What is Display Advertising
Display advertising is also known as banner advertising in Singapore. It conveys messages using logos, text, images, videos, animations, among other graphics. Display advertisers target their audience by exploiting particular traits to increase the effects of the ads.
The ads are displayed on websites, apps, social media sites, which make up the main display marketing platforms. The display ads typically have three seconds to get the brand’s message across. However, to ensure that you are doing the right thing, you need to be on the lookout for the trends shaping the display advertising in Singapore.
Display advertising allows you to quickly and effectively share information with your target audience. This form of advertising can be applied to accomplish a variety of goals including increasing brand awareness, brand engagement, or even increase conversions for your ecommerce website.
In this article, we will offer you a complete guide about display advertising in Singapore to help enhance your brand awareness efforts, engagement, and increase conversions.
Here is a video that expounds on display advertising.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyPc0gmsZ0w
Source: Grow with Google
How Display Advertising Works in Singapore
Display ads are intended to generate traffic to a website by linking to it. The ads can have similar functions such as those of traditional print ads, which are to inform, increase brand awareness, and notify customers about products and services.
The difference is that banner ads are clickable, and are more effective. Brands use display advertising in Singapore for the following reasons:
- Create brand awareness
- Build a user base while acting in the capacity of a lead generator
- Retarget your audience
- Increase conversions
Display ads ought to be placed in high traffic websites that offer interesting or valuable content. For best results, you need to seek sites that are in your niche to ensure the effective use of your advertising budget.
Types of Display Ads
When it comes to display advertising in Singapore, there are several types of display ads, including:
- Expanding
- Static
- Video
- Interactive
- Animated
With that said, a beautiful ad is not enough. Before you embark on display advertising in Singapore, make sure that you have answers to these questions:
- Which websites are most appropriate for your campaign?
- What keywords do people search for when they find your company?
- Which is the most relevant geography for your brand?
- Do you wish to reach users at a certain company?
- Do you want to exclude any domains, users, or geographical locations?
These questions will give you a better understanding of the ads creation process. Here are five things you need to consider when creating banner ads for display advertising in Singapore:
Goals and Themes
The success of display ads is dependent on having a cohesive theme for your display marketing campaign. This is a crucial factor to consider when creating multiple display ads for your campaigns.
You need to maintain consistency in the colours, main image, as well as fonts, to ensure that you create a uniform feel and look across your display marketing campaigns. This will go a long way in reinforcing brand identity and recognition.
Moreover, you should also have similar goals for all your display ads. However, this does not mean that you should hold back from A/B testing for each ad.
Keep It Simple
Other than coming up with a similar theme and overall design, you need to keep the ads simple. Most digital marketers in the effort to make ad buys worthwhile, end up adding too much information, which ends up ruining their display advertising in Singapore.
For this reason, you need to make the ad concise, catchy, and to the point. You must also understand your target audience to know how simple you need to be when creating the display ads.
Include a CTA
While you may have a compelling ad copy, it will amount to nothing if you do not include a call to action. Telling the users what to do is the key to securing clicks. Moreover, you need to optimise your CTA buttons on the display ads to entice the viewers into clicking them.
Provide Value
You need to provide the users with incentives as an incentive for them to click your ads. This includes providing some form of value when the user takes action and moves to the next step. For instance, you could give the users something to download, learn more about, or register for a webinar.
However, you need to ensure that you extend the value on the banner ads to the landing page. It will be counterproductive to have excellent display ads, yet you do not extend value on the landing page.
Targeting, Testing, Optimising
Once you have banner ads with a cohesive concept, simple ad copy, a CTA, and offers value to the user, it is time to launch the campaign. However, the work does not stop there. There is an increase in the number of platforms that are making it easy to target the right audience, access and use analytics while providing key metrics to track click-through rates and impressions.
For starters, you could try A/B testing with two or three versions of your ad. After this, check in with your ad publisher about the performance of your campaign and explore ways that you can optimise it for better results.
You are bound to have seen display ads of different sizes. While it might seem like the dimensions are random, there are standards set by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB). The IAB standard banner sizes include:
| Ad size | Name | Where it’s featured | Supply |
| 300×250 | Medium Rectangle | Embedded within or at the end of articles | Good inventory |
| 336×280 | Large Rectangle | Embedded within or at the end of articles | Good inventory |
| 728×90 | Leaderboard | Placed on top or in inserted in an article | Good inventory |
| 300×600 | Half Page | Featured in the right or left hand side | Growing inventory |
| 468×60 | Banner | Featured in small spaces inside or on the left in articles | Limited, declining inventory |
| 234×60 | Half Banner | Featured in small spaces inside or on the left in articles | Limited, declining inventory |
| 120×600 | Skyscraper | Featured in websites sidebars | Limited inventory |
| 160×600 | Wide Skyscraper | Featured in websites sidebars | Good inventory |
| 970×90 | Wide Skyscraper | Top of website pages | Limited inventory |
| 200×200 | Small Square | Usually featured in the right hand sidebar | Limited inventory |
| 250×250 | Square | Usually featured in the right hand sidebar | Limited inventory |
Trends Shaping Display Advertising in Singapore
Display advertising in Singapore is constantly evolving to meet the demands of the modern consumer. Studies show that at least 80% of consumers today are heading on to digital channels to research, shop, and find product and service recommendations.
Several research companies have carried out studies, and they have shown that display advertising is bound to be an integral part of display marketing in Singapore. According to Statista, projected revenues from display advertising will be worth more than $7 million by 2022.
Moreover, at least 80% of digital display ads will be programmatic by the same period. According to Forbes, native ads receive 53% more views than traditional display ads, and they increase purchase intent by 18%.
Here are some display advertising trends you need to be on the lookout for in Singapore:
Native Advertising
Native ads emulate the look and feel of the media format on which they appear. Consequently, they gain greater acceptance and engagement since they are designed to seamlessly integrate into the social feeds and websites, unlike pop-ups and banners.
Popular formats of native ads include:
- Recommendation widgets such as recommended articles, resources or posts
- In-feed ads, such as those that appear within a feed on platforms such as LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, et al. they appear as a different form of content but are less intrusive than other types of ads
Digital Video
According to IAB’s 2019 Video Advertising Spend Report, the digital video budgets increased 25% year over year, and over 85% of marketers are incorporating video content in their digital display marketing campaigns.
However, short compelling video ads have the power to grab and maintain the consumer’s attention compared to longer videos. YouTube and Google have 6-second bumper ads that offer brands a creative edge of extending brand reach in a short time frame. The trick is to ensure that the videos are high impact and provide value to the consumer.
Mobile Advertising
You cannot ignore the impact of mobile advertising when talking about display advertising in Singapore. It is projected that smartphones will surpass TV as the preferred medium of watching videos and keeping up to date with the news.
This is due to the following reasons:
- The stories feature on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook is an excellent choice for mobile display ads. According to a Facebook survey, the banner ads used on the stories led to a 53% increase in sales. The story display ads are in existing story feeds and appear much like the rest of the organic content
- Google introduced new ad types targeted at mobile devices. The ads will allow advertisers to display several images to their consumers to swipe. Moreover, Android users will start seeing ads in the Google discover feed
The digital display advertising in Singapore is growing at a quick pace, and it remains one of the most effective ways for brands to find new customers. It is also a way of keeping existing customers interested in their new products or services. However, to remain competitive, you need to be on the lookout for strategies that will keep you ahead of the pack in your niche.
Top Display Advertising Networks in Singapore
Fortunately, the number of networks that you could display your banner ads is increasing exponentially. However, for the best results of your display advertising in Singapore, you need to work with the major display ad networks available. These include:
Google Display Network
The Google Display Network is arguably the most popular choice for digital display marketing experts. Approximately 97% of Google’s revenue comes from serving ads, and they have refined their display advertising process over the years to keep up with the times.
The Google Display Network reaches 90% of all internet users across the world, visiting millions of websites, blogs, Google sites, news pages, and more. After creating your display ads, you can use Google Ads to measure the performance of your digital display marketing campaigns. You can then adjust it to meet your goals.
Facebook Audience Network
The Facebook Audience Network is arguably Google display network’s biggest competitor. The network not only has a variety of display marketing options, but it also provides advertisers with a suite of tools that they can use to create perfect display ads.
According to research by Fiksu, brands that installed e-commerce apps from the Facebook Audience Network ads drove as much as 20 times more revenue compared to brands that used other display network ads.
With that said the Facebook Audience Network helps display marketing experts reach the right audience in ad formats suitable for mobile.
Twitter Audience Platform
Twitter has grown to be a formidable social network platform, and it offers one of the best display ads networks. The Twitter Audience Platform is designed to take your ads and promote them through the internet as well as on mobile apps.
It is a simple and effective way for advertisers to reach more than 700 million people on and off Twitter. Advertisers get to push for increased tweet engagements and video views. These options are available in beta to all your managed clients across the world.
Moreover, the platform will, in the coming future, add creative formats that will help you engage better with your in-app audience.
With that said, you need to look into how you can leverage Instagram to improve the success of your display advertising in Singapore.
Types of Display Advertising in Singapore
Depending on the role display ads are meant to fulfil, there are five main types of display advertising campaigns in Singapore. They include:
Target by Website Placement
This is arguably the most effective and safest targeting option for display advertising in Singapore. Targeting by website placement allows you to choose which websites your display marketing ads will appear on, instead of leaving Google to select the sites for you.
Source: Britannica
For example, if you sell life insurance, then selecting sites related to insurance is the best way of reaching interested buyers. However, if you are unsure which websites to target, you can set the digital display marketing campaign to target all sites automatically, and then check the sites where Google displayed your ads. Moreover, you can choose to exclude the sites that are not related to your business.
Remarketing
Remarketing display ads are some of the most common types of display advertising in Singapore. Remarketing is also known as retargeting, and it is a powerful technique that allows you to reconnect with users who have visited your website in the past.
Here is the procedure you can use to set up remarketing ads:
- Add a code snippet, which is provided by Google Ads, across all your web pages
- Create remarketing lists. These are specific segments of your site visitors that you can target with remarketing ads
- Finally, create a remarketing campaign within Google Ads with various ads targeting each of your remarketing lists
The result is that whenever users visit your site and exit it, they will continue to see your brand. In the long run, this will build trust and exposure, thus increasing the chance of purchase.
Target by Interest
Targeting by interest allows you to target site visitors in line with Google’s interest categories. There are two types of interest targeting, affinity audiences and in-market audiences.
- In-market audiences include the people that are looking to buy your products or services very soon. Google will know when these audiences are actively looking for a specific category of products or services based on their social activity and search history.
For instance, people who are reading moneylender reviews, searching for interest rates in Singapore and using loan amortization calculators send a strong signal to Google that they are in the market for a loan.
- Affinity audiences, on the other hand, target users who are not actively searching for products and services. Google places them in the “long-term interest” category by analysing their lifestyle, profile, as well as overall passions and interests.
For example, a person who reads on motorcycles and has subscribed to at least one newsletter or checks motorcycle trends in Singapore, Google will place them in the “motorcycle enthusiasts” affinity audience. This information will then be made available on Google Ads.
Contextual Targeting
Contextual targeting is a form of digital display marketing that uses keywords to find relevant websites to display your ads. Whenever you enter keywords in a display marketing campaign, Google will scan the content on all related web pages and then select the most relevant content of all and display your ads there.
Topic Targeting
Topic targeting allows you to choose specific topics from your web pages to display on your banner ads. Google then selects the web pages related to your preferred topics to match your display marketing ads.
For example, an insurance company may want to select the “Life and General insurance” topic so that their banner ads will be shown on any website related to insurance. The company can then narrow down the targeting by choosing subtopics such as auto insurance, whole life insurance, health insurance and more.
Determining the Success of Display Advertising in Singapore
Display marketing and advertising campaigns are some of the most rewarding marketing strategies when done effectively. With that said, how do you evaluate the success of a digital display marketing campaign?
Digital marketers and advertisers use key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the performance of their marketing and advertising campaigns. Whatever your goal is, these four KPIs will help you know whether the display ads are meeting the set objectives:
Impressions
Whenever an ad appears on a website, it creates an impression. The number of impressions will help you quantify how many times the ad has appeared on a website. Essentially, an impression is a view, and the viewers do not have to take any action for it to occur.
Source: singaporeyou.com
If you record a large number of impressions, then this means that your banner ads are reaching a wide audience. A high impression rate means that there is an increased chance of a conversion. However, if you find that other KPIs such as the engagement rate does not correlate with the impressions, then you ought to rethink the strategy you are using for your display advertising in Singapore.
You also need to pay attention to ad placement, the time it is visible, and your target audience to increase the chances of engagement and conversion. The chances are that if your ad stands out creatively, people will remember its message and foster brand familiarity and recall.
Reach
The reach metric measures how many people have seen the display marketing ad. It quantifies the number of unique views the ad gets. Unique views mean that a single person viewed the ad once. Consequently, if one person sees the ad twice, it does not mean that you have two reaches.
Keeping tabs on the reach metric ensures that you are not wasting resources by showing the ad to the same person. This will come in handy when trying to boost brand awareness and engagement. Moreover, with more people experiencing ad fatigue, it is wise that you tailor your digital display marketing campaigns to reach the intended target market.
Engagement Rate
The engagement rate is expressed as a percentage, and it indicates the number of people that have interacted with your display ads. Engagement includes actions such as hovering over the ad, clicking on the ad, listening to audio, or watching embedded videos.
You can use the information to determine if the ad’s creativity captures the attention of the intended target audience. A high percentage correlates with a high conversion rate. The best way to increase the engagement rate of your ad is to include interactive elements, which results in higher conversion rates.
Click-Through Rates (CTR)
While some display marketing experts argue that tracking CTR is a waste of time, it is still a valid KPI. CTR allows you to see how many people clicked on your ad after seeing it.
The CTR is recorded as a percentage, and it is calculated by taking the ad’s total number of clicks and dividing it by the total number of impressions. If the CTR is high, then you can conclude that the digital display marketing campaign was successful.
Conversion / ROI
For a majority of display marketing executives, conversions, or return on investment (ROI) is one of the most important metrics of all when measuring the success of display ads. It goes without saying that if you are investing money in ads, then you should have a return on your investment.
However, you still need to be mindful of several variables when considering the ROI. Most advertisers measure direct conversions from the display ads. Unfortunately, this is a common misconception, as it might seem like you are not getting enough conversions to cover your expenses.
While each KPI is important, you can only gauge the success of your campaign by comparing these four KPIs together. Moreover, you will receive invaluable insight into how your display marketing campaigns are performing.
How to Create Responsive Display Ads
For beginners or inexperienced display marketing experts, creating responsive display ads can be overwhelming. Moreover, responsive display ads are phasing out traditional responsive ads as the default ad type on the Google Display Network.
Responsive display ads have all the characteristics of traditional responsive ads, and they allow for more control over the ads. Google Ads has a comprehensive and straightforward outline of how to create responsive display ads for your display marketing campaign. With that said, here are a few principles you need to keep in mind:
Target Audience
Before you start designing and creating your display marketing ads, you need to know who your target audience is and what you want from them. This includes anything from clicking on your website or buying a limited product, to trying a service for free.
Value Proposition
In order to rise above the competition, you will need to have a firm affirmation of your value proposition. This will help you in writing the text of your ad, as well as in choosing an appropriate text for your CTA button.
Choose a Standard Web Banner Ad Size
Ad publishers typically use standard banner ad sizes on their platforms, and you ought to remain in the confines of the banner size shown in the table above. If you go outside the standard sizes, you might be limiting the reach of your banner ad campaigns.
High-Quality Photos
The use of low-quality photos can create mistrust between you and the viewer. Moreover, at least 54% of ad viewers will not click on display ads if they do not trust a brand.
Other things to consider when creating your display ads include the use of brand colours, readable fonts, company logo, company name, and website.
Programmatic Advertising
Over the years, display advertising in Singapore has evolved and disrupted by technology. This has seen the emergence of programmatic advertising, which involves the use of intelligent software to buy digital ads automatically.
Programmatic advertising allows for precise targeting, which ensures that you are spending your advertising money on people who are most likely to convert. Moreover, it offers more transparency and control when compared to traditional modes of advertising.
Overview of the Display Advertising Packages in Singapore
The chances are that if you do not have the technical knowhow or lack time to carry out a digital display marketing campaigns, you can always go for a display marketing agency in Singapore. However, individual agencies have a variety of ways of computing how much they will charge for display advertising in Singapore.
The difference in cost depends on a variety of factors, including ad location, ad publisher, the number of website visitors, among others. Fortunately, with an increase in the need for digital advertising in Singapore, there more agencies and publishers are willing to offer competitive rates for their services.
The basic monthly retainers for digital advertising agencies in Singapore range between SGD 1000 and SGD 5000. However, this is exclusive of the actual marketing campaign.
The average cost of essential display marketing services in Singapore includes:
| Display Advertising Packages | Standard | Professional | Enterprise |
| Annual cost | S$12000 | S$36000 | S$60000 |
| Monthly cost | S$1000 | S$3000 | S$5000 |
| Manpower hours | 20 | 23 | 25 |
| Hourly cost | S$ 50 | S$130 | S$200 |
The tables below show some of the critical services provided by display advertising agencies in Singapore.
| Services | Standard | Professional | Enterprise | |
| Keyword optimization | Keyword research | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Keyword targeting | Yes | Yes | Yes
|
|
| Photos | Hi-res photos | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Ad copy optimization | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Image and link optimization | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Ad management | Daily ad management | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Targeting | Retargeting | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Targeting by interest | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Contextual targeting | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Targeting by website placement | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Topic targeting | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Content optimization | Copywriting | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Images | Images and videos | No | Yes | Yes |
| Reports
|
Google Analytics | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Performance Analysis | Yes | Yes | Yes
|
|
| Monthly report | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Questions to Ask Display Advertising Agencies before Hiring
Before hiring display advertising agencies in Singapore, you should take out several quotes and ask questions to gauge their expertise and professionalism. Here are sample questions that you need to ask:
How Would You Prepare and Set Up A Display Marketing Campaign?
This is a crucial question to ask, and it will give you insight into the expertise of the agency or digital display marketing professional. For an experienced professional, they will provide you with a straightforward and concise answer. However, beginners or unprofessional persons will beat around the bush before answering. Here is how to go about preparing and setting display ad campaigns.
What Display Marketing Strategies Do You Use?
It is critical to know if the agency or expert will stick to the digital display marketing best practices to avoid wasting your time and money. Ideally, you want an expert that strictly follows publicly posted best practices. Moreover, they need to have robust strategies to ward off competition and ad fraud.
What Support Will I Get?
Launch of the ad is the easy part. This means that you need extra support to help you determine whether the ad is delivering on the set objectives. For instance, the agency should help you in interpreting the various KPIs, such as impressions, ROI, among others. Moreover, the agency needs to keep on optimising the ad to ensure that you improve your chances of attaining the set objectives.
What Type Of Creative Assets Do You Recommend In The Beginning?
Depending on how the agency representative answers this question, you will be able to gauge the level of their digital display marketing expertise. The agency or professional ought to provide case studies that incorporate real data with regards to your or similar brand.
Do You Include or Exclude Devices and Placements in Your Targeting?
Most brands today focus on knowing who their customers are, but they have no clue of the people that are not part of their audience. Do not make the mistake of leaving it up to the marketing agency to figure out who does not fit with your brand.
Once the agency has done their research on the customers, ensure that you have a list of outlining who will not be the best fit. This ensures that you do not waste time and money, promoting your brand to the wrong audience.
What Display Marketing Campaign Objectives Do You Use?
If your display advertising goals are at the bottom of the funnel, or are revenue and acquisition-based, avoid dealing with an agency that specialises in increasing brand awareness. You ought top be working with an agency focused on increasing conversions.
While the objective might have its merits, you should be careful not to invest time and resources on the wrong display marketing objectives.
Conclusion
Display advertising in Singapore is constantly evolving, and you need to monitor the trends. While this guide might be viewed as directed to beginners, experienced digital display marketing experts could learn a thing or two.
Get in touch with us today for professional display advertising services in Singapore.
