What Is Display Advertising?
Display advertising is one particularly effective form of paid media marketing that the LSEO team would love to help your business to deploy online.
But an ad performs well only if it is done correctly. Let’s face it: no one wants to see ads that are entirely irrelevant to their interests.
LSEO is happy to partner with businesses that want to benefit from our display advertising services. It takes time and effort to get these ads right. We are here to help.
So, what is display advertising, and how can it help grow your business’s online presence?
Display advertising uses images, videos, and text to market a business’s products or services. Anyone who regularly uses the internet is probably familiar with display ads. You might see a long display ad going down the sidebar of an article you’re reading, or even a short video ad between paragraphs. Display advertising is also enormously popular on social media platforms.
The idea here is that the ads will be relevant to the audiences that see them. The ads should entice users to click them and be taken to a business’s landing page, where the users can buy something or complete a contact form.
Digital marketers use publishers such as the Google Display Network and social media sites to create these ads and then place them where users can see them.
The key to creating effective display ads is to perform audience research and target the advertisements to the correct demographics.
All of this research and creation is included in LSEO’s display advertising services. Our team combines paid media expertise with a focus on our clients to generate display advertising campaigns that convert above all else.
The Different Types of Display Ads
There is no one-size-fits-all mindset in display advertising. Different audiences respond uniquely to the various types of display ads. We’ll cover the main types of ads here.
Traditional Display Ads
Traditional display ads are the meat and potatoes of display advertising. They’re the ones you are most likely to see hanging around on a web page. These ads usually consist of images, text, and a call to action. They can be square or rectangular.
Responsive Display Ads
Responsive display ads combine supplied assets such as images, headlines, descriptions, and logos. Google assembles different combinations and adapts their size, appearance, and format to the available placement. This involves more than changing colors: each asset should work with the others and accurately communicate the offer. See Google’s responsive display ad overview.
Retargeting Display Ads
Retargeting display ads are placed so they can be seen by users who visited the advertiser’s website but did not make a purchase or complete a form. The ad retargets these individuals, hoping to draw them back in to finish what they started.
Native Ads
Another type of display ad is a native ad, which is created to look like the content of the website where it is placed. Users might have to look closely to spot native display ads, since they tend to blend in easily.
Social Media Ads
As their name implies, social media ads are display ads found on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Social media ads usually fit into the interests of the user and change their format depending on the platform and where they appear.
Discovery Ads and Demand Gen
Advertisers familiar with Discovery Ads should evaluate Google’s current Demand Gen offering. It supports image and video advertising across eligible Google surfaces. Google also announced the transition of Display campaigns into Demand Gen in May 2026, with rollout and migration controls varying by account. We review the available channel, audience, creative, and measurement settings before recommending changes. Read Google’s Display and Demand Gen announcement.
How to Target with Display Ads
We mentioned above that the correct kind of targeting is necessary to get display ads right, and that this is a basic component of LSEO’s display advertising services. Let’s explain more about how we target for display ads.
Contextual Targeting
Contextual targeting matches advertisements with relevant page or app content, using signals such as selected topics or content keywords where supported. For example, a cycling retailer may seek placements alongside cycling content. It differs from selecting an audience based on estimated interests or previous interactions. Available controls vary by campaign type; see Google’s contextual targeting guidance.
Interest Targeting
Audience targeting uses eligible segments based on estimated interests, habits, or purchase intent. Affinity, in-market, and custom segments serve different purposes; a custom segment’s keywords or URLs are inputs for audience modeling, not a list of exact searches that every recipient performed. LSEO evaluates the available controls, audience relevance, and performance rather than treating interest targeting as the same as contextual placement. See Google’s audience segment reference.
Remarketing/Retargeting
As we mentioned above, remarketing, or retargeting, helps ad platforms to show display ads to users who visited certain websites and did not complete a desired action. The remarketing helps to bring these people back to those sites.
Considering display advertising for your business? LSEO can review audience fit, creative, landing pages, and conversion measurement within your paid media strategy. Discuss your display advertising goals so we can assess the opportunity around qualified inquiries, sales, and acquisition costs.