Sorry to burst your display ad dreams but…display ads suck

Here is what we’re seeing so far. Display ads have long been a key marketing tactic for advertisers across the web. However, over the years the format has been watered down and evolved into a straight waste of money for most advertisers sold into the junk format.

Here is where it gets worse…agencies and programmatic dsp vendors add exorbitant CPM fees that 90% of the time are hidden from the client.

The false positive is that display ads are “cheap” citing lower overall CPM costs relative to let’s say OTT or social media. Don’t let the narrative fool you.

Display Ads perform nowhere near the power of paid search ads and have much less control over the user’s desired intent.

The only positive we see with display is the potential to have control over your target audience however, after spending millions in ad dollars and setting up countless programmatic campaigns we’ve discovered most of these audiences are watered down and highly diluted when mixing six or more line items.

Line items are the audience segments you include in your campaign prior to putting the campaign live.

What does this mean for the future of display?

Well first off… if you are running display ads with an ad agency be sure to ask them for clear media fee transparency. Chances are these fees could be eating up as much as 45-70% of your media budget. 

No joke…we’ve seen 70% CPM fees. Imagine the client’s face when they realize only $300 of the $1000 budget they are getting invoiced for is going to their agency’s pocket.

Oh no…there more

Display Ads are often considered “direct response” ads, due to their clickable format. However, we’ve found that most of these clicks tend to not convert.

Meanwhile attribution sources that claim “full funnel” attribution tend to be based on impression view-through attribution. Essentially matching users only to the impression vs the actual click.

Now before you dive in further…go google “programmatic ad fraud” and you will for sure end down a similar rabbit hole to the one we’ve just ranted on.

Sorry to ruin your display ad dreams but we’re doing what we can to help marketers save time and money.

….wolf out