Google’s search advertising market might have been cornered, but that does not mean the advertising giant can not try your hand in display. People who wish to craft simple graphical ads, but are not really eager to hire a designer can now cherish, as Google has introduced a do-it-yourself “Display Ad Builder” for AdWords.
“If you have ever wanted to spread out beyond your text ad campaigns, or if you have been looking for an easier way to build display ads, this tool can help,” Trevor Claiborne of the Inside AdWords team wrote a blog in an article that featured this aspect.
Once created, the tool’s simple but creative output can be distributed across the company’s content network. Users can place their own text, images and logos within the ads, as well as amend color schemes and backgrounds.
This amazing self-serve ad creator can build creative units for all placements available on the Google network, including video and game ads. Forty ad templates are customized to business categories such as movies, travel and games.
Google has long offered display ads on its content network, but until now advertisers had to upload their creative assets.
“Today we released the AdWords display ad builder, which lets you create professional-looking display ads in AdWords without needing to hire a designer or start from scratch.”
AdWords Display Ad Builder should be especially useful for small businesses and smaller advertising agencies. It facilitates the progression from simple text based advertising to display ads. At present the tool is only available to advertisers in the U.S. and Canada.
Presently the display ad builder contains forty templates that have been categorized as business, movies, games, travel and so on. AdWords account holders can click “Display Ad Builder” on their “create an ad” page to access this new tool and make new ads or even to modify ads that are already loaded onto the system.
Ads will be charged in the usual manner, on a PPC or CPM pricing format, and will have contextual and placement-based targeting options.
View the Display Ad Builder tutorial here:
The do-it-yourself trend is erasing the barrier to entry for small advertisers on platforms like Facebook and MySpace and it makes sense for Google to hop on board.
In the past few months, competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo have been touting the untapped potential of display advertising, which has always played second fiddle to search because it is not as easily tracked. Microsoft’s engagement mapping tracks advertising effectiveness beyond the traditional last-click before purchase that has propelled search, while Yahoo’s new APT platform aims to eliminate some of the scalability issues for large advertisers online.
Google may not be betting as heavily on display, while the launch message does not say anything about Google’s real motivation behind this, it is obvious that the Display Ad Builder has one purpose, which is to drive smaller businesses to use the content network even more and to improve Google’s position in the display advertising market, but that would not stop the company from getting a few extra dollars where it can.
Interestingly, Google is not the first to launch such a tool. Earlier this week, MySpace took the wraps off its MyAds self-serve ad buying system for bands and small businesses. The beta platform lets marketers bid between $25 and $10,000 for performance-based display ads on the site.
Spending on internet display ads in the UK rose by 16.3 per cent in the first half of 2008 to reach £333.8 million, according to a recent report published by the Internet Advertising Bureau.