A few weeks ago, Noah Brier wrote in an article for AdAge that “online display advertising sucks.”   While this is a well-known truth by parties on both sides of the equation — publishers and advertisers — I was struck by the familiarity of his recommendations as to how to improve performance going forward.  Among his suggestions, two stood out among the rest: 1) develop more and unique creatives based on target sites, and 2) design ads that blend in more with the sites on which they are running.

If these also sound familiar to you, it is likely because they are tactics that have been embraced by the SEM community and are best-practices in any well-managed paid search campaign.  In paid search, marketers have come to understand that one major success factor is the micro-segmentation of keywords into tightly knit ad groups that are then coupled with relevant ad copy across multiple ads; this is the equivalent of Brier’s call for more, unique creatives.  Moreover, many search marketers spend lots of time and effort testing ad copy, modifying keyword groups, and restructuring accounts in an effort to deliver paid search results that feel natural to the user — results that actually belong where they are.

What Brier seems to be calling for more than anything in his article is simply that display advertising begin to adopt the rigor — both qualitative and quantitative — that has become commonplace in the paid search space.  As display media-buying platforms mature and analytics become more sophisticated, it seems that the same skills that lead to SEM dominance may well be transferable to display.  Identifying and acting on shared best-practices across different media can be a huge competitive (or at least first-mover) advantage, and is one that Ampush spends significant time (and thought) trying to achieve.