In the B2B marketing world, generating qualified leads is typically the highest priority need. Marketing teams are focused on any lead gen method that proves successful, whether it be Google search, LinkedIn, email marketing, Meta, etc. The question digital marketers are often faced with is, how can we raise awareness? How can we increase our top of funnel customers even earlier in the buying cycle? As an agency we are constantly asked to run ads across the Google Display Network (GDN) for awareness purposes. While awareness is definitely important to any marketing strategy, we find the display network to be one of the least effective brand awareness platforms for B2B advertisers. Below gives an in-depth review of the shortfalls of the GDN network, and more effective platforms that should be prioritized ahead of the GDN.
Why is GDN Not Effective?
Poor Audience Targeting Options:
There are minimal options for quality audience targeting within Google. You can create audiences off website visitors, but there are no other options to further qualify the targeted users (company size, job titles etc.). More granular targeting is critical for B2B companies looking for prospects within their ICP. More recently, Google introduced custom intent audiences where you can target people who are searching on certain terms or people who exhibit purchase intent related to these terms. While this appears to be a good option for prospecting, we have found impression volume incredibly high for this audience with an influx of poor-quality placements. On average, custom intent audiences generate a 35% lower conversion rate than general site retargeting audiences.
Placements are Poor Quality:
The Google Display network consists of millions of websites, apps, and other Google owned properties. Of those millions, we find the majority of placements matched to users to be spammy or poor quality. Typically, we see top traffic and impression driving placements come from international sites, mobile apps/games, parked domains (even when excluding parked domains), or websites with untrustworthy domains. You can remove placements across the display network and you can opt out of mobile apps, but it requires constant daily exclusions given that roughly 90% of placements are considered low quality or spammy.
3 Alternatives to Google Display Network:
LinkedIn Ads:
The LinkedIn platform allows for the strongest audience targeting, letting users build audiences off job titles, company size, professional groups, seniority, industry, etc. In addition to platform targeting, users can also develop campaigns for known targets, such as high priority companies or industry contacts. LinkedIn also allows for multiple integrations to your CRM, allowing for robust strategies to be deployed against your pipeline to assist in down funnel activities.
Because we can hit such a highly relevant audience, we can utilize more top of funnel advertising methods like sending users to eBooks, guides, webinars, and even events. Additionally, users who are on the LinkedIn platform are more likely to be looking for business related content, rather than a user browsing the internet with GDN. LinkedIn also offers inMail advertising which delivers a targeted, personal message to the inbox of LinkedIn users. According to LinkedIn, 50% of prospects open inMail messages. You can then evaluate performance to see which job titles or roles are interacting and taking action with your brand.
In addition to lead gen efforts, LinkedIn now offers Connected TV (CTV) as a new placement for advertising. This allows users to advertise on specific television networks, such as the Discovery Channel, Paramount, and Nat Geo, while targeting the same highly relevant, job-title based audience you would have on the feeds. LinkedIn continues to prove to be a more suitable option to spread awareness given the audience targeting capabilities.
Google Demand Gen Campaigns:
Google Demand Gen campaigns (previously Discovery) are a form of display campaigns that target just Gmail, YouTube, and the Google Discover feed on mobile devices. Placement quality is the number one benefit of Demand Gen campaigns due to ads being limited to more legitimate and credible sites. Additionally, Demand Gen ad types are more visually appealing as they are shown across more visual platforms. Demand Gen campaigns can feature carousel ads, where a user can swipe through multiple visually appealing images. Traditional responsive display ads (RDAs) will show ads wherever the placement can fit, commonly resulting in plain text ads across websites. These tend to look “spammy” to users and result in extremely high impression volume. Lastly, Demand Gen campaigns automatically use Google’s AI to generate growth. Automated bidding is required for Demand Gen campaigns with conversion bidding, value based bidding, and max clicks as options. Therefore, campaigns are more focused on goals (site traffic, conversions, etc.) rather than driving impressions like traditional GDN.
Account Based Marketing (ABM) Platforms:
There are also other 3rd party platforms like 6sense or Demandbase, which are ABM platforms that allow users to create precise audiences based on ICPs within their B2B databases. These solutions use existing account lists, targeted keywords, and any other data points to identify accounts best fit for your business. Users can develop more personalized ads for accounts based on their stage in the buying journey. Typically, these solutions allow for advertising within the actual platform however you also can export audiences to apply to existing Google ads search campaigns or Demand Gen campaigns for an additional layer of audience targeting.
In general, it is commonly assumed that the Google Display network is effective for awareness. While building awareness is important for any B2B company, the lack of targeting capabilities and low quality placements lead to highly ineffective spend. We recommend testing other display opportunities, including LinkedIn and other, more targeted display platforms, to produce more meaningful results.
If you have any questions regarding display best practices, or would like to discuss how to optimize your digital marketing programs, please contact us by email at sales@synapsesem.com.
