The GDN Might Not Be All Junk

I recently launched a Google display campaign for a client, and was a bit apprehensive out of the gate. In the past I’ve seen GDN campaigns drive a ton of low quality traffic, but I’m helping this client get a new product off the ground, and the contextual targeting options for the display network showed some potential.

I was very clear from the beginning that the goal of this campaign wouldn’t be to generate direct response leads, but instead serve as a first touchpoint to introduce a new audience to the brand and its new product. Instead of focusing on leads, the main metrics I used to evaluate performance here were:

• CTR to measure ad quality

• Average engagement time in GA4 to understand if visitors from this campaign were actually consuming site content

• The percentage of site visitors scrolling below the fold to see if they weren’t just parked on the hero section

• The volume of quality companies visiting the site after clicking on these ads as identified by a site visitor identification tool

Initial results after the first week or so weren’t great. The big data points that stood out were that average engagement time was only 3 seconds, and only a handful of visitors scrolled below the fold. While the initial results weren’t promising, I knew that there was a big opportunity to refine performance, so over the next several weeks I implemented several rounds of placement and content exclusions.

After implementing these content exclusions, this campaign saw:

• CTR improved by 41%

• Average engagement time increased to 11s

• There was a 45% increase in visitors scrolling below the fold

• The site visitor identification tool showed a few hundred relevant companies (based on ICP) had visited the site after clicking on these ads

• Branded search volume increased 23%

  • This could also have been impacted by other marketing and outbound efforts

While sometimes I found myself excluding 75% of the placements where these ads appeared in a given week, the optimizations here have clearly had a positive impact. (I’m looking into leveraging larger general exclusion lists).

Initial engagement and site content consumption is now fairly strong, and the company level identification will help me tie actual leads and closed deals to visitors who have interacted with display ads to end up on the site prior to becoming a lead.

I think this is a good example that proves how just because one channel or tactic hasn’t worked in the past, doesn’t mean a new approach isn’t worth testing.

Have questions, considerations, or critiques? I’d love to hear them! If you’re reading this via email, just hit respond. Otherwise, you can find me on LinkedIn.