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Overload of SEO and PPC (search) Agencies?
Anyone else feel like there are a ton of SEO or PPC agencies everywhere that specialize in search, even social media marketing / management agencies, however there are not that many Display only agencies?
Is this the norm because search and social marketing is higher in demand?
Is it viable for a freelancer or digital marketing agency to only specialise in display ads with GDN, or is the market too small, or perhaps it is too niche a service?
Would like to know all your thoughts on this, thanks!
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13 Replies
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Yes it would be way more unique. And if you can do it well and actually get results for the businesses the possibilities could be endless. Imagine all the agencies that you could partner with that dont really know display. The hard part is generally display traffic is much colder and you need to put in a lot more effort to achieve results. Just my thoughts.
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I think it would be very doable, but as you suggested, there’s not many people that are actively seeking a Display-specific specialist. Maybe just because they don’t know they are out there. If you’re a display expert you may be good at generating demand though 🙂 I work in paid search for ecommerce, and display is definitely a weak point of mine. A lot of my clients could benefit from someone who is more familiar with various display networks and services that also has some chops on the creative side. Especially for certain industries that have restrictions on Google and other platforms, like medical, adult, etc.
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You could be an “Awareness agency” 🙂 But that would mean programmatic etc… Surely more than just GDN. The issue in my opinion is that even if your display advertising is top notch, very creative, and indeed would bring better results, for most companies it would be such a small piece of the puzzle that most clients don’t buy it separately.
(whilst specialized agencies would makes sense, e.g. difficult to find an agency that is awesome in both Facebook PPC and Google PPC, usually they offer both, but are better in one of them…)
The market (display) is not small, but the service is somewhat niche, bought as part of a larger package. However, I could imagine a large agency hiring a freelancer with proven trackrecord of awesome, creative display campaigns… 🙂
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I am not an expert in this field but based on my -fairly short- experience, I believe this is tied to misinformation and lack of knowledge, just like many other areas of digital marketing I have learned about.
So far, a lot of clients who are interested in search ads have the idea of “I want to be on top of Google so people who search for my vertical will see me first”. This is a more persuasive statement, which most likely creates more demand for search after all.
Also, I can only imagine the number of business owners who think display ads are only about inserting blogs & images on websites, considering the only place their ads can go is next to the “mEeT siNgLeS iN YoUr ArEa” banners.
The location plays a massive role as well. If you have a bunch of contractors or home renovation services etc. around you, I can anticipate search ads & SEO being more in demand whereas, in areas full of restaurants and entertainment, social may be more in demand.
Lastly, display, depending on how your agency is structured, may require more work and design skills as it requires proficiency with setting up campaigns on the back-end and also creating the banners (or the content you wish to use). Often, skills are transferrable between SEO & PPC/Search as well, which allows smaller agencies to offer both of the services with ease.
I am not educated on this subject, but I would suggest studying Google’s decision to remove third-party cookies further before specializing in display only.
Again, this is based on my limited experience and it may not be the case for everyone.
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They do exist, but display agencies don’t use GDN, they use programmatic platforms like tradedesk or DV360.
However getting an agency account on those platforms requires a big minimum, so there aren’t that many agencies comparatively.
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Most agencies that sell display are full-service and do big bucks with big brands. They may run some stuff in-house on Google 360 or whatever but mostly just do ad buys through various networks.
It’s a branding channel and therefore a lot of small businesses don’t buy much display.
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As a marketer who works in-house, I think there’s a reason this doesn’t exist. Most companies want to minimize the number of agencies they work with. For me at least my team handles both search and display. So if we were going to shop for an agency, we’d want one that does both.
IMO, search is easier to run, easier to get a good ROAS out of, and is a natural place for clients to start with. Usually I expect an agency would do a good job with a company’s search spend, and then upsell them on doing a test for display. This probably doesn’t happen much the other way around.
You’d probably get used most by agencies that are weak in display, to white-label your work and sell it as their own to clients.
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Display ads are some sort of ‘adventurous’ at the current state. With search or social ads I can make prognosis and state KPIs for my clients but with Display I usually just tell them let’s spend $1k and see what we get. The problem is most of clients don’t want to hear anyth like that. They want to be sure in the result and what they invest in
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Display is typically a brand awareness play. We are bombarded with display ads everywhere on the web, and you won’t see much leverage with going programmatic on a RTB platform (as others have already mentioned).
We use The Trade Desk for display campaigns, but you are only able to access the platform if you maintain an average spend of $20-40k a month.
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Display only is very ambiguous to myself at least..
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Majority of agencies should include display if they are focused on search as they should be specialised across the whole google search network from youtube, display to shopping. Once set up and performing well then you can also switch them to tCPA or other bidding methods which use machine learning which really requires minimal management.
Also, this helps with minimising communication and multiple strategies from different parties. If you can find a growth agency the does all of the above why would you deal with an agency or freelancer for both?
While others have mentioned the agencies also need a high spend threshold to get onto Google’s programmatic platform which to be honest is more focused on branding compared to performance marketing ROI but you can work with specific agencies that look after this side. Most of them will be larger multinational agencies.
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OK it’s beer thirty, I can answer this as we’re a medium to large agency that does 7-8 figures per month of programmatic not counting search and social buckets. We’re a few hundred employees. We do omni channel for some clients (SEM/Social/Programmatic) and for others we may do single channel, quite often programmatic but there’s a lot of examples of only SEM or social at scale so we see quite a bit.
What most people mean when they say programmatic is display but it’s really much more. This includes programmatic native, pre roll video, connected tv, radio, geofencing, offline attribution, cross device, cross platform. Etc. All with the same pixel.
Technically Google and Facebook are “programmatic” but they’ve become walled gardens unto themselves so programmatic has become synonymous more with open market bidding. Bidding. Auction. Did I mention programmatic is also commonly known as RTB (real time bidding).
We use TTD (DSP), the trade desk and in my personal opinion it’s the best for full funnel programmatic campaigns compared to say DV360 (DSP) Google’s enterprise display platform that is better at awareness than mid and lower funnel campaigns.
Now programmatic is a bit of a challenge compared to social and Google products which have no minimum. There are direct site deals (direct non programmatic), there are SSPs (supply side platforms) and then are DSPs (demand side platforms, aggregate multiple SSPs and other features) each tier comes with its minimums, scale and features.
The cool thing about RTB/Programmatic is that the more scale you can buy at the better your pricing, usually priced in CPM. Whereas Google and Facebook set the price and its difficult to get a low CPM, at scale, especially retargeting programmatic makes it much easier. I can get a $2 CPM for 68% Prospecting and 32% retargeting Blended if my targeting isn’t too narrow or uses any third party data. I’ve seen that kind of costing scale nationally for ROAS campaigns.
Which brings us to the next benefit, a black box that comes with a user manual and you can play with but isn’t a walled garden. What I mean by that is all the targeting available on Facebook and Google use first and second party data and sometimes third party. Third party data, ie, data providers like BlueKai, Adform, eXalate, Lotame, and about 100 others. Allow you to realllllyyy dial in your niche and customized needs. B2B? Got it. Household income? No problem.
All the things Facebook took away? Lots of it is available. Fully vetted. Opted in and usable for targeting. Something like a few hundred thousand segments last time I looked. That file has a high propensity to crash excel.
It doesn’t stop at targeting. You can report on offline events. Cross device. Top paths to conversion. Etc.
You can even build your own tech on top of certain programmatic platforms.
Facebook is basically the #1 “display” network in the world meaning people see something and the impression they get leads to intent. See, search is fantastic because it’s literally raising their hand and saying…. I want this thing. Social and Programmatic and display of all sorts is great for creating that want an intent. Organic and paid search volumes will go up as people see your add and choose to search instead of click (70-95% of display/social conversions).
Aka post view and attribution falls off because GA works on a click model. So it becomes a discussion on tracking and source of truth. You begin to learn platforms influence sales, run enough channels and there’s significant overlap duplication, there’s practically no such thing as a 1:1 conversion.We all use GA, right? For those that run Traditional TV/Radio or a billboard- aside from a code or a phone number if someone writes it down (HA!) TV is valued nearly at $0 in a click based platform like GA. But that’s not its value. The value is brand awareness. The value is plop plop fizz fizz sung by kids decades later who never even used the product!!
First of all TV still works wonders but it’s shifting to online and digital platforms as demographics and habits change. My 70+ year old parents talk about YouTube videos they watch. The cool part is the trackability and being able to retarget video with, say display banners and setting up sequential funnels (dear tier 1 brands, hire agencies that don’t suck, I am TIRED of seeing your sorry ad 50x in a weekend all saying the same thing) and generally setting up multiple ad types so you can leverage various types of content to get numerous channels of convertible traffic.
Google and Facebook are great but there’s a big wide world out there beyond those channels that convert for performance and can also yield great reach with lookalike (1st party list matching), demographic, interest, behavioral, etc.
Billions and trillions of each ad type every single day on every site and platform that runs programmatic ads that aren’t Facebook and Google. Think about how many people don’t use Facebook on a daily basis and an enterprise DSP will target the top 20-40 networks for each ad type.
I’m trying not to self promote but if you’re interested in an inventory, ad type, data targeting sheet feel free to DM me and I’ll invite you to the Google doc. It basically lists all the SSPs, Third party providers and things that Google and Facebook bake into smart and automated campaigns but don’t let you control or gain insight from in any way beyond vague categories.
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From what I gather and from speaking with other advertisers, Display is simply hard to crack. I’ve seen tremendous results on Display, having launched multiple businesses where I start with Display before any other traffic source in the last 2-3 years alone. If you can convert cold traffic from Display, then you’re sitting on a gold mine.
In fact, that’s why I created a course specifically teaching others how to convert Display traffic. IMO the reason it’s so tough is because it is a deep and complex platform, ultimately far more powerful than Facebook or Native networks like Taboola, Outbrain, Revcontent, etc. And because of that’s, it’s so darn easy to leave an incorrect setting that causes Google to absolutely blow through your budget with little to no conversions or user engagement.
BUT, if you know what settings filter out the junk, how to properly optimize, then Display can get way more targeted traffic than Facebook or other Native sources.
That’s just my two cents.
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