In a world of scrolls and skips, only intuitive display ads win. What sets the top display ads apart amidst banner blindness and noise? Let’s unpack.
Consciously or unconsciously, people have become seasoned professionals in ignoring ads. Whether physical or digital, users scroll past hundreds of ads daily.
This is banner blindness. In the current digital landscape consumed by noise, it’s become an unconscious habit. When people are constantly bombarded with ads, they find it taxing to spare attention towards only one.
The banner ads, irrespective of how flashy they are, fail to demand attention. They look and feel crowded, cluttering up the whitespace.
What’s the problem with traditional display advertising?
The real scenario is that even the most well-placed ads go unnoticed if they don’t break through the noise. They end up remaining crumpled up in the space, turning invisible to the users. And ad blockers only add to this challenge.
It’s a response to poorly designed, intrusive ads.
To grow in the modern advertising landscape, businesses must tackle this with confidence. But how?
By spotlighting what works and what doesn’t.
More engaging and intuitive display ads have become a prerequisite more than ever, especially to overcome cognitive filtering and grab attention. And maximize your reach to as many audience segments as possible.
We aren’t attempting to figure out the impossible.
Several brands out there are thriving amidst intense market competition. They haven’t just revamped their display advertising campaigns. But found tactics to balance creative innovation with design best practices.
In theory, all seems plausible. But practical proof is where the actual value shines.
What does it really look like in the real world?
Display Advertising Examples: Brands that Learned to Forego the Flashy Creatives
Here are three prime display advertising examples that not only lead the modern advertising frontlines but are also successfully cutting through banner blindness.
1. Slack – Humanizing Business Communication
Slack advertising doesn’t delve into corporate jargon, but speaks to relevant pain points. Amidst B2B ads that lean towards highlighting features and specifications, its creative strategy focuses on the real-world frustrations of workplace communication.
They use relatable copies with minimal messaging, such as “Be Less Busy,” alongside clean and recognizable branding. The illustrations entail cartoon-style graphics and vibrant gradients. They might be minimal, but not dull.
All of these components soften the “tech” feel behind practical solutions for their chaotic workflows.
Slack ads are effective not due to their aesthetics, but their emotional resonance and clarity of messaging. They understand who their target audience is – decision-makers and overstressed employees. As they heavily lean into retargeting, different ads are often delivered depending on the team the user may belong to, whether it’s HR, IT, or marketing.
Slack’s personalization ensures that every ad boosts engagement while retaining a consistent brand experience across all touchpoints.
It demonstrates how Slack can improve day-to-day workplace communication while emotionally connecting with its audience. Their messaging and visuals are curated to transcend brand blindness.
The modern advertising landscape is saturated with the same robotic B2B pitches. But Slack adds a dash of freshness to it. It illustrated that simple, warm, and user-centric storytelling can prove effective even for workplace solutions.
It all boils down to perceiving employees as individuals who prefer relevance to complexity.
2. Monday.com – A Visual-first Approach
Monday.com‘s display ad approach is more UI-driven and use-case focused. It leverages the product interface as the nexus of each marketing tool.
Their ads include a real screenshot of their dashboards, which are colorful and intuitive. Posit the product’s flexibility and usability without heavy explanations.
Monday transcends the general project management pitch and gets into what users can do with the platform. Interacting with their ads is an immersive and valuable experience. And Monday knows what it’s doing with this visual-first strategy.
However, what truly polishes their approach is how they leverage audience segmentation across their creative content. While one ad may target marketers with “Plan Campaigns Seamlessly,” another directly speaks to IT managers through “Streamline your Team’s Workflow.”
The visual ensures cohesion, while the messaging changes per the pain point of each audience segment.
Additionally, effective CTAs, such as “See How It Works” to “Try It for Free,” are mostly conversion-driven and offer low friction. It targets the psychological barriers and removes them from the get-go, making the action or entry points seem exploratory and easy. There’s no added weight of committing to a demo or sales call once you click on the ad.
These facets make Monday.com’s display ad strategy both familiar and persuasive. There’s a balance between design and context. No element in their ad is present for the sake of it. It’s thoughtful and perceptive.
Monday doesn’t just tell what their platform does. But shows it, negating the cognitive load for the viewers. And across this multi-tasking and fast-scrolling world, this strategy drives action and grabs attention instantaneously.
3. Salesforce – Balancing Authority and Accessibility
Across the enterprise tech space, balancing authority and accessibility is challenging. It’s what Salesforce leverages to amp up its marketing campaigns.
It doesn’t use static messaging, but ensures that every campaign revolves around a specific theme, whether it’s digital transformation or customer-first growth. This way, each campaign is developed with strategic storytelling instead of generic sales pitches.
For example, recently, Salesforce dropped a global brand campaign regarding what the $130 billion company actually does. It’s led by “We Bring Companies and Customers Together.”
With this, the company is making an aggressive effort to illustrate itself in a way people understand. And according to Salesforce’s CMO and Executive VP, this advertising campaign is supposed to help business leaders understand how Salesforce can aid their businesses, irrespective of their size.
With numerous acquisitions made, Salesforce is growing complex. So, its decision-makers want to keep the overall messaging simpler. “It should be easy for everyone to understand in a matter of seconds, regardless of the audience,” says Buscemi, Salesforce’s CMO.
Overall, Salesforce’s display ads’ success is driven by its focus on business outcomes and growth, not just product features.
And to elevate the ad’s value, it leverages thought leadership as a display strategy, i.e., linking whitepapers and benchmark reports to ads. The clicks on the display ads then convert into a form of lead-nurturing tactic. It’s a brand reinforcement tool and a lead-gen engine.
From immediate clicks to trust – an essential functionality in a landscape where buying cycles are long and require multiple stakeholders.
Salesforce’s display ads are layered and consistent across an innumerable number of industries, offering relevance even to those higher up the chain.
As the leading names in the digital-first B2B landscape, they might be doing something right. And we must pinpoint exactly what it is that these brands are doing differently.
Is it the visuals, the messaging, the targeting?
What’s actually working out for them?
The Anatomy of Effective and Intuitive Display Ads
The aforementioned display ad examples demonstrate different approaches to their campaigns.
But overall, they are equally perceptive of what their customers want to see and what modern consumers usually respond to.
These brands recognize the significance of spearheading their ad campaigns towards customer experience. They bridge strategy, design, and user psychology to create effective and intuitive ad campaigns.
From Salesforce to Slack, each has imbibed a few integral components that enhance the brands’ display ad performance:
1. User-centric Messaging
At the nexus of every display ad campaign is understanding the target audience. But it isn’t about demographics or firmographics. The primary focus should be on behavior, intent, and context.
The best of ads, such as the above display advertising examples, speak to a particular pain point or motivation. And they do so, in less than 10 words. Lengthy messaging or explanations aren’t required when the ad copy is relevant and resonating enough.
The viewer must feel like they matter. And for a display ad to be effective, it should answer one significant question: What matters to this user right now?
2. Clear Hierarchy in the Visual
Intuitive ads aren’t meant to be just aesthetically pleasing, but also feel good to the viewer’s eyes. Every text and visual should guide the users’ eyes from the headline/tagline to the CTA.
And the overall graphics included shouldn’t distract the viewer from the narrative. For this, the primary focal points should be the use of a restricted color palette, clean layout, ample whitespace, and bold fonts.
Each element should create a symphony. A great ad design considers this. The overall visual must decrease cognitive effort and ensure the message isn’t lost in the clamor.
3. Relevancy Through Personalization
The previously mentioned display ad examples thrive on dynamic content, the heart of modern advertising. Messages and visuals are tailored based on user behavior or industry segmentation, and speak directly to the user.
And doing so is quite crucial. The ad copy should showcase the correct product variant or speak to the prospect’s motivations. Whether it’s a small “for SaaS marketers” or retargeting efforts, the slightest element can improve relevance and boost engagement.
4. Fast-loading and Mobile-optimized
Most prospects use mobile phones for convenience, whether it’s for personal or professional reasons. With marketers aware that mobile impressions are skyrocketing, most of their strategies include mobile optimization.
Intuitive display ads are optimized for screen sizes and load times. Any tiny friction can deter users from your brand – it’s a fact. Flashy creatives that look great on the desktop but collapse on mobiles lose attention instantly.
Responsiveness isn’t an option. It’s imperative for effective display ads.
5. Action-driven CTAs
Generic CTAs have plagued the market. No matter where you look, it’s the same template recycled. But it’s also not about creating unique and complex CTAs; that’s irrelevant.
Instead of landing on any of the two extremes, CTAs on display ads should be compelling and action-oriented. They should be concise and tied to the value you are offering. It should logically stand out in the ad copy while also matching its tone.
Overall, the CTA shouldn’t be intrusive or hollow. Instead, invite the user to the next logical step.
6. Trust Signals and Brand Consistency
If not done right, display ads can disrupt the experience. When you browse websites, there are often flashy ads that are frayed at the seams, i.e., they disrupt the visual journey.
However, an effective display ad should be a balance between standing out and seamlessly blending with the brand. It should ensure cohesion so that the ad feels part of the website experience and not an obstacle users have to pass.
This hampers the user experience, while a lack of consistency can damage how users perceive your brand. Here, trust signals such as social proofs, testimonials, and reviews play a fundamental role. It should all be part of the ad copy.
Display Ads are Minute Brand Experiences.
With the clutter that ads have become, viewers have started perceiving them as random rectangles on screen. But they aren’t so.
From the marketer’s perspective, display ads should invite and guide users to meaningful actions – a bridge between the brand and its audience. That’s why static banners and uninspired ad copies don’t pack a punch anymore.
Users want ads that feel like the brand’s extension.
The display advertising examples, from Slack to Salesforce, illustrate a common thread: they don’t just clutter up the ad space, but occupy it with purpose. Their underlying success doesn’t lie in championing design but in turning every second of attention into a micro-experience.
They invite users to explore, not just click. And on the other side of the CTA button is an initiative that urges emotion and trust.
As an increasing number of brands attain this mindset, the definition of display ads will also transform. From mere awareness tools, they are converting into intent-powered experiences.
They aren’t supposed to interrupt but interact.
