The best sizes for your ads on the Google Display Network

Setting up and optimizing ads on the Google Display Network can be a challenge for an advertiser who is in a learning stage and at times, this trial and error process can generate significant cost overruns when running campaigns.

One of the best ways to optimize your advertising budget is by knowing the size to use for each type of ad. Although it seems that the ads on the Display Network are created with the same characteristics, there are some limitations that you must take into account so that your pieces have a correct performance.

For that reason, in this article I will show you why it is important to define the correct size of your pieces and what are some of the best measures so that your images have a good performance on the Display network.

Define the size in advance

When you are in the process of setting up an ad on the Google Display Network, you will need to define the measurements of the pieces that you are going to publish.

The websites that are within the Display network are the ones that limit the sizes of the ads they show, so when designing your pieces you must create as many variants as possible so that your message is displayed correctly. In this order, if a site shows ads at the top, at the sides or at the bottom of its pages, you will not be able to have pieces of a single size and instead you must have images with dimensions according to those of said website.

Choosing the wrong format for your ads will limit the reach and effectiveness of your campaigns. This is important as there are some ads that, due to their size, perform better than others.

Number of impressions by ad type

Based on the chart above, the 300 × 250 and 728 × 90 ads have the most impressions. With this, it could be assumed that if you want your ads to be shown on as many pages as possible, these are the best formats to create your pieces.

This may be partially true, however it does not explain the importance of the different dimensions of the images, since a successful campaign is not measured by the number of impressions, but also by the clicks that people make. This metric is especially important in determining the effectiveness of an ad based on its size.

However there is a problem. Image ads don't always have the best CTRs, especially when compared to search platform ads. This is in part because ad blocking services can limit your ad exposure, especially if you use only the more prominent 300 × 250 and 728 × 90 formats. For this reason, it is important to understand that one or two ad sizes will not be enough to perform well in your campaigns.

The sizes of images searched by sites on the Google Display Network vary widely. And ad blocking tools can remove the larger ones, but still show the smaller ones. For these reasons, I recommend that you prepare and optimize as many as possible.

In the same way, I recommend that you take into account the sizes you need for your ads on mobile devices, since since the launch of the Display network in 2013, more and more websites are using the ad platform in its mobile version. . Today sales are estimated at about $ 10 billion for those companies that use image ads on mobile devices within the Google network.

This is a fairly important part of the business and if the trend continues, it is very likely that the growth curve will continue in the coming years. For this reason, I recommend that you keep this in mind when setting up your campaigns on mobile devices.

Considering image sizes on mobile devices, these are the most common types of ads you can find on the Display Network.

Taking into account all the above, there are a large number of variables when choosing the size of an ad, which applies to the Display network. In any case, the important thing is that you manage to cover as many locations as possible with your pieces, so I recommend that you evaluate what works best for your business and based on that, set an objective.