According to recent research by iPROM and Valicon, display advertising is the most popular form of digital advertising, even among domestic brands. Read this post to learn about its strengths, why it’s prioritized by the leading advertisers and how it’s delivering results.

Research by iPROM and Valicon shows that Slovenian advertisers will soon spend more than €100 million annually on digital advertising. Display advertising will continue to lead investments in 2021.

The effectiveness of display advertising depends on advanced targeting technology

A decade ago, display advertising had the reputation for being a “spray and pray” approach where the content of online banners was completely irrelevant to the user. Many have compared it to TV advertising. However, thanks to the development of advanced advertising technologies, display advertising has become one of the most effective forms of digital advertising, and advertisers prefer it for this reason.

Advertisers can leverage behavioural, contextual and semantic targeting technologies to better align the content of their ad messages to digital media content, serve ads that are more relevant to users and protect their brand.

Predictive targeting allows advertisers to improve their campaign results by serving ads only to users who have expressed an interest in purchasing a product or service. This is why display advertising has proven to be most effective when different ad distribution and data processing technologies are combined and complemented with modern ad formats.

This was the approach we took to create the advertising campaign for SKB banka, which was recognised as the most effective digital project of 2021.

The power of display advertising lies in big data that competitors can’t access

The power of display advertising is derived from the data that is used thoughtfully to create and target advertising messages. In contrast to algorithmic and standard targeting, predictive targeting relies on predictive analytics combining both internal and external data obtained according to the provisions of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

More digitally mature companies are going further by combining data from past campaigns with data from other digital touchpoints and back-end systems. However, in doing so, you need to ensure compliance with GDPR regulations.

In addition to better control over data management, companies that invest into building their own data silos and use them to run advertising campaigns can gain better insight into consumer behaviour, track market needs more effectively, and plan their advertising activities more easily. Since their proprietary data is not accessible to competitors, they are more agile, resilient to change and competitive.

Having your own data silo is a fundamental competitive advantage

SKB banka is using iPROM DMP data management platform to build its data silo. The platform captures advertising campaign data in compliance with the latest regulative guidelines and ensures that it does not contain users’ personal data. By applying advanced algorithms and machine learning this data is converted into smart data and then leveraged for advanced targeting of users in digital media, creating personalized advertising messages and optimizing all digital campaigns in real time.

As part of the award-winning advertising campaign, we used a variety of factors to determine whether or not each individual web user belonged to SKB banka’s target group. Advertising resources were then focused on the users with 90% probability of being in the target group and we served them two or even three times as many ads as we would have otherwise.

Using iPROM Cloud technology, we further optimised targeting in real time (temporally, geographically and technologically) while custom ad formats and limited frequency of ad impressions per user drive even better engagement and improved response from potential customers.

Advanced advertising technology delivers greater brand relevance, protection and security

Advertisers are becoming more aware of the importance of brand protection and are paying attention to the content alongside which their advertisements appear. As brand safety has become a key requirement of advertisers in the delivery of advertising campaigns, there is an increasing desire to maintain control.

When it comes to brand reputation, editorial content, which is usually accompanied by display advertising, is proverbially safer than user-generated content. The use of a number of smart algorithms, which work on the principle of anti-semantics and further ensure that the brand appears in a controlled and reputable context, further strengthens confidence in this leading form of digital advertising in terms of investment.

Display advertising is paving the way to consumers

Most of the purchase journey takes place online and to communicate effectively with consumers, it is crucial to reach them by delivering quality and consistent communication across the various mainly digital touchpoints.

Display advertising plays a key role in this process by using advanced ad formats to grab the consumer’s attention and ensure that the ad message gets through to the right person despite saturation. It encourages research and builds interest and reputation. It also serves relevant and useful ad messages to each targeted user. By doing so, advertisers are able to get the most out of their advertising dollars and consumers receive ads that facilitate their purchase decisions.