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Do you want to utilise your display ads more effectively? Have you ever considered optimising your digital display campaigns for global audiences? If not, this is the blog for you. 

Right now, there are over 4.66 billion internet users in the world, and display advertising is an essential part of this digital ecosystem for businesses, allowing promotional material to appear across multiple platforms at once. 

Yet many companies using this method of online advertising fail to actually use it to its full potential. Read on to learn more about the importance of a globally-focused display ad campaign, and how to get the most out of your ads. 

Transcreation 

The cornerstone of a truly successful global display ad campaign is transcreation.

Much more reflexive and personalised than translation alone, transcreation ensures that the meaning of an ad is carried across to different cultures, as well as the messaging — think multicultural rather than just multilingual. Where translation is often literal, leaving scope for mistakes or even offence (like KFC’s international blunder in China), transcreation is deeply contextualised within and responsive to the culture, idioms, local customs, and language of the location you are trying to market in. 

When planning to show your ad in a new country or region, you have to first consider their values, and implement culturally-sensitive localisation techniques to refine your ads. This can be difficult, as it requires specialist knowledge and multiple skill sets to be in operation at once, including (but not limited to):

  • Translation
  • Copywriting
  • Proofreading
  • In-depth research
  • Localisation 
  • Collaboration
  • Editing
  • Cultural familiarisation 
  • Contextualisation

For this reason, it is often best left to the professionals — and we definitely don’t recommend using translation tools, as things can often go awry. 

To find out more about how we can help you introduce your ads comfortably and successfully into different cultures, visit our Transcreation & Localisation page. Or to see the different types of banners our team can design to support your campaigns, download our handy fact sheet here.

Types of audiences

While it might sound obvious, if you’re expanding the location of your display ad campaign, you are broadening the audience profile too. If you are planning to advertise in new areas, the demographic you are targeting will naturally change, and it is essential to stay on top of these local and cultural variations. 

Similarly to transcreation (though, less content-orientated), the audiences that your ad campaign is targeting need to be honed in order to reflect global differences.

You might want to ask yourself the following questions:

  • Which areas do I want to focus on?
  • Are there any areas to avoid? 
  • How do these individual areas differ?
  • What are the audiences going to be like in these areas?

Campaign-wise, it is essential to create clear, unique custom audiences for each area you wish to target. This is a separate section to Google’s affinity audiences and in-market audience targeting options. 

To do this, navigate to the Tools & Settings in your Google Ads account and select Audience Manager -> Custom Audiences. Then, name your audience and choose a targeting option. From here, you can begin to add targeted terms. 

Under the Custom Audience section, you can hone in on the following about your audience:

  • Interests & behaviour
  • The websites they visit 
  • The apps they use 
  • And even the places they visited. 

Location targeting

The last point has a lot of scope, and location targeting is worth discussing at length. This feature of Google Ads manager allows your ads to target audiences in specific locations.  

To make the most of this helpful feature, you may want to add and exclude locations from your display ad targeting list. If an area is performing exceedingly well, or, on the other hand, is highly competitive,  you can always adjust the bid for that area, too. If there are certain locations that aren’t doing so well, exclude them or lower your bid. This responsive activity is a really effective way to keep costs down and in proportion when targeting new areas. 

Reversioning/ retargeting/ remarketing   

Another useful tool to help you get the most out of your display advertising campaigns (global or otherwise) is the remarketing option — sometimes called ‘reversioning’ or ‘retargeting’.

By showing your ads on multiple occasions to people who have previously demonstrated interest in your company, you are actively honing your budget on the people most likely to buy your products and services. If you’re expanding your ads globally, it is worth also keeping an eye on the controllable: the users who keep coming back. This feature allows you to show your ads to people who have 

  1. Already visited your website
  2. Engaged with your content
  3. Are an existing or previous customer 

By retargeting users who have already been exposed to your brand, you can showcase new products and/or reel customers back in. For example, you can target ‘cart abandoners’ or individuals who visit the same webpage multiple times in a day, to provide them with more information or a positive review to sway their decision. 

Let’s say you are an online travel provider looking to target customers that have bought holiday packages from you before. You can easily do this with display advertising, creating custom ads that tap into the ‘post-holiday blues’ feeling.

Our display advertising solutions 

Here at We Are Amnet, we pride ourselves on delivering top-quality digital marketing services quickly and effectively. Find out how we designed digital banners for a leading UK DFM platform here.

If your in-house team could use a hand creating targeted digital adverts for a global audience, contact us today or head over to our Display Advertising Page to find out more. 

Saskia Johnson

Author Saskia Johnson

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