Display and video are channels used for awareness and consideration. Remarketing aside, display and video are generally unprompted from the customer brand engagement, where the audience wasn’t necessarily in the mind set to convert, but are the right audience and are being primed for when they are in the right mind set. This means their performance will always look poorer in comparison to the results driven by channels such as PPC, which engage with audiences who have shown intent through actively searching at that time. This approach can only lead to disregarding the channel as ‘not working’ and limit your engagement with a previously untapped audience.

One of the biggest blockers which is tied very closely to the above challenge is attribution. Many brands rely on last-click attribution to measure performance across all their marketing channels. While this generally benefits your lower funnel channels, it’s an enormous challenge for branding and consideration channels, that don’t aim to be the last click point, but the initial or mid journey interaction points.

Think about your own consumer journeys; you are a building your home gym, and have started to research products and brands, during your lunch break at work. You’re shown a video or display ad for a new fitness brand, you click the banner/video ad, but you need to get back to work. You also need to do some more research, look at the products, compare them to other brands, take measurements, and then potentially come back later, when you have more time to either continue research or purchase. At the weekend, you recall the brand name, search for it and click an SEO listing or PPC ad. This is your last click before you make a purchase.

In this scenario, you were unaware of this new brand, so it wasn’t part of your consideration set. You only became aware of the brand after viewing that display ad, and subsequently searched and purchased. On a last click model however, PPC or SEO would have taken the credit, leaving display/video with a cost for the ad engagement but seemingly, no conversion value.

Brand safety concerns are always valid and should never be disregarded. However, there are ways to mitigate the risk. Utilising brand safety platforms such as Integral Ad Science or Double Verify, can provide a layer of brand protection. Whitelists are a more restrictive method of implementing brand safety processes but can ensure the websites your ads are showing on, are acceptable to your brand.