B2B DISPLAY

ADVERTISING

HOW-TO GUIDE
 B2B Display Advertising
HOW-TO GUIDE

Business marketers have always advertised in specialized media such as trade magazines, but
their audiences have traditionally been too narrow to use television, radio, and similar mass outlets.
This limitation has carried over into the digital world, where business marketers could target ads
on search terms and industry websites but not buy display ads that reach broad audiences.

This has become an increasing problem as buyers do more research anonymously on the web,
making them harder to identify and nurture. Tools such as content marketing and social media
have filled some of the gap by offering alternative methods of acquiring new names. But those
methods are labor and content intensive, making them difficult to scale. As a result, business
marketers have longingly eyed the “insert coin here” efficiency that lets consumer advertisers
reliably increase results by raising their display ad spend.

Happily, new methods have now made online display advertising a more effective, higher volume
option for business marketers. Improved audience targeting expands the number of prospects
marketers can reach and how frequently they can be contacted. Business marketers must learn a
few new tricks to take advantage of this opportunity. But in return they gain greater control over
the flow of new names and more precise targeting of the messages for each individual. This guide
will ease your entry to the new world of effective B2B display advertising. Let the journey begin.

Display Advertising Basics

Web display advertising includes any kind of advertising presented on a website other than a
search engine. (Search advertising, such as Google AdWords, is different enough that it’s best
treated as a separate topic.) Search advertising is much simpler to manage than display adver-
tising, so most business marketers are already familiar with how to use it.

Site-Based vs. Visitor-Based Targeting

The fundamental benefit of display advertising is that it takes advantage of audiences assembled
by website owners. Usually the audience will be attracted by the content of the website and
thus share a common interest related to the advertiser’s product: corporate travelers will go to a
corporate travel website, steam turbine buyers will go to a steam turbine website, and so on. For
this reason, marketers are often content to show their advertisements to everyone who visits a
site, without knowing anything else about them.

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Ads may also be targeted at specific visitors based on information such as past behaviors or
known interests. This requires technology to identify those visitors. In this case, the contents of
the website where the ad appears are largely irrelevant. (Exception: marketers often avoid ads
on websites whose content they consider objectionable.) Visitor- based targeting usually relies
on web browser cookies that associate a computer with behaviors or interests, even though they
may not be linked to a specific person.

Visitor-based targeting is increasingly available for business marketers. It can be more effective
than site-based targeting, and greatly expands the number of opportunities to deliver targeted
advertisements.

Targeting may also be based on other attributes such as the user’s physical location, their employer,
search terms, previously visited websites, or the type of device they are using. This information is
derived from technical data provided during web interactions. Employer-based targeting is espe-
cially relevant to business marketers.

Purchase Models
Display ads may be sold on basis of cost per impression (cost per thousand or CPM), cost per click
(CPC), or cost per action (CPA), depending on the publisher and the situation. Most ads are sold at
a fixed price, typically as part of a negotiated contract for large number of impressions. Others are
sold on ad exchanges through real time bidding on individual impressions. Different approaches
serve different needs.

Many marketers use several methods to provide the most effective results. For example, they
might make a bulk purchase of site-based ads and supplement this with visitor-based ads targeted
at high value individuals.

Process Flow
The actual mechanics of web display advertising can be surprisingly complex. Indeed, the adver-
tising technology industry sometimes seems to take a perverse pride in the obscurity of its
processes. Still, the basic steps and related systems can be summarized as follows.

Advertisers create their messages (banner ads, videos, etc.) and store them in an ad server
where they can later be fed onto actual webpages.

Publishers create webpages with tags that will display advertisements when the pages are
delivered. The tags may call the publisher’s own ad server directly, or they may call an ad
network that controls what is displayed. The tags can also set and read browser cookies to
identify the user to the publisher.

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 Advertisers place orders that determine who will see their advertisements. They can either
purchase ads based on where they will appear (site- and page-based targeting) or who will see
them (visitor-based targeting). The advertiser can buy directly from publishers or ad networks,
purchase through an agency trading desk, or enter orders into a demand side platform that
coordinates purchases from multiple sources. When purchases are based on visitor character-
istics, a list of cookies to target is loaded into the demand side platform from a data manage-
ment platform, which in turn gets cookies with the desired characteristics from data brokers.

When an individual visits a Web page, the ad tag within the page either loads a page-based
advertisement or sends cookie information to the publisher or ad network, which may serve an
ad based on the visitor characteristics, or let an ad exchange offer the impression to multiple
buyers via real time bidding. Bidders use cookie data and other considerations to decide what
the impression is worth.

Once an ad is selected, it is loaded from the ad server and rendered on the webpage. Tags on
the webpage or within the advertisement may later send the publisher or advertiser additional
information used to measure results and optimize future selections, such as whether the ad is
viewed or clicked on, location of the viewer, and time of day.

Social media networks such as Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn use different technical mech-
anisms, but can also deliver targeted advertising based on either the contents being viewed or
characteristics of the viewers.

Display Advertising For Marketers

The main factor limiting business marketers’ use of web display advertising has been the rela-
tively small number of impressions available on business websites. This has led to high prices and
limited the volume of business that marketers could generate. Visitor-based targeting has greatly
expanded the inventory of available impressions by enabling marketers to reach their target audi-
ences on non-business websites.

Although marketers are sometimes concerned about the context of these advertisements, they can
be more effective than content-based ads if the targeting is based on sufficiently precise information.

One powerful example of visitor-based advertising is retargeting, which shows ads on other
websites to people who have visited a company’s own site. Because the retargeting can be based
on browser cookies placed during the original site visit, the ads can be served even if the visitor
did not identify themselves by filling out a form or taking some other action. This greatly expands
the reach available to company marketers.

4 B2B DISPLAY ADVERTISING HOW-TO GUIDE

Other techniques to improve display advertising results include:

Frequency caps that limit the number of times an individual is shown an advertisement. This
ensures that ad spending is not concentrated on a small number of frequent site visitors. It
depends on cookies or other methods of identifying individuals.

Personalization that tailors ad messages to individual interests or characteristics, such as

company, location, industry, or title. This information may be inferred from behaviors, provided
by visitors when they fill out forms, or purchased from third parties and linked to the visitor via
cookies, IP address, or other identifiers.

Content testing that automatically delivers different advertisements to similar viewers to see
which performs best. Such testing can usually be built into the ad serving process so the
human effort is minimal. Some systems can automatically construct different ads by combining
alternative headlines, photos, and offers to find which combination performs the best. This
allows marketers to test more options than they could manage manually.

Other testing of such variables as audience segments, frequency, time of day, and placement
on the Web page to find the best performers. Systems can often automatically monitor results
and remove the losing options to improve results over time. Users select the metric used to
define good performance, which may be page views, clicks on links within the ad, or subse-
quent conversions such as filling out a form or making a purchase.

Budget limits that ensure advertisements are spread over time by capping the number of ads or
amount spent per day. Similar constraints may limit the cost per impression or cost per action.
Such limits can usually be defined as part of the campaign set-up and enforced automatically.

Alternative formats, such as video, animation, or in-ad surveys. These often attract more
attention than static standard advertisements. They may cost more but marketers can easily
measure performance to determine whether they are worth the added expense.

5 B2B DISPLAY ADVERTISING HOW-TO GUIDE

Challenges
Some of the challenges that display advertising presents to business marketers include:

Visitor tracking — Many audience tracking techniques are based on browser cookies, which
are far from perfect. Privacy conscious users often block their browsers from accepting cookies
or periodically delete cookies they have previously accepted. Many people browse on multiple
devices, such as home and office computers, smart phones, and tablets, which have separate
sets of cookies that are not easily linked to provide a complete customer view. Some mobile
devices will not accept cookies at all, although advertisers have developed some ways to at
least partially compensate for this.

Privacy — Marketers must limit the data they collect from visitors and how they use what they
gather, both to comply with legal restrictions and to avoid making visitors uncomfortable. It’s
important to be aware of the rules that govern the use of individual data, to recognize that
these rules differ in each country, and to keep an eye on new regulations and evolving industry
best practices.

Measurement — Display advertising generates plenty of data, including impressions, cost

per impression, clicks, and conversions. But those metrics often don’t capture the real value
created by an advertisement, such as customer attitudes or changes in long-term behavior.
One critical issue is that display advertising often indirectly influences future leads when they
see an ad but don’t click on it. Traditional methods such as attributing leads to the first or last
ad they view are widely recognized as misleading, and often underestimate the impact of
display in particular. More sophisticated methodologies are available but can be expensive
and difficult to understand. Marketers can gain some insight from simpler analyses such as
correlating changes in lead production with changes in ad spend, or measuring how many new
leads viewed a display at any point in their life cycle.

Expertise — Creating effective display ads, buying media, and measuring results are new skills
for many business marketers. The options for purchasing display ads are especially confusing:
content-based vs. viewer-based, fixed price vs. bid, cost per impression vs. cost per action.
Although self-service options are available, many marketers do best by working with agencies
to provide the necessary skills and experience.

6 B2B DISPLAY ADVERTISING HOW-TO GUIDE

Resources
Several vendors have developed specialized offerings for B2B display advertising. Most can
provide general information on the topic even if you don’t use their services. Companies to
consider include:

Bizo — A B2B advertising network with particular strength in business advertising on Face-
book and LinkedIn, supports cookie-based personalization on company webpages, and
integrates with marketing automation systems for cross-channel campaigns.

DemandBase — Uses the IP address of webpage visitors to identify their employer and
delivers targeted advertising on that basis. Also supports marketers and sales teams by iden-
tifying website visitors by company, auto-filling web forms with company information, enhan-
cing lead records, and targeting messages on corporate websites based on the visitor’s
employer.

Vendemore — A Sweden-based B2B ad network that uses IP address and cookies to target
and retarget display advertising and to deliver website personalization. Particular strength
outside the United States.

BBN Solutions — B2B ad network that offers site-based ads and real time bidding on impres-
sions outside its network.

The complexity of creating, buying, and evaluating web display advertising can seem over-
whelming but, marketers can ignore many of the technical details and hire experts to handle much
of the remaining work. Getting started isn’t as hard as it looks. Just follow the action plan below.

Bottom Line
Web display advertising is a new frontier for many business marketers. Like any frontier, it hides
unknowns and presents risks that more familiar terrain does not. But the paths to success
are increasingly well marked, the rough spots are increasingly paved over, and experienced
guides are widely available. Business marketers should plan an initial journey to explore the
new terrain and find out how they can harvest its resources.

7 B2B DISPLAY ADVERTISING HOW-TO GUIDE

 Action Plan
STEP 1 - Is it Worth Trying?

Display Advertising Opens

1 Is it Worth
Trying? Doors in the Buying Cycle

Is your company having a hard

time finding enough new leads?
Create a Test
2 Program Do you have the budget to
create new ads and purchase
ad impressions? Is it impossible
to reach the complete pool of
potential buyers directly through
purchased lists or trade shows?
Measure
3 Results
Most companies would answer
“yes” to all these questions, but
your situation might be different.

The key benefit of display

advertising is that it reaches
potential buyers early in the
4 Expand
buying cycle, well before they are
ready to contact you on their own.

This expands your audience

beyond those people who know
your company already.

8 B2B DISPLAY ADVERTISING HOW-TO GUIDE

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