Studies from New York University, the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin show that display advertising increases site visits and consumer purchasing behavior – leading to ad engagement. If you have a consistent brand message, then display advertising will increase your visibility, drive more visitors to your site, and help you generate more revenue.
This is not just academic theory; display advertising efforts here at Instapage produce results. After significantly increasing the budget of banner ad campaigns on the Google Display Network, we saw a sustained 20% lift in new subscriptions compared to the preceding weeks.
The image below shows a huge jump in our total unique new paying accounts per week:
This picture shows marketers that you can get better online ad engagement and sales by increasing your budget and having a consistent brand message.
The benefits of display advertising seem straightforward: Demonstrate value to the right people through a unique message and nice-looking pictures so that they give you money. The idea is quite simple but the execution is not easy. The difficulty lies in creating effective display ads that users will engage with and remember.
The Instapage post-click landing page platform makes advertising more effective post-click, so we want to use today’s article to help you improve your pre-click ad engagement in three key areas: Viewer attitude toward the advertisement and brand, the tone of the ad, and the features of the ad image.
User response to image ads
Internet users stereotypically regard online ads as disruptive or annoying. A study in the Journal of Advertising Research counters that high quality advertising can deliver utility to Internet users. User attitudes indicate that ads that address a pressing need of the ad viewer or deliver entertaining messages create positive attitudes. The study states that entertainment “exhibited almost four times more strength of influence on favorable consumer attitudes” than the second strongest predictor, informativeness. Additional research supports this, indicating that when “offered the chance to be entertained, consumers were 27 percent more likely to click an ad than when offered a cheap product.”
Consumers are 27% more likely to click an entertaining ad than when offered a cheap product.
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Other factors influencing viewer attitudes include “peer influence,” “self-brand congruity,” “privacy concerns,” and “invasiveness.” Posts with an informal tone that reinforce compatibility between the brand and the viewer’s identity can provide benefits. When crafting your ad creative, think about the value your product delivers, but also consider the value that the ad itself delivers.
Relevant and helpful information that demonstrates your brand value will help performance, but emotional appeal improves user engagement as well. A study focusing on user responses to social media advertising finds that users “react more favorably to a persuasive message… if it has a greater emotional appeal.” Users that view an informative or persuasive ad with emotional appeal are more likely to associate with a brand positively and spread the message to friends.
An additional study on Facebook posts found that emotional content receives nearly twice as many likes as content lacking emotion. The study recommends using emotional appeal in ads while avoiding “hard sell” or explicitly commercial statements. It also suggests that B2B Facebook posts are more effective if they include corporate brand names. Instapage finds this to be true because our highest engagement post on Facebook in recent months mentions AirBnB in the title: