Display and remarketing that follows up without annoying people
Audience-based display, remarketing and responsive ads across the Google network
Display does two jobs well. It reminds people who already looked at you, and it puts you in front of a defined audience before they think to search. It fails when it is bought as cheap reach and nobody checks where the impressions went. We run it with caps, real audience definitions and view-through numbers kept separate from click numbers.
Remarketing first, prospecting second
For most businesses, remarketing is the only display that pays from month one. Somebody read a service page, did not enquire, and sees a relevant reminder for the next few days with a cap of about three impressions a week. That is a small audience and a small budget, and it usually returns more per rupee than anything else in the account.
Prospecting display is a different proposition. It works when the audience is genuinely defined, in-market segments, custom intent built from competitor searches, lookalikes off a customer list, and when the creative gives somebody a reason to care about an ad they did not ask for. It does not work as a cheap way to buy impressions, and we will not sell it that way.
Creative and hygiene
Every campaign gets responsive display assets plus a small set of designed banners in the sizes that still carry most of the inventory. Where the audience is better reached in a feed than on a website, paid social usually earns the budget instead. Placements are reviewed weekly and the junk, made-for-advertising sites, mobile games, anything with a suspiciously high click rate, is excluded by hand. That list is yours and travels with the account.
View-through conversions are reported on their own line. Display will happily claim credit for a sale that search ads earned, so we keep the two apart and let you judge it fairly.
What display advertising includes
Remarketing
Audience lists split by which pages someone read and how far they got, with sequenced creative and a weekly frequency cap.
Prospecting audiences
In-market segments, custom intent built from competitor and category searches, and customer-match lookalikes. Tested against each other, not assumed.
Responsive & banner creative
Responsive assets for coverage plus designed banners in the sizes that still take most of the inventory, in your brand rather than a template.
Native formats
Demand Gen and native placements where the audience reads rather than scrolls past, with copy written for the surface.
Placement hygiene
A weekly pass excluding made-for-advertising sites, unsuitable apps and content categories you would rather not appear beside.
Measurement
Click and view-through conversions kept on separate lines, plus a holdout group where the budget is large enough to prove lift.
Getting display live and keeping it honest
Audiencesweek 1
Remarketing lists and prospecting segments built from what analytics already knows about who visits and who buys.
Creativeweeks 1–2
Responsive assets and a banner set in your brand, with two message angles so there is something to compare.
Launchweek 2
Live with caps, an opening exclusion list and conversion tracking checked against GA4.
Pruneweekly
Placements, audiences and creative reviewed weekly. Most of the early gain comes from what gets switched off.
Reportmonthly
Reach, frequency, view-through and cost per lead, with the remarketing and prospecting halves reported separately.
From $400/month
Management from $400/month alongside a search or social retainer.
Display ads, answered
What is display advertising?
Image, responsive and native ads shown across websites, apps and YouTube through the Google network. Unlike search, nobody asked to see them, so the targeting is by audience and interest rather than by query, and the creative has to do more of the work.
Does display advertising actually work?
For remarketing, reliably. For cold direct response on its own, rarely. Treat it as the channel that keeps you in view between the first visit and the enquiry, and it earns its budget. Treat it as a way to buy cheap traffic and it will find you the cheapest traffic there is.
How much should we budget for display?
Remarketing can run usefully on a few hundred dollars a month, because the audience is only as big as your traffic. Prospecting needs more to get past the learning phase. Management is $400 a month when it sits alongside a search or social retainer.
What ad formats do you produce?
Responsive display ads, which cover most of the inventory, plus designed banners in the main IAB sizes for the placements that still take them. Native and Demand Gen formats where the audience suits. You get the source files.
How do you stop our ads appearing on rubbish sites?
A starting exclusion list built from what we already know, then a weekly review of the placement report where anything with a strange click rate or an unsuitable audience gets excluded by hand. Mobile game apps and made-for-advertising sites are usually the first out.
How do you measure display?
Clicks and view-through conversions on separate lines, plus reach and frequency so you can see how often a person is being shown the ad. Where the budget allows, we hold back a share of the audience as a control group to check the lift is real rather than assumed.
Follow up properly.
Tell us who visits the site and leaves without enquiring. We will come back with a remarketing plan, a budget and a frequency cap.