Search Ads VS Display Ads – Which One Is Better? [Ad Creatives Cheatsheet]

Beginners in Advertising often get confused when they have to choose between – search or display, while creating ads? Several factors should be taken into consideration while selecting the best campaign for your online business. As one wrong decision can potentially ruin your campaign.  

The basic difference between Search Ad and Display Ad is Search Ad uses Pull approach whereas Display Ad uses Push approach.

It means Search Ads target those people who are looking for your products and services. While Display Ads target those who have interacted with your website, reading your email or watching the video. Search Ad consider one of the favourable ad type to start with advertisement whereas Display Ad generally preferred when you have a good number of visitors for retargeting. Both run with their own specific audience and strategy. 

After getting these differences it will become easier to determine which approach will work better for your products and services.

Search Ads

Search Ad is simple and powerful advertising network because it lets you know about the user intent i.e. what they are looking for while searching. Advertisers bid on keywords here. 

Features

If I want to buy hockey shin guards and heading on google. I see these ads. There are multiple businesses that can solve my problem. I click on it straight to a landing page that complete my searching part. 

So this is why Search Ads are best for capturing the customer intent. 

75% of people that click on ads say said Search Ads make it easier to find the information they’re looking for (Search Engine Land, 2019)

Search Ads lets you control who can see your ads with instant results. Or the Search Ads gives you direct results. Every keyword in Search Ad has its own bid value so just bidding on keyword isn’t enough. Your keyword should be relevant to your ad and your landing page. You need to know the customer objective behind that. 

Tools for Search Ads

Multiple tools are available for keyword research like – Google Keyword Planner, Moz Keyword Explorer, Uber Suggest. I prefer Google Keyword Planner because it has such features as compared to the other two. 

Competitor (Indexed Value) shows you the number of competitors currently using this keyword “WooCommerce” in their ad, so you can get an idea of your keyword bid, competition before using in an ad. 

One of the most popular tools SEMrush lets you do competitor analysis, to see how they are running their Search Ads, what keywords they are using etc.

So use these tools to analyze the customer search intent before placing keywords in ads.

 

Ads Extensions

Search Ads is considered to be the best because of its call extension. The business that gives “urgent services” always prefer with Search Ads.

For example- if you are going somewhere and your car breaks down you are likely to search the service urgently so at that moment you will search in google about car servicing. 

There you will get to know about the call extensions of Search Ads. 

 

Advantages

  • Cure of Poor Organic Traffic

    Google Search Ads itself the solution for a website with low rank on organic search results or poor SEO performance. As it displays over google organic results to gain the ever-important search exposure and reach their audience.

  • Great in Urgency

    Some businesses are likely to take the benefits from Search Ads for companies that provide services or sell products that are required urgently by people from time to time, and when immediacy is key.

  • Intent Marketing

    Search Ads more targeted as they are directly focused on customers intent because it is more important for the companies to know and address the customers’ actual intent. It is important to know what your customers want at that very moment and focusing on the ways to deliver it to them.

 

Display Ads

Display Ads are one of the banner ads or graphic ads that appear on specific areas of websites or social media platforms. You can also use just plain text in an ad but it is still called Display Ad but you can get more from it by adding videos, graphics or HTML5 animations that can make your ad richer and targeted to your users. 

Performing Ads Sizes

Display Ad comes in different shapes and sizes like Leatherboard(728×90), Skyscraper(120×600), Wide Skyscraper(160×600), Half Page(300×600) etc. You don’t need to create ads of every size, it all depends up to your specific needs. 

Features

Display Ads work best for creating brand awareness as they are found where potential customers are present. For example: if you are on a website on Levis then the Display Ad that may show up an advertisement for an apparel store. 

Display Ad focuses on getting high impressions than clicks. Clicks are cheap on display network as you can see in WordStream infographic below-

source – WordStream

Advertisers or marketers collect this information by analysing buyers persona and previous search histories. So you can target those users who come to your site but didn’t get converted. This method is called retargeting. Display Ads are the opportunity to get those customers back to you and convert them using retargeting. The Display Ad reminds them wherever they go after visiting your website, and helps in improving the chance of converting.  

Advantages

  • Display Ad has high visibility

    It’s not just shown to those who visit your website but also those who are not part of your demographics – doesn’t know about your products or services. Even if you are not targeting them, your ad will still be shown in front of them. 

  • Display Ads creates more demand

    The Display Ads work in creating the demand in front of users, not like Search Ads. Your ad come-up when users browse websites and social media platforms not when they are actively looking for their solution. Rather than just making efforts on sales from display network, you should focus more on presenting valuable content for building awareness. 

  • Display Ads and Social Media are best friends

    In-display network, Social Media platforms is an extreme way to increase the traffic of your business, create loyal customers and generate leads. We all know Facebook is the king of social media and connects tons of marketers in it. If you really want your business to grow and not using social media advertisements then you are losing customers daily. 

Search Ads vs Display Ads – Who wins?

The average person spends 28% of his or her time online on social networks — or 1.72 hours per day. Facebook users are so active that every minute, users Like 4 million posts,  comments, status updates, and photos. 

You can go with Facebook Lead Ads. Now we know what Display Ads are suitable for us and what action should we take to get the best possible results for our business. As ads are all about tests and run, marketers prefer all-time changing its content, media to know the buyer persona. 

If you are not using social media ads for capturing leads with a good lead funnel strategy then you are wasting your time. I always use Facebook Ads for lead generation and yes most of the time it makes me happy to get new customers for my business. Firstly, create offers for your customers to attract them from social and let you know about your products or services. Create beautiful images, interacting graphics, rich videos with the best tools available online like Canva. This helps you in creating ads within a minute. 

If you are using Facebook ads for new users, create lookalike audience as shown below –



AdExpresso ran a test on lookalike audiences and found 1% of sizes produced significantly better results. 

source – AdExpresso

You can consider this Brand Awareness Funnel: 

Source: SlideShare

Conclusion

What you have chosen between Search Ads vs Display Ad. Understand and decide the right platform for your business is the solution. Both of these networks – Search Ad Network and Display Ad Network are completely different. If you get the difference you will definitely increase your return on investment. 

Your Search Ad network works on pull approach where you will get to know about the user intent, their query which is ready to convert while the Display Ad networks apply to push approach to get new users with awareness and retargeting.

View Comments (1)

  • You have very well described about the difference between search ads & display ads . I have been working in marketing for past 8 years, I don't consider myself an expert because there is still so much to learn in marketing. By the way, search ads are best if your product or service has a shorter sales cycle that doesn't require multiple touchpoints or retargeting, display ads are ideal if your product or service isn't typically purchased immediately and therefore has a longer sales cycle.

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