Search and Display: Perfect Together

Mixing-up Your Marketing Strategy

Want to make your display advertising work harder and your search advertising work better? Then you should run display and search advertising at the same time.

Here are three reasons why search and display ads are a perfect pair.

1. Search Data for Display
Before we go into why display ads are good for search, let’s talk about how search can help your display ads. It’s all about the data.

Your search data gives you critical clues about who your target demographic is, and how they behave. Here are just a few data points to consider:

• Where do your searchers live? If you can gather geographical data about your searchers (often available through IP address information), you can use that data to plan a corresponding regional media campaign.
• When do your searchers search? If you know when your searchers search, you also know when they’re online—which, again, is key when you’re trying to figure out when to serve them an ad of any kind.
• What’s the best creative? Search ads are simple, direct and sparse—and they seem like worlds apart from creative-heavy display advertising. But once you know which bare-bones messages work in search, you can apply that information as the building blocks for better messaging, across all channels—display ads included.

You get the picture. The more you know about your searchers, the more informed you’ll be about where, when and how to serve up display advertising, as well.

2. Drive Searches from Display
Did you know that display advertising can drive search click-throughs?

It’s true. And it’s not hard to see why. Display ads can generate new interest in your brand, and that new brand interest usually drives search traffic on your branded keywords. Display ads also keep your brand top-of-mind, which means that searchers on generic keywords are more likely to respond to ads from your brand, after they’ve seen your display advertising.

That’s why marketers regularly see real surges in search click-throughs after their clients run display ads—even by as much as 20 percent.

3. Better Engagement from Search plus Display
Here’s another search-plus-display benefit. As Yahoo and comScore have found, a search and display combination results in deeper site engagement, and even better bricks-and-mortar conversions than display or search advertising alone.

Why would that be? Probably for the same reason that display ads drive search click-throughs. If you’ve driven search traffic with display advertising, then the search traffic you’ve driven arrives to your site ready for a deeper engagement than the average searcher. It’s another way search plus display combined is better than search alone.

Are these the only benefits of combining search with display? Of course not. There are plenty of other benefits—like those offered through ad programs in which networks target customers based on a combination of search behavior and other online activity. And don’t forget the value of retargeting, in which you can use display ads to re-engage visitors—including search visitors—who arrived at your site but left without converting.

But you get the basic picture. Search and display ads together are much more powerful than either one alone. If you’re missing one of those channels, you’re missing a real opportunity. If you’re combining the two together in the right ways, then you’re well on your way to marketing stardom.

Have a search plus display success story? Post it in the comments section below.

—Abe Mezrich, Communications Manager, Didit