UPDATE: We mostly bailed on the display network. We had this blog scheduled last week and it already became clear it’s not the best advertising mechanism for us. However, have no fear… We’re repurposing the ads into a much more effective Google re-marketing campaign. Future blog to come!
We sell a product that is generally needed once, twice or three to four times a year. Most of our online costumers (and likely, you) are in need of wristbands for an upcoming event. Maybe you hold this event every few months. Or once or twice a year. The point is, most of our customers are not ordering wristbands every week. And for this reason, we’ve always been hesitant about advertising on Google’s display network.
What is the Google Display Network?
If you’ve gone to a website and seen an ad on the side or top that doesn’t look entirely native to the site, then you’re likely looking at a Google display ad. Google is brokering the selling of ad space between popular, well-trafficked websites and e-commerce websites like ours. We create ads, Google puts us in touch with websites like CNN.com, and then our ad appears on their page. Every time you click it, we pay a nominal fee to Google who then shares the profits with the publisher (in this example, CNN.com).
In the above image there is a display ad for a Canon camera. It says, “Deeper Into The Eye.” Through this type of advertising, CNN.com can make a tidy profit on all of their visitors and Canon can hopefully sell some cameras.
Why we’ve been hesitant to start advertising on the display network.
We’ve always thought of our product as one you need when you need it. It doesn’t seem likely you’d want to purchase 100, 200 or 1000 wristbands simply because you saw an ad while surfing the web. It’s not that type of product. Wristbands take some work for you to sell and you need a reason to sell them, whether that be for a fundraiser or as a merchandise item for your band.
So we walked through life holding this general thought. Until recently, when we had another thought:
What do we have to lose?
The answer is very little. You can set your own budget with Google, so it would be very easy for us to test ads with a small budget. We would just need to create some ads, set up a campaign, and wait for the results.
And that’s exactly what we’re doing. Check out some of the ads we’ve created and you might be seeing soon on some of your favorite websites.
Our Google Display Ads
