enhance the effectiveness of direct response ads, and insights drawn from direct response activities can fine-tune overall brand strategies.

Direct response marketing strategy must-haves

Crafting a direct response strategy that resonates with potential customers isn’t a simple, cookie-cutter process. It demands a blend of tried-and-tested techniques tailored to your unique audience. Let’s take a look at some of them.

1. Personalization

Customized advertising that speaks directly to distinct groups can significantly boost engagement—91% of consumers are drawn to brands that recognize their preferences. Think about who your audience is. Pin them down by factors like income, device usage, or hobbies. The more precise your audience profiling, the better your chances of hitting the mark. But there’s a fine line to walk. Tread carefully around personal details to avoid overstepping, as was the case with Target’s marketing misstep.

Target’s customer tracking technology, developed by a marketer named Andrew Pole, once revealed a teenage girl’s pregnancy her parents hadn’t known about. In a Target near Minneapolis, a father was furious when he received coupons for baby items addressed to his high school daughter. He accused the store of encouraging teen pregnancy. The manager, initially confused, confirmed the coupons’ contents and called the father to apologize a few days later. In a phone conversation with the manager, the father admitted his mistake, saying that his daughter was indeed pregnant, but he hadn’t known about that at the time.

2. A sense of urgency and scarcity

Let’s admit it: we often purchase things driven by a flash sale rather than by necessity. Urgency leverages our instinct to value time-sensitive opportunities over product benefits. Scarcity, on the other hand, can make an item seem more desirable, just like Birkin bags by Hermès.

To amplify urgency and scarcity in your marketing:

• Set deadlines with a prominent countdown timer on the site and in an email: “Sale ends in …. hours!”
• Highlight price increase: “Prices go up tomorrow!” notices on product pages
• Use time-related copy in email campaigns with phrases like “Last chance to save!”
• Show real-time updates about the product: “10 customers have added this item to the shopping cart”
• Add a notification in the shopping cart with an image of an item: “These are selling fast!”
• Display the number of items available: “Only 3 left in stock”

These are just some examples of how to encourage customers to act quickly to avoid letting a potential benefit slip away.

3. Focus on the offer and its value

Being offer-centric in direct response ads means the ad is built around a strong value proposition that clearly communicates the benefit to the customer. The offer is the star of the show; it’s what catches the eye and hooks the potential customer’s interest.

Visualize your ad campaigns and connect ads to relevant landing pages–all in one place with AdMap.

Get started now

The CTA (Call to Action) is the direct response part—it’s the ‘what now’ that guides the customer on how to take advantage of the offer. Use sharp, benefit-focused language tailored to speak directly to the customer’s needs or desires.

Customer-centricity

Gone are the days of the dry, serious sales pitch—today’s consumers want to feel valued, not just sold to. It’s about creating a connection that goes beyond the transaction.

Here’s how to put your customer at the heart of your communication:

• Embrace storytelling: Stories transform plain information into something personable and engaging. For example, use testimonials to show how your product or service has improved someone’s life or addressed a challenge they faced.
• Highlight the product positives: People resonate more with what they stand to gain. Rather than listing the features of your product, emphasize the benefits. Shift from “Our hotel rooms include free Wi-Fi” to “Enjoy the convenience of staying in touch with complimentary Wi-Fi.”
• Demonstrate empathy: Make it clear you understand and care about your customer’s needs. For instance, “Morning rushes are hard. That’s why our fast-brew coffee maker delivers quality coffee quickly—so you can focus on taking on the day.”

Direct response advertising types

Email campaigns

Direct response advertising can be super effective, especially with email campaigns. Ensure your emails are engaging, on-point, and persuasive enough to cut through the noise of the cluttered email box.

Consider these tips for fine-tuning your email campaigns:

• Be concise: Your email should be short and sweet, ideally not extending beyond the length of two screens.
• Message up front: State your offer or message right at the start. Highlight the benefits early on to grab attention.
• Reader-focused writing: The email should speak to how it benefits the reader’s life, not just how great the product is.
• Visually pleasing layout: Employ bullet points and short sentences, and include plenty of white space for easier reading.
• Clear CTA: Make the next steps obvious, whether it’s downloading an ebook, confirming attendance, or visiting your store. Use compelling verbs like ‘grab,’ ‘discover,’ or ‘explore.’
• Apply psychology: Leverage tactics like the fear of missing out (FOMO) or the attraction to ‘free’ offerings to boost engagement. Keep options straightforward to prevent decision fatigue.

Landing pages

Offering clients too many options, like we often see on a homepage, can impact their decision-making process. Psychologists refer to this as the paradox of choice. So, what’s the best strategy for getting them to focus on something specific?

Use the power of landing pages.

A landing page is a dedicated webpage designed to drive a specific action, such as a product purchase or newsletter signup. Landing pages focus on converting visitors into leads or customers and feature a single, clear call to action.

There are two main types of landing pages:

• A lead generation page for gathering visitor info in exchange for something valuable.
• A click-through page for nudging users toward a specific action on another page.

Best practices for high-converting landing pages:

• Craft concise headlines that directly state the value of your offer
• Use high-quality visuals that capture attention and align with your product or service
• Include testimonials or client logos to build trust and credibility
• Keep your text brief and focused on the benefits, using bullet points for clarity
• Use an action-oriented CTA like “Download Now” or “Join for Free”
• Remove unnecessary elements that don’t contribute to the main goal of the CTA
• Optimize your page for quick loading, which is crucial for retaining visitor interest
• Ensure the page looks great and functions well on mobile devices

Retargeting vs. Remarketing

Retargeting is a direct response marketing strategy that targets website or social media visitors with online ads to encourage them to complete a conversion after moving away from it.

It uses tracking pixels (code snippets for monitoring user behavior) to gather visitor data, enabling more personalized and effective advertising.

There are two main ways to target ads: behavioral and contextual targeting. Behavioral targeting is based on collecting information about a customer’s past online actions—it’s very detailed because it uses a lot of personal data.

Conversely, contextual targeting is more about fitting the ad to the current webpage or content. Choosing in favor of behavioral or contextual targeting depends on what you’re aiming to achieve with your ads and how your audience feels about privacy.

While retargeting focuses on engaging potential customers, remarketing is essential for re-engaging those already familiar with your brand. Popular remarketing techniques include email campaigns and paid advertisements. Interestingly, with a 16% drop, email inboxes aren’t as packed these days.

This also opens up an excellent opportunity for businesses to reach out and remind previous customers about what’s great about their products and tempt them with new deals.

Native ads

Almost 40% of users in the U.S. utilize ad blockers. And this isn’t a hot take—it’s common knowledge that people don’t like annoying and repetitive ads that may invade their privacy.

What’s great about native ads is that they’re sponsored content that blends in with the platform’s regular content, offering a sales message with a direct CTA once the reader is already engaged.

These are some of the best practices for creating native ads:

• Ensure the content is readable and resonates with the target audience
• Highlight what the product can do for the reader rather than just its features
• Sweeten the deal by offering helpful info, fun facts, or freebies
• Use actual customer stories and testimonials to boost trust
• Add a hint to check out the website or snag the product

If you’re struggling with writer’s block and could use some help crafting persuasive and native copy, you can use AI-assisted tools like Instapage’s AI Content Generator.

QR Codes in advertising

QR codes made a major comeback during the pandemic, and they’ve stuck around as a valuable tool in direct response ad campaigns. Their magic lies in streamlining the customer journey, swiftly bringing potential customers from the physical realm to where you want them: a website, a landing page, or even a spot for a free download.

Here are some tips on how to make the most out of your QR codes:

• Place QR codes where your target audience is most likely to scan them. (print ads, on product packaging, or at event booths)
• Briefly guide users on how to scan the QR code, especially if your target demographic is not very tech-savvy
• Ensure your QR code takes a user to a specific action like signing up for a newsletter or availing of a special offer
• The destination page must be optimized for mobile viewing since QR codes are primarily scanned with smartphones
• Offer incentives for scanning the QR code, such as discounts or valuable information

If you think that QR codes are not attention-worthy in the eyes of potential customers, check out a growing trend of QR code art. You can easily transform these functional squares into visually appealing pieces that don’t just direct traffic but can also be used creatively to stand out.

Exit-Intent Pop-Ups

Pop-ups usually show up on a website when you do certain things to grab your attention or tell you something important. A study using eye tracking found that users typically glance at a pop-up within 1.3 to 1.5 seconds and then immediately close it.

No wonder some people see them as overly intrusive and annoying. In this light, relying on exit intent pop-ups is better. They give you a last-second opportunity to engage with users just as they’re about to leave your website.

Here’s how you can use a respectful approach to designing exit intent pop-ups that users won’t be tempted to skip:

• Create content that’s directly relevant and present it within a design that’s straightforward and clear-cut in its message
• Time your pop-ups thoughtfully to avoid interrupting the user’s experience
• Implement A/B testing to determine which pop-up connects more effectively with your users
• Guarantee that your pop-ups can be easily closed if the visitor chooses to do so
• Make your pop-ups mobile-friendly, ensuring they are as functional as they are on desktops
• Be mindful of various privacy regulations, like GDPR

Otherwise, you can consider alternatives to pop-ups, such as slide-ins, banners, or embedded CTAs within the content, which can be less disruptive but still effective.

How to track your marketing campaign success

In 2024, with all its upcoming economic twists and turns, it’s super important to keep tabs on some key metrics to get a handle on how your direct response marketing is doing:

• Conversion Rate: Look at what percentage of your website visitors are taking action—like buying something or signing up. If this number is climbing, your campaign is hitting the mark.
• Response Rate: This is all about how many people are engaging with your campaigns compared to how many you’ve reached out to. It’s a straightforward way of seeing if your messages are making an impact.
• Cost per Acquisition (CPA): Keep track of what you’re spending to win over a new customer, considering your ads, tech tools, and the effort of your team
• Average Order Value (AOV): This tells you how much money customers typically spend on an order. It’s a great indicator of how well your marketing is driving higher-value sales
• Return on ad spend (ROAS): ROAS helps you see if the money you’re putting into your marketing is paying off in terms of revenue
• Lifetime Value (LTV): LTV predicts the total revenue a customer will bring in during their time with your company. By understanding LTV, you can make smarter decisions about how much to spend on getting new customers and keeping the ones you have.

With a clear eye on these metrics, you can sharpen your campaigns and aim for better outcomes. Remember, the key to marketing success is to watch, learn, and constantly improve.

Direct response advertising examples

Filmsupply (landing page)

The Filmsupply landing page is offer-focused and features potential savings of up to $40,000 on production costs.

This is a significant incentive for filmmakers and creates a subtle sense of urgency by nudging visitors toward taking immediate advantage of the offer. The page features a clear call-to-action with the Find Your Footage button, which is strategically placed to encourage immediate engagement from visitors.

The nostalgic visuals add aesthetic appeal and resonate with the craft of filmmaking, potentially reminding visitors of the industry’s rich history and the value of high-quality production footage.

Banana Republic Factory (a pop-up notification in the cart)

This banner pops up after customers browse the shopping cart for a few seconds. The message creates a sense of urgency and scarcity. It informs the potential customer that the item added to the cart is almost sold out, encouraging immediate action to avoid missing out.

The discounted price is clearly displayed and backed up with a CTA. The notification is easy to close and doesn’t irritate users if they’re uninterested in the purchase.

IMAGE Skincare (email remarketing campaign)

The IMAGE Skincare ad combines urgency and personalization, declaring “TWO DAYS ONLY” for a “10% sitewide” discount and addressing a customer as an “IMAGE loyalist.”

The offer is placed to capture immediate attention and reinforced by free shipping and a clear “SHOP NOW” CTA button. Visuals of the product, together with vibrant oranges, underline the brand’s vitality and natural ingredients. At the same time, options like Afterpay and interactive elements, such as a skin quiz, can further engage the customer and potentially allow for collecting more data for future retargeting or remarketing efforts.

Good Ranchers (pop-up)

The header “UNLOCK FREE CHICKEN FOR A YEAR!” alongside the subtext “CLAIM THIS $189 VALUE TODAY” creates a sense of urgency for the user to take immediate action.

The value proposition is shown upfront, and the offer targets a specific audience—customers interested in regular meat purchasers. There’s a clever use of reverse psychology with the message “No Thanks, I Hate Free Chicken” for opting out. The pop-up has a mouth-watering image of cooked chicken, enticing the user.

Get started on your direct response marketing campaigns

With direct response ads, you get to actively engage users, sparking a direct and immediate response from them. Targeted, personalized advertising techniques help transform casual browsing into decisive action.

With that in mind, check out the Instapage AdMap feature. And, if you want to connect your ads to personalized experiences and elicit that conversion action, you need to try Instapage’s AdMap® feature. With the feature, you can connect page experiences to ads you’ve already created or build new personalized pages from within the feature.

AdMap® helps you manage campaigns more efficiently by visualizing all your ads and matching landing pages in one place, increasing conversion rates, and decreasing cost-per-acquisition by improving your ad-to-page personalization ratio like the Farmer’s Dog did with their ad and landing page.

Want to start creating more personalized experiences? Give Instapage and AdMap® a try. Sign up for a 14-day free trial today, and make every click count.

START 14-DAY TRIAL

Try the world's most advanced landing page platform with a risk-free trial.

Instagram ads allow businesses to reach their target audience on one of the world’s most popular social media platforms. You can leverage the platform’s laser-focused targeting capabilities to reach your audience with the right offer at the right time with optimized ads to spring prospects into action. But what do you do if Instagram doesn’t approve the ads you’ve spent so much time creating and optimizing?

Today, you’ll learn the eight biggest reasons your Instagram ads aren’t approved and how to get the platform to reconsider and launch your ads.

Why are my Instagram ads not getting approved?

Before your ads appear in your audience’s feed or stories, they go through the approval process. Commonly, it takes 24 hours to get your ad approved or declined. The reasons for this may vary from the ad content to the technicalities of their publishing.

With all the opportunities Instagram advertising offers to promote products and services, grow brand awareness, and connect with customers, your Instagram ads mustn’t get rejected—or they only show on a limited basis.

Between heightened competition across social media and constant changes in the algorithms, many businesses find their Instagram ads not delivering—either because they were disapproved or because the ads are not optimized for the best campaign results.

The good news is your Instagram ads not delivering doesn’t mean the platform is wrong for your business. It could simply mean that you made a small mistake during ad setup that prevents it from showing, or maybe your ad strategy needs some tweaking. Either way, it’s most likely fixable.

8 Reasons why Instagram rejects your ads

1. Your Instagram account set up needs to be optimized

The most basic explanation for your Instagram ads not showing is that your account isn’t set up as a business account — and you can’t have an ad account without this in place.

So, before going any further in this list, ensure you have a business account rather than a personal one.

If you still find your Instagram ads not working, it might be because you’re not a page admin on your Meta Page. Keep in mind, Instagram ads are created through the Meta Ads Manager (formerly Facebook Ads Manager).

2. Your ad doesn’t follow guidelines

There are several reasons why Instagram ads could get disapproved.

First, you must adhere to Meta’s advertising policies and guidelines to advertise on either Facebook or Instagram successfully.

On top of that, Instagram has its own set of rules for using the platform. If you’re guilty of any of the following, it could get your Instagram ads rejected or, even worse—get you banned from the platform altogether:

• Impersonating others or providing inaccurate information
  Unlawful, misleading, or fraudulent activity
• Violation (or helping/encouraging others to violate) of these Terms or other policies, including Instagram Community Guidelines, Instagram Platform Policy, and Music Guidelines)
• Interference with or impairing the intended operation of the Service
• Attempting to create accounts or access/collect information in unauthorized ways
• Buying, selling, or transferring any aspect of your account (including your username) or soliciting, collecting, or using login credentials or badges of other users
• Posting private or confidential information or doing anything that violates someone else’s rights, including intellectual property
• Using a domain name or URL in your username without Instagram’s prior written consent

3. You’re not using the correct ad format

Instagram provides a number of ad formats for businesses, and while choosing the wrong one won’t result in getting your IG ads disapproved, it could certainly impact delivery.

Photo ads allow you to tell your story through a clean and simple creative canvas with square or landscape photos but might attract less attention than a video ad that includes movement and sound.

Video ads provide the same visually immersive quality as photo ads—with the added power of sound and motion—for up to 60 seconds. These will likely be a good fit for your brand if you have a product, feature, or service to demonstrate (how-to videos, explainer videos, recipes, etc.).

Build message-matched landing pages for your social ad campaigns to increase conversions and your ROI.

Get started now

Carousel ads let users swipe to view additional photos or videos, so you can expand the theme or message of your campaign and add more depth to your offer. This ad type is particularly effective for selling products because you can show the same product from different angles or display a range of different items:

Collection ads help tell an integrated story with a product or lifestyle focus through multiple videos, images, or both, all within the same ad. These ads are great for visually inspiring and helping your audience discover, browse, and purchase products:

Stories ads complement your IG feed content by reaching 500M+ accounts using Instagram Stories daily, which is an optimal way to reach your crowd. This ad placement uses a fullscreen, vertical format, enabling you to immerse viewers in your content:

Explore ads reach Instagram users on the Explore page while they’re conveniently in a discovery mindset, looking to expand their interests beyond the accounts they already follow:

4. You’re targeting the wrong audience

Targeting the right audience is another element that won’t get your Instagram ads disapproved but will limit delivery and impact campaign performance. You could create show-stopping ads, but if they aren’t reaching the best audience, they’re likely not producing the results you’d hoped for.

That’s why every advertiser should take the time to become familiar with Instagram’s targeting options below (along with their exact target audience) before creating a new ad set:

• Location — Targets people based on specific locations including states, provinces, cities, countries, etc.
• Demographics — Narrows your audience based on information like age, gender, and language.
• Interests — Helps you reach people based on their specific interests, such as apps they use, ads they click, accounts they follow, etc.
• Behaviors — Defines your audience by activities they do on and off Instagram and Facebook.
• Custom Audiences — Targets customers who have previously interacted with your business based on email address or phone number.
• Lookalike Audiences — Used to find new people who are similar to your existing customers
• Automated Targeting — Instagram quickly creates an audience for you, who might be interested in your business using a variety of signals including location, demographics and interests.

5. You’re using the wrong ad content

While including prohibited content could result in your Instagram ad not being approved, promoting boring, salesy, or invaluable content can result in poor delivery and performance.

When creating ads, you must ensure they:

• Represent and reflect your brand
• Aren’t too promotional, invasive, or salesy
• Appeal and provide inspiration to viewers
• Deliver the same message across the image and ad copy

Since Instagram is a platform for sharing images, videos, and stories; you must create ads to look like organic Instagram posts with entertaining, amusing, and/or inspirational content, rather than screaming, “This is an ad!” or “Buy this!”

See the difference:

The first one uses:

• A high-quality lifestyle photo of a couple enjoying their vacation
• Bright, contrasting colors for aesthetic appeal
• Smiling faces enjoying the vacation
• A small logo in the bottom corner

Compared to the second one with:

• Too much ad text
• Salesly, gimmicky copy
• Pricing placed on the image

The image of the water isn’t relevant for a vacation offer. If your ads are attention-grabbing and tell a story, they’ll feel natural in the Instagram feed, and your business will reap the benefits through engagement (and ultimately sales). If not, there’s a good chance you won’t see the ad campaign results you wanted.

6. Not checking Instagram Insights

One of the most common reasons why your Instagram ads aren’t delivering is because you’re not closely monitoring Instagram Insights to track the following:

• Impressions – Number of times your ads were viewed
• Reach – Number of unique accounts that viewed your ads
• Interactions – Number and types of actions (profile visits, follows, and website/link clicks) that were taken on your profile after viewing an ad

These analytics help you understand your audience (gender, age, location, etc.) and how your audience is engaging with your ads so you can see what is working and what needs improvement.

7. Your landing page isn’t optimized for mobile

Instagram advertising can only be done on the Instagram app, not on the web platform. Since the app is mobile-only, you must make your ads — and the landing pages they lead to — mobile-friendly.

If you find your Instagram ads not showing or performing well, there are typically two common explanations related to the landing page:

1. Perceived friction — The mental block that occurs when a user goes from your ad to a mobile landing page lacking message match.
2. Actual friction — When a page isn’t mobile responsive, people struggle to complete forms with their thumbs, scroll or pinch/zoom to find the CTA button, or can’t click the CTA button.

You could be harming your conversion rate without a mobile-optimized landing page. Be sure the landing page to which you send your mobile app traffic responds to every size, displays information best suited to the device used, includes only a few form fields, and contains an easy-to-click CTA button.

8. Violation of copyright or intellectual property rights

An often overlooked pitfall that can lead to the disapproval of your Instagram ads is the infringement of copyright or intellectual property rights.

Using a recognizable image or video piece like a trendy meme, iconic photo, or movie scene to draw attention to your goods may be tempting. However, what regular users can get away with a business account cannot, especially when the ad content is involved.

Meta takes a firm stance against the unauthorized use of content that doesn’t belong to you. If your ad includes images, videos, or any other material that infringes on someone else’s intellectual property, it’s a fast track to rejection.

Avoid the following to ensure there’s no violation of copyright:

Unauthorized content use — Always ensure you have the right to use the images, music, or any other content in your ads. Unauthorized use can lead to ad disapproval and pose the risk of legal repercussions.

The original, the better — Instagram thrives on original and authentic content. Avoid using copyrighted material without permission, and prioritize creating visuals that represent your brand uniquely.

Trademark respect — A trademark or logo signifies the copyright owner or the author of the content. Advertising a product using branded content that belongs to someone else is considered bad taste and promotion to the copyright owners, which does not look like proper brand communication. Plus, Instagram is quick to spot any attempt to leverage someone else’s brand for your gain.

What is the ad review process?

Before ads on Facebook and Instagram show up, they must pass a review process according to Meta Advertising Policy Principles.

During the ad review process, the following components are checked:

• Images
• Text
• Targeting
• Positioning
• Post-click content and functionality (an ad may be disapproved if the landing page content isn’t fully functional, doesn’t match the offer promoted in your ad, or doesn’t fully comply with Advertising Policies)

Although some ads may take longer, most are reviewed within 24 hours. If your ad doesn’t get approved, its status will change to “Rejected” in the Ads Manager:

This could be because of the following reasons.

How to appeal a disapproved Instagram ad

When dealing with IG ads not being approved, there are two main approaches you can take:

1. Edit your ad — Check your email notification explaining why your ad wasn’t approved, edit your ad (or create a new compliant one), and resubmit it for review.
2. Appeal the decision—If you can’t edit your ad or feel it was a mistake that it wasn’t approved, you can appeal the decision by requesting an ad review using your Ad Account:

Now, what happens behind the scenes? Instagram employs a thorough ad review process to ensure that every ad aligns with its community standards, guidelines, and policies. This evaluation is about maintaining a high-quality user experience and safeguarding the platform’s integrity.

What does the Instagram ad review process entail?

Policy compliance: The first checkpoint involves an examination to ensure your ad complies with both Meta’s advertising policies and Instagram’s specific guidelines. The policy compliance check covers a spectrum of criteria, from content appropriateness to adherence to community standards.

Visual and textual analysis: Instagram scrutinizes your ad’s visual and textual elements. The reviewers check for overly promotional language, the quality and relevance of images or videos, and the overall tone to ensure it resonates with the platform’s aesthetic and guidelines.

Targeting assessment: The platform evaluates your chosen audience targeting to verify that it aligns with Instagram’s criteria. This ensures your ad reaches the right demographic without breaching privacy or ethical standards.

How long does a typical ad review process last?

The duration of the review process can vary, and Instagram doesn’t provide specific timelines. In most cases, the review process takes anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days. Some marketers report waiting for the resolution over two days, while generally, it is done within 24 hours. The volume of pending appeals in the queue, the complexity of your ad content, and the platform’s current workload can influence the review timeline.

Some tips for a smooth Instagram ad review process

Plan ahead. If your ad is time-sensitive, plan your campaign well in advance to accommodate the review process. Don’t cut it too close to your desired launch time.

Learn the rules. Before creating your ad, get familiar with Instagram’s advertising policies and guidelines to address potential pitfalls.

Ensure content quality on your end. Ensure your ad meets high-quality visual and content standards to expedite the review process.

Make sure your Instagram ads are approved and delivering

Don’t let a rejected Instagram ad keep you from benefiting from all the platform has to offer businesses. Determine what you did wrong (or what you could do better if your ad is underperforming), fix the issue, and move on.

Remember, a great ad campaign is about creating an engaging landing page, which means personalizing it to each unique audience segment. Learn how to create personalized, Instagram-approved landing pages at scale with an Instapage 14-day free trial today.

FAQ

My Instagram is restricted for ads. Does it ever get unrestricted? It has been restricted for quite some time now.
Instagram ad restrictions can be temporary or permanent, depending on the nature of the violation. Temporary restrictions may lift automatically after a specified period. If the restriction persists, try reviewing Instagram’s community guidelines, rectifying any possible policy violations, and contacting Instagram support for further assistance.

Are Instagram ads manually approved?
Instagram ads undergo a manual review process to ensure compliance with community standards, advertising policies, and guidelines. While most ads are approved within 24 hours, some may take longer based on content complexity and the volume of pending appeals.

Instagram ad approved but not running. What should I do?
There could be several reasons why your Instagram ad has been approved but is not running. Check your campaign settings, targeting options, and budget to ensure all the settings are correct.

You should also monitor for any notifications or emails from Instagram explaining the issue. If the problem persists, consider editing your ad or appealing the decision through the provided channels for further review.

START 14-DAY TRIAL

Try the world's most advanced landing page platform with a risk-free trial.

Demand-side platforms (DSP) and supply-side platforms (SSP) make the process of publishing an ad efficient and near-instantaneous. Gone are the days when ad buying and selling included manual insertion orders, sit-down meetings, and contracts.

So, what is a DSP, and how does it work? Let’s dive in.

What is a DSP?

Demand-side platforms are used by advertisers to buy mobile, search, and video ads from a marketplace on which publishers list advertising inventory. With DSP advertising, it’s simpler to manage accounts across real-time bidding networks – like Google Ads and Facebook Ads Manager – instead of logging into each one individually.

What is the difference between DSP and SSP?

Supply-side platforms, or SSPs, serve a different purpose than demand-side platforms but both play an important role in the programmatic advertising space.

An SSP allows publishers to include their inventory to ad exchanges, and they communicate with DSPs about the details of an impression.

In other words, DSPs don’t own or purchase media directly from publishers, but instead communicate with an SSP through the ad exchange.

Together, DSPs and SSPs enhance the digital advertising landscape and make the process of bidding on ads and managing ad inventories easier than ever before.

DSP marketing is a modern example of how automation is being used to streamline processes and boost productivity.

The world of digital display advertising moves quickly and marketers need to be able to make snap decisions and adjustments in order to optimize performance of their ads.

Programmatic advertising using DSPs and SSPs makes it easy to adjust campaigns in real time by automatically increasing budget for well-performing ads, pulling campaigns that are not performing well, or scaling for mobile optimization.

What are the main components of a demand side platform?

There are several capabilities and components that can be found in a DSP, including:

• Real-time bidding (RTB): A real-time bidder is a crucial component of a DSP. A DSP will automatically bid for ad impressions that are most valuable based on the advertiser’s goals.

An advertiser will specify who they want to reach with ads and how much they are willing to spend. From there, the platform will automatically facilitate bids on the advertiser’s behalf against other advertisers trying to reach the same target audience.

How is that done? When a prospect lands on a page, such as a Google search for a type of product, algorithms determine which ad to display in real-time, using data like browsing history, time of day, and IP address. The business that bid the highest for the impression based on this data wins the placement.

• Ad server: A server, in this sense, is the actual mechanism that serves the ad elements to the publisher’s website; DSPs either work with external servers or have a proprietary, built-in one. Aside from serving ad elements, the DSP ad server will also track impressions and conversion data and use that information to optimize an ad campaign.

• Campaign tracker: One of the clearest benefits of using a demand-side platform is that it automatically pulls in data that will be used to make decisions about the campaign itself, so naturally, the ability to track campaigns is an important component of a DSP.

The campaign tracker monitors and records ad data like impressions, views, clicks, click-through rates (CTRs), conversion rates, ad spend, and more. This information will determine how effectively an ad is performing and whether more money should be spent on it or if it should be stopped altogether.

• User profiles: When a user views an ad served by a DSP, that user’s data is captured and stored. Over time, the DSP will continue to build that user’s profile, collecting insights about the types of ads they are viewing, where they’re viewing them, and where/when they are clicking.

These profiles are used to segment people into different audiences, with those segments determining which profiles will be used in remarketing or optimization campaigns.

• Budget management: Another benefit of using automation to optimize ad campaigns is that a predetermined budget will be spent in the most efficient way possible. With a DSP, this is accomplished through a component known as a banker or cashier, which is essentially what manages an advertiser’s budget.

Through the banker, an advertiser can specify parameters about their campaign, such as the maximum amount of money they are willing to spend and how they are willing to spend that money.

• Integrations: These days, any decisions about adopting new technologies depend on how well or not those technologies integrate with other tools. This is the case with DSPs as well. Demand-side platforms integrate with ad exchanges and supply-side platforms, as well as tools that facilitate data management, analytics, payment processing, and security.

When it comes to SSPs specifically, a DSP will most likely integrate with several supply sources, which would allow an advertiser to broaden their reach.

Top demand-side platform (DSP) examples

Let’s explore five different demand-side platform examples:

1. Amazon DSP

Best for: Amazon-owned sites and brands that want to advertise on Amazon

This is one of the better-known DSPs. Anyone can use Amazon DSP, whether they sell their products on Amazon or not. The Amazon DSP site says that self-service and managed-service options are available. Self-service customers are in full control of their campaigns. The managed-service option is designed for companies that want access to Amazon DSP inventory with consultative service or for those with limited programmatic advertising experience. The managed-service option typically requires a minimum spend of $50,000 USD (minimum may vary per country).

2. Google Display & Video 360

Best for: Small business and enterprise

Perhaps the biggest advantage of Google DV360 is that Google is a trusted brand. DV360 is an end-to-end campaign management tool that delivers robust insights, helps advertisers optimize campaigns, and integrates with other solutions that allow you to connect data and workflows across products.

3. StackAdapt

Best for: Advertising agencies looking to grow their business

StackAdapt markets itself as an open, flexible DSP designed to help advertisers and agencies plan, execute, and analyze campaigns for their clients. Machine learning and AI are at the core of their technology, which means campaigns are optimized for performance. They also offer comprehensive customer success guidance so that agencies feel supported along the way.

4. Equativ

Best for: Both advertisers and publishers who want to connect

Equativ operates as a marketplace for customers, with both DSP and SSP products. They have spent two decades building ad servers and working directly with advertisers, publishers, broadcasters, and rights owners to fully understand the whole scope of modern programmatic advertising. They offer an advertising marketplace, monetization solutions for publishers, and business scaling services.

5. Jampp

Best for: Mobile companies who want to grow their business

Jampp is tailor-made for mobile companies like gamers, anyone promoting in-app activations, those targeting ecommerce shoppers, and more. Jampp uses contextual and behavioral signals to forecast in-app conversions. They build and rotate creatives to exceed goals and provide deep insights via their campaign performance dashboards.

Why do you need a demand-side platform?

Using a DSP has advantages and disadvantages—and each platform is a little different. It’s important to understand your options before investing in this type of software.

Pros of using a DSP

• Efficiency: If you’re managing campaigns across many networks, a DSP allows you to view and adjust all of your advertising from one dashboard. This allows advertisers to reach and activate customers at scale.

• Data: Many DSPs partner with third-party data providers to offer advertisers as much information as possible. Often, it’s more than a single network can provide. Additionally, there are many demand side platforms that allow advertisers to import their own data from a CRM or a DMP (data management platform).

• Targeting: More data gives advertisers pinpoint targeting capabilities. Better targeting means more personalized ads and landing pages, which means a higher likelihood of conversion.

• Support: Often, DSPs provide support beyond the traditional help desk-style customer support of a single network.

• High-quality inventory: DSPs will have access to the major networks and then some. If you’re after more premium inventory, a demand-side platform may be what you’re looking for. Some have more access than others, though, so it’s important to compare offerings before you pick one.

Cons of using a DSP

• Cost: DSPs can require significant investment, so it’s important to understand the minimum monthly or campaign spend required before selecting an option. A managed DSP, such as The Amazon Managed Services DSP, may require $35,000 ad spend or more. A self-serve option may only require $3,000 – $12,000 for a campaign but needs a greater investment of time to manage the process.

• Complexity: Whenever you aggregate data, you run the risk of overcomplicating things. Some advertisers may find demand-side platforms too complex to learn. In this case, sticking with individual online advertising channels makes sense.

• Time: You need to be prepared to invest time up-front to learn and incorporate new software into your tech stack. Alexa Wieczorek, Growth Marketing Manager at Electronic Arts, says that “DSPs can take 1-2 months or more to ramp up, especially if it’s in-house where you develop your own bidding algorithm.”

The basics of programmatic advertising

Let’s say a marketing manager visits your demo landing page. She didn’t request a demo, but she’s expressed interest in your product by visiting your page. This makes her more valuable to you than somebody who’s never visited your website or interacted with your brand.

In that case, your DSP will likely bid higher for her impression. Whether you win the bid will depend on how valuable this impression is to other businesses. Maybe this same person abandoned her cart on an ecommerce website. If that’s the case, the ecommerce website may bid more to serve an ad that gets her to the checkout page. It all depends on the budget of the bidder and the value of the impression.

This process is facilitated automatically by the SSP, DSP, and the ad exchange between advertisers and publishers.

Get the most out of your tech stack

For some businesses, a demand-side platform can increase efficiency and their broader reach to prospects across multiple ad exchanges, including more premium digital ad inventory. For advertisers or media buyers who don’t have a large advertising budget, the cost and complexity of a DSP may outweigh the benefits. In this case, using a small number of individual platforms, such as Google and Facebook, will likely be sufficient.

No matter how you manage your digital advertising, getting the most out of your ad spend requires connecting all of your ads to relevant, optimized landing pages. Find out how easy it can be to create landing pages for all your advertising campaigns and audiences by signing up for the Instapage 14-day trial today.

START 14-DAY TRIAL

Try the world's most advanced landing page platform with a risk-free trial.

By understanding and improving your Google Ads Quality Score, you can optimize your ads for better performance, get higher click-through rates, and increase ROAS.

While mastering the nuances of the metric can be challenging, the rewards are worth it. Today’s post will explain everything you need to know about the Google Ads Quality Score, what it is, how to calculate it, and how to ensure your score is high.

What is a Google Ads Quality Score?

Google Ads Quality Score is a critical metric in your Google Ads campaign that significantly impacts your ad performance and cost. The score estimates the effectiveness of your ads, keywords, and landing pages. The higher the Quality Score, the more relevant your ad and landing page are to the user, leading to lower prices and better ad placements. Caring about your ad campaigns’ Quality Score is essential as it directly influences your ads’ effectiveness and your return on investment ROAS.

Google calculates Quality Score as a sum of the following factors:

• Expected CTR
• Ad Relevance
• Landing Page Experience

You may come across a formula for calculating Quality Score:

Quality Score = (CTR * Relevance * Landing Page Experience) / Expected Impact

This formula emphasizes the importance of creating relevant, high-grade ads and landing pages with a good user experience.

It’s important to remember that the Quality Score calculation is a proprietary algorithm used by Google. The formula considers multiple factors and their respective weights.

When evaluating your campaigns, Google weighs CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience score differently. Expected click-through rate and landing page experience contribute more to Quality Score than ad relevance:

The benefits of improving your Google Ads Quality Score

A high Google Ads Quality Score gives your ad campaigns a competitive edge so you can deliver more compelling ad experiences to potential customers and enjoy a host of other benefits.

1. Reduce advertising costs through lower cost-per-click (CPC) rates

A high Quality Score signals to Google that your ads are relevant and valuable to users, which can result in reduced CPC and more efficient use of your ad spend.

2. High ad rankings and increased visibility in search results

A higher Quality Score also translates to better ad rankings and increased visibility in search results. This means potential customers are more likely to see and click your ads, driving more traffic to your landing page.

3. Improve ad performance and increase click-through rates (CTR)

Improving your Google Ads Quality Score can also enhance the performance of your ads, leading to higher click-through rates (CTR). The more relevant and engaging your ads are, the more likely use.

4. Enhance overall ad relevance and user experience for potential customers

One of the ways to improve Quality Score is to optimize ad relevance and enhance the landing page experience. This boosts your score and improves user experience, increasing engagement and desired actions.

Landing page relevance is crucial as it impacts how your audience perceives your brand. When users click on your ad, they expect content aligned with what was promised. By meeting this expectation, visitors are more likely to engage and convert.

When your Quality Score is calculated, Google evaluates the coherence between ads and landing pages. Therefore, a highly relevant landing page enhances user experience and contributes to a higher score, improving ad performance.

5. Better return on ad spend (ROAS) for ad campaigns and marketing efforts

Finally, a higher Quality Score can lead to a better return on ad spend (ROAS). Ensuring your ads are relevant, engaging, and targeted at the right audience can boost conversions and sales, resulting in a more profitable advertising campaign.

Factors affecting Google Ads Quality Score

The Google Ads Quality Score is a pivotal metric for advertisers, providing insights into the effectiveness of their ad campaigns. A combination of factors influences it, each contributing to your digital advertising efforts’ overall performance and success.

Relevance of ad text to the keyword

The relevance of your ad text to the keyword is a critical factor in determining your Quality Score. For instance, if your ad text aligns closely with the keyword, it signals to Google that your ad will likely be relevant to users searching for that keyword. This, in turn, can boost your Quality Score.

It’s essential to ensure that your ad copy communicates the value proposition of your product or service clearly while incorporating the target keyword naturally and effectively.

Quality and relevance of the landing page

A user-friendly and informative landing page directly related to your ad can significantly enhance your Google Ads Quality Score.
Ad-to-page relevance ensures a direct correlation between your ad’s content and the landing page it leads to. This personalization improves user experience, click-through, and conversion rates, contributing positively to your Google Ads Quality Score.

For example, if your ad promises to teach you how to craft a backlink strategy for your business needs. In that case, your landing page should deliver on that promise by providing a clear and straightforward way for users to access a course teaching them how to do that.

Historical click-through rate (CTR) of the keyword and the matched ad

Historical click-through rate (CTR) is another crucial factor that affects your Quality Score on Google Ads. If your keyword and matched ad have historically garnered a high CTR, Google interprets this as an indication that your ad will likely be clicked in the future, positively impacting your score.

To improve your CTR, consider employing tactics such as using compelling call-to-action phrases, optimizing your ad copy, and targeting your ads more precisely.

Relevance of the keyword to the ad group

Finally, the keyword’s relevance to the ad group also impacts your Quality Score. When your keyword is highly relevant to the other keywords in your ad group, it signals to Google that your ad will likely be beneficial and relevant to users, thereby boosting your Quality Score.

Consider grouping related keywords and creating separate ad groups for different product categories or services to enhance keyword relevance. Find more about keywords, ad groups, and campaigns for impression sharing in Ad here.

By comprehending and optimizing these variables, you can greatly enhance your score, resulting in more impactful ad campaigns and improved return on ad spend. Now that we’ve examined the factors influencing Google Ads Quality Score, let’s shift our focus to another crucial aspect: the various types of Quality Score. In the upcoming discussion, we will delve deeper into this subject to gain a more profound understanding.

Types of Quality Score

Understanding the different types of Google Ads Quality Score can provide valuable insights into your ad performance and guide you in optimizing your Google Ads campaigns. Each type offers a unique perspective on how various elements of your campaign are performing.

Account-Level Quality Score

This is an aggregate measure of the overall health of your Google Ads account. It considers the historical performance of all ads, keywords, and landing pages associated with your account. A high Account-Level Quality Score indicates that your account, as a whole, is providing value to users and meeting Google’s high standards.

Ad Group Quality Score

An Ad Group Quality Score is an average indicator based on all the keywords within a specific ad group. It provides insights into how well your keywords and ads perform within a particular ad group. A low quality score might indicate that your keywords and ads are irrelevant to each other or your target audience.

Keyword-Level Quality Score

The Keyword-Level Quality Score is the most familiar type. It is a rating between 1 and 10 assigned to each keyword in your account based on its relevance to your ads and landing pages and expected CTR. A high Keyword Quality Score signifies that your keyword will likely trigger ads relevant to users’ search queries.

Ad-Level Quality Score

An Ad-Level Quality Score measures the significance and efficiency of your individual ads. It is determined by factors such as the relevance of your ad text to the keyword, the expected CTR of the ad, and the user experience on your landing page. Improving your Ad-Level Quality Score can improve ad rankings and lower costs.

Landing Page Quality Score

The Landing Page Quality Score assesses the relevance and efficiency of your landing page. It considers factors such as the originality of content, transparency about your business, and ease of navigation. A high Landing Page Quality Score indicates that your page provides a good user experience and is relevant to your ads and keywords.

Display Network Quality Score

The Display Network Quality Score is specific to Google’s Display Network ads. It evaluates the relevance and effectiveness of your ads and landing pages in relation to the themes of websites on the Display Network where your ads might appear. A high Display Network Quality Score can improve your ad placement and visibility on the Display Network.

Gaining a comprehensive understanding of the various Quality Scores can greatly assist in pinpointing areas for enhancement, optimizing campaigns, and ultimately elevating your overall score. Now that we have a firm grasp on the diverse types of Quality Scores and their impact on Google Ads performance, let’s redirect our attention toward exploring effective strategies and best practices to enhance these scores.

Tips to improve Google Ads Quality Score

Enhancing your Google Ads Quality Score can significantly improve your ad performance, increase your return on ad spend, and ensure you are reaching your target audience effectively. Here are some strategies you can employ to boost your Quality Score:

1. Optimizing landing pages for relevant user experience

One of the key factors influencing your Quality Score on Google Ads is the effectiveness and relevance of your landing page. Users should find what they are looking for quickly and easily after clicking on your ad. To optimize your landing pages, ensure they are user-friendly, fast-loading, and directly related to your ad content.

With the Instapage platform, you can create highly relevant landing pages that match your ad content. The platform’s AdMap® feature lets you connect your ads to relevant landing pages, ensuring your message aligns seamlessly from ad click to post-click. Instapage enables you to create fast-loading landing pages that instantly capture visitor attention and serve targeted messaging to every audience, enhancing user satisfaction and engagement.



2. Conducting regular keyword research and refining ad groups

Regular keyword research is crucial in maintaining and improving your Quality Score. By identifying and targeting the most relevant keywords for your business, you can ensure that your ads reach the right audience. Additionally, refining your ad groups by grouping related keywords can improve the relevance of your ads, leading to a higher Quality Score.

Instapage offers powerful capabilities for businesses to conduct keyword research and refine ad groups. Its advanced features significantly contribute to these activities. With Instapage, you can analyze landing page performance to gain valuable insights on high-converting keywords. Additionally, Instapage supports dynamic keyword insertion, enhancing landing page relevance. You can optimize your PPC advertising efforts by refining ad groups based on performance data.

3. A/B testing ad variations to improve click-through rates

A/B testing involves creating multiple versions of your ads and testing them to see which performs better. By experimenting with different ad texts, headlines, and call-to-actions, you can identify what resonates most with your audience and drives more clicks. Improving click-through rates (CTR) can significantly boost your Quality Score Google Ads.

Enhancing Google Ads Quality Score

Mastering and optimizing your Google Ads Quality Score is crucial for successful advertising campaigns. The Quality Score depends on factors like ad text relevance, landing page quality, and historical click-through rate. Each type of Quality Score offers unique insights into ad performance and optimization opportunities.

To elevate your Quality Score, refine landing pages, conduct regular keyword research, fine-tune ad groups, and test ad variations. Consider using Instapage to streamline these efforts and facilitate more effective, targeted ad campaigns. With Instapage, optimize landing pages based on data-backed insights, conduct in-app A/B testing, and gain insights from on-page behavior analytics.

Focusing on these areas can enhance your Google Ads Quality Score, resulting in more effective ad campaigns and better utilization of your advertising budget. Improve your landing page experience and sign up for an Instapage 14-day free trial today.

FAQs

We understand that the Google Ads Quality Score can be a complex topic. Here are answers to some common questions to help you navigate this critical metric.

1. What is a good Quality Score on Google Ads?

A good Quality Score on Google Ads typically falls between 7 and 10. This range indicates that your keywords, ads, and landing pages are relevant and valuable to the people who see your ads. However, it’s important to remember that this metric is relative to each campaign and market competition.

2. Where do I check my Quality Score on Google Ads?

You can check your Quality Score on Google Ads by logging into your Google Ads account and navigating to the Keywords tab. From there, hover over any keyword’s “Status” column to view details.

3. How do I get the best Quality Score on Google Ads?

To achieve the best Quality Score on Google Ads, focus on improving the relevance and effectiveness of your keywords, ads, and landing pages. Regularly conduct keyword research, optimize your landing pages for a better user experience, and A/B test ad variations.

4. How long does it take to build your Quality Score Google Ads?

The time it takes to develop your Quality Score on Google Ads varies depending on several factors, including the changes you’ve made to improve it and how often users can see your ads. It can take anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks for Google to gather enough data to update your Quality Score.

5. CTRs are high, but the Quality Score is low on Google Ads. Why is this happening?

While a high click-through rate (CTR) is a positive signal, it’s just one component of your Quality Score. If your CTRs are high, but your Quality Score is low, it could be due to issues with the relevance of your ad text, keywords, or landing page. It’s essential to ensure all these elements align with each other and with what your audience is searching for.

START 14-DAY TRIAL

Try the world's most advanced landing page platform with a risk-free trial.

Display advertising has come a long way since October 27, 1994, when the first banner ad promoting AT&T appeared on HotWired:

Here’s what a typical display ad looks like today:

However, it’s not just the appearance of display ads that has changed—the frequency with which users see display advertising has exponentially increased over the years.

A recent experiment by The Drum suggests that an average user living in the US sees around 93 display ads per day.

That’s overwhelming, to say the least, and probably the reason why, according to recent data, 530 million people use Adblock software on their mobile devices, and 290 million people use Adblock software on their desktop browsers. These numbers have seen a significant increase since 2011:

Some reasons why users opt to use Adblock software include the threat of malware, interruption, slow website loading time, too many ads on too many web pages, and tracking by unknown parties.

Does this mean there’s no point in creating display advertising campaigns because even if your ad gets through to users, they’ll likely have banner blindness and won’t react to it?

Well, quite the contrary. When you create display ads that target the right audience with the right message, you can significantly increase brand awareness and your ROAS.

So, what exactly is display advertising, and how do you create ads that work? Let’s find out.

Increase your display advertising ROI with personalized landing page experiences for each ad group.

Boost ad ROI

What is display advertising?

Display advertising is a type of online advertising that features text, images, animation, videos, and other creative elements to promote a product or service. Placed on third-party websites, social media platforms, or within various apps, display ads urge consumers to click through to a landing page and take action (subscribe to a newsletter, make a purchase, etc.)

Display ad costs differ, but what makes them cost-effective is how flexible they are. Unlike traditional ads, where you can’t tweak visuals, calls to action (CTAs), or messages once the campaign starts running, display advertising is dynamic, meaning advertisers can adjust things on the go. This flexibility helps brands optimize their campaigns and get the most out of their budget.

Digital advertising market share

Research suggests that the global display advertising market will reach 292.7 billion U.S. dollars by 2026.

Several factors are driving the display ad market growth, including:

• High demand for digital advertising
• Better internet access and connectivity
• The increasing use of mobile devices
• Growing ad spend by brands
• Increased automation of advertising platforms

Why marketers prefer display advertising over search ads

Marketers lean towards choosing display advertising over search ads for various reasons, and the decision largely depends on the objectives of a marketing campaign.

Here are some reasons why you, as a marketer, might prioritize display advertising:Marketers lean towards choosing display advertising over search ads for various reasons, and the decision largely depends on the objectives of a marketing campaign. Here are some reasons why you, as a marketer, might prioritize display advertising:

1. Brand visibility and awareness: Display ads have proven to be more efficient for elevating brand visibility, allowing you to showcase a brand, product, or service to a broader audience, even if users are not actively searching for related terms.

Third-party cookies contribute to boosting brand visibility, as advertisers have been using them to better understand consumer behavior and preferences by tracking user online activities across various websites. However, starting Q1 2024, Google Chrome and other browsers will begin phasing out third-party cookies in order to better protect user privacy, but display ads will still work, just a bit differently.

2. Visual appeal: Display ads seize attention with striking graphics and elements, which is especially beneficial for products or services that thrive on a visually impactful presentation.

3. Robust targeting options: With a wide range of targeting options, display ads allow you to hone in on specific demographics, interests, and behaviors. This precision targeting is invaluable for campaigns demanding a nuanced approach to connecting with a particular audience.

4. Content promotion: In content marketing, display advertising is excellent for drawing attention to valuable content, serving as one the best ways to promote blog posts, articles, and other content pieces.

5. Rich media formats: Display ads are a canvas for rich media formats featuring interactive elements, animations, and videos. This flexibility empowers marketers to craft dynamic and immersive ad experiences, particularly effective for specific products or services.

6. Retargeting options: With retargeting ad campaigns, you can reignite the interest of potential customers who’ve previously visited your website but didn’t make a purchase and nudge them toward conversions.>

7. Top-of-the-funnel engagement: Display and search advertising can work as complementary tools within a digital marketing strategy. While search ads capture users actively searching for specific products or information, display ads are more suitable for introducing the brand to potential customers.

It’s important to note that the choice between display and search ads often depends on the specific campaign objectives, target audience, and the nature of the products or services promoted. Many successful digital marketing strategies combine display and search advertising to maximize reach and effectiveness.

Why is display advertising important?

Imagine this: someone has just learned about your products or services. Now, think of a strategically placed display ad as a friendly reminder nudging them to consider making a purchase.

In fact, display ads are capable of so much more than that:

• Display advertising caters to the people who already know about you and lets you reach out to new audiences who have yet to discover what you offer.
• Display advertising offers a targeted approach by giving you a lot of choices in who sees your ads. It’s not about reaching everyone. It’s about reaching the right people. With display advertising, you’re in the driver’s seat, deciding who sees your ads and who doesn’t.
• Display advertising lets you choose who sees your ads based on topics, interests, where the ads appear, the context, people’s demographics, or specific details about your custom audience. You can tailor your targeting to align with your marketing goals, reaching those who fit your ideal audience or reconnecting with past customers and visitors.

By taking advantage of the diverse targeting options in display advertising, you increase the chances of reaching people eager to purchase with a higher likelihood of turning those prospects into customers and boosting conversion rates.

Programmatic display advertising

Programmatic display advertising, also known as “programmatic marketing” or “programmatic media buying,” is the method of purchasing ad space through software and leveraging intricate algorithms for targeted ad delivery.

Now, let’s clarify the difference between programmatic and display ads. In simple terms, “programmatic” refers to the way you buy ads, while “display” refers to the format of how ads look. The key difference lies in the purchasing process and the ability to buy ads across various platforms.

Display ads are often associated with placing ads within a specific ad network, like the Google Display Network. Programmatic advertising takes it up a notch, as it operates across multiple platforms, including supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-side platforms (DSPs), allowing advertisers to buy ad inventory across an open network of platforms.

With programmatic display ads, marketers have control over critical aspects such as audience targeting, bidding strategy, budget, creative content, and ad placements. It’s like navigating the advertising waves precisely, ensuring your message reaches the right audience in a suitable format across diverse platforms.

Types of display ads

You can advertise the following types of display ads:

1. Banner ads

Banner ads are the most common type of display ads that appear at the top, bottom, or sides of a webpage. They are static images designed to grab attention and encourage clicks.

2. Interstitial ads

Interstitial ads show up as web pages before you go to the webpage or app you wanted to access in the first place. In the example below, you can see how it looks before you open a webpage on a desktop and mobile:

3. Rich media ads

These ads incorporate video, audio, animations, and fillable or clickable elements, such as lead forms, to serve the purpose of lead generation. There are three main types of rich media ads:

• In-page ads show up on a specific ad placement within the webpage
• In-stream ads are video ads that appear before (pre-roll), during (mid-roll), or after (post-roll) video content
• Out-of-page ads are usually initiated by user behavior, for instance, pop-up and expandable ads

4. Native ads

Native advertising refers to a form of advertising that attempts to match the surrounding content on a website to make the message more easily consumable by the users of that website. Native ads appear in-feed and are non-disruptive, like suggested posts on Facebook or promoted posts on Twitter.

5. Video ads

Video ads use moving images and sound to convey a message. They can roll before, during, or after online video content, within social media feeds, or on websites. Video ads are effective for conveying stories and capturing attention.

6. Social media ads

Social media ads appear on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter, and Pinterest. They can take various forms, including image ads, carousel ads, slideshow ads, and video ads. As a part of social media advertising strategy, this type of advertising offers extensive targeting capabilities, allowing you to reach potential customers based on their geographic, demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics/traits.

7. Search ads

Search engine advertising is a type of advertising that appears at the top or bottom of search engine results pages. Search ads are typically text-based and triggered by specific keywords. You can bid on keywords to have your ads displayed when users search for relevant terms.

8. Affiliate marketing banners

These banners are part of affiliate marketing programs where businesses pay affiliates a commission for driving traffic or sales through the affiliate’s marketing efforts. Affiliate marketing banners often contain unique tracking links to monitor conversions.

Why you should include display ads in your marketing campaigns

As mentioned earlier, display ads offer a quicker return on ad spend (ROAS) as they appear on publisher websites immediately after a campaign launch. This is in contrast to SEO, where establishing authority is necessary before appearing in search results.

Running both short-term and long-term ad campaigns enables your business to optimize conversions over an extended period. Once your marketing materials are part of an ad network, targeting and reach become seamless. Take the Google Display Network, for instance—it has the capacity to display your ads on numerous websites visited by your target audience, especially if you carefully selected the right keywords during the campaign launch.

Moreover, display advertising networks offer tools for precise monitoring, refining, and scaling of your campaigns. Using advertising platforms, marketers can identify which assets generate the most impressions, clicks, and conversions—valuable insights that may enhance other marketing efforts as well.

What’s the difference between display ads and banner ads?

Display advertising is an umbrella term representing the big family of digital ads that comes in all shapes and sizes, including banner ads, video ads, pop-up ads, and many more.

Banner ads are rectangular ads you often see at the top, bottom, or sides of a webpage. Today, we usually refer to these as leaderboard ads.

Sometimes, people use the terms “banner ads” and “display ads” interchangeably when discussing display marketing. This could be because, back in the day, display ads were often banners at the top of a website.

To sum up, all banner ads are display ads, but not every display ad is a banner ad.

Why are display ads essential for remarketing?

Remarketing or retargeting allows you to keep your brand in front of your potential customers after they have left your website without performing an action—persuading them to reconsider your offer when they need it.

Remarketing involves showing ads to prospects based on their behavior on your web pages to guide them through your marketing funnel. The process is enabled by cookie-based pixels that track your prospects’ internet browsing behavior after they abandon your website.

Remarketing display ads help call back lost visitors by showing them relevant ads to products/services they showed interest in while on your webpage.

The buyer journey is no longer linear. In fact, it looks like this:

Remarketing display ads help you highlight your value proposition for your target audiences who have steered away from your website—persuading them to revisit your offer when they believe they need it.

There are two types of remarketing campaigns:

1. Pixel-based remarketing works with the help of a JavaScript code that’s placed on your website or landing page. After the pixel is attached, whenever a visitor comes to your website or landing page, the pixel drops an anonymous browser cookie that helps you track their online activities and show relevant display ads at the right time. Take note: starting Q1 2024, Google Chrome and other browsers will begin phasing out third-party cookies in order to better protect user privacy. Google will propose new functionality for cookies to continue supporting legitimate use cases while preserving user privacy.
2. List-based remarketing shows ads to your existing customers to retarget specific ads at them.

Your remarketing display ad campaigns should have the following two goals depending on where the user is in their buying cycle/journey:

1. Awareness: The campaigns are meant for the top-of-the-funnel users—visitors who have had little interaction with your brand. Awareness campaigns inform visitors about your product features and other announcements. You can run awareness campaigns as a forerunner for your conversion campaigns.
2. Conversion: The campaigns are meant for the middle-of-the-funnel users—visitors who are more familiar with your brand and its products or services. They could sign up for a free trial, download an ebook, or watch a webinar but still haven’t bought your product or service. So, you want them to click on a relevant display ad, direct them to a dedicated landing page, and convince them to do so.

Whether you choose to run awareness campaigns or conversion campaigns, the key to creating remarketing display ads that work lies with audience segmentation.

Segment your audience based on the following:

1. Behavior: There are two types of behaviors a visitor can showcase when they’re on your website – not Interested (the visitors spend less than a few seconds on your website, don’t go to any other page on your site, and immediately exit), and Interested (the visitors browse through the website content, maybe even click through to other pages like the resources page, pricing page, or the about us section). Serve remarketing ads to Interested visitors with high intent.
2. Time: Time segmentation involves taking care of three things:
   • The time duration between the visitor’s website visit and when you show them the first display ad
   • The frequency with which visitors see ads
   • The time duration between the visitor’s first visit to the website and the time when they stop seeing remarketing ads
3. Existing customers: Show your display ads to customers who aren’t that active on your platform. The new feature update might convince them to become more active.

Depending on your advertising platform, your remarketing display ads can have multiple formats. However, the components of an optimized remarketing ad essentially remain the same.

Optimized remarketing display ads

Optimizing remarketing display ads involves creating ads that have the following components:

• A persuasive headline: The ad headline should be relevant to the visitors’ experience on your website and must be written to make it stand out.
• Relevant, visually appealing media: Your display ad media should be relevant to the offer presented in your ad copy and must look visually appealing. Be sure to use the branding colors you know the visitor saw on your website to make an instant visual connection.
• A relevant CTA button: Design the CTA button in a contrasting color and add relevant copy.
• Actionable copy: Display ads have limited characters; ad copy that gets to the point immediately and incentivizes visitors to click will likely get you more clicks.

This remarketing display ad has a persuasive discount offer and a call to action:

If you want your target audience to continue the journey with your brand beyond the remarketing ad click, always connect your ads to relevant landing pages. How you optimize the landing page for your display ads and what components all post-display ad click landing pages must have is what we’ll discuss in the next section.

Why connecting display ads to relevant landing pages is important

Optimizing your display ads with the right components gets you an ad click. The prospect of reaching your target audience by clicking your ads is exciting, it’s true. However, the customer journey doesn’t end with the ad click; it is just the beginning.

To ensure that users still want to avail of your offer after clicking the ad, you must connect all your display ads with relevant landing pages.

What is a landing page?

A landing page is exactly what its name suggests—it’s the experience that occurs immediately after a user clicks an ad. You can optimize the landing page by connecting all your ads to landing pages that have the following two attributes:

1. Message match

Message match refers to the process of matching the content of an ad to the content of a landing page to make the user aware that they have landed on a relevant page.

When you create an ad and landing page that maintains a message match, you reassure the user that the page they’ve come to is the one the ad CTA button promised to bring them to.

The display ad and epam landing page maintain a message match. The ad copy talks about future-forward IT services, and the landing page follows through with the same message:

In addition to message match, maintaining a conversion ratio of 1:1 is also very important for an optimized landing page.

1:1 conversion ratio

Conversion ratio refers to the number of places to click on a webpage compared to the number of conversion goals presented on the page. A proper landing page is standalone, separated from your main website’s navigation. The purpose of this page is to promote a single offer, so it should always maintain a 1:1 conversion ratio.

The only clickable link on an optimized landing page is the CTA button. Suppose your landing page has other off-page navigation links. In that case, you are essentially going against the very definition of a landing page, which minimizes your chances of getting visitors to fulfill the conversion goal.

The Active Campaign display ad and landing page maintain message match:

Pair all your display ads with relevant, optimized landing pages to convince visitors to continue their journey with your brand beyond the ad click.

Display advertising allows you to use images and other rich media types to create ads that have the visual appeal to attract new customers and call back potential customers who have lost their way. When you create optimized display ads and connect them to relevant landing pages, you increase the chances of getting an ad click and a CTA button click.

Create optimized landing pages for your display ads today with Instapage.

Sign up for the Instapage 14-day free trial and use the industry’s most sophisticated landing page platform with advanced testing and analytics capabilities.

START 14-DAY TRIAL

Try the world's most advanced landing page platform with a risk-free trial.