The Google Display Network gives brands the space to do what traditional search advertising cannot: have a visual presence in the places where users spend time every day.
It's a channel that allows you to reach potential customers with visuals before they actively search for a product. In this article, we explain what the Google Display Network is, what formats are available, how to target campaigns, how much advertising on the GDN costs, and how to measure its results.
What is Google Display Network?
The Google Display Network (GDN) is an ecosystem of websites, apps, and video channels that provide Google with advertising space. According to Google, the network includes over 2 million partner websites and reaches approximately 90% of the world's internet users.
Advertisements broadcast on GDN take a graphic form – they appear on news portals, blogs, mobile applications, Gmail and YouTube channels.
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How is a GDN campaign different from a Google search ad?
GDN fundamentally differs from search engine campaigns. In search results, an ad reaches someone who has entered a specific query and expressed intent. In the Display Network, an ad finds a user who fits a specific profile—thematic, demographic, or behavioral—but is not necessarily currently searching for a product.
For this reason, GDN works well at the top and middle of the marketing funnel, where the purpose of advertising is to build brand awareness and maintain interest, not to close a sale here and now.
Google Display Network Ad Formats
GDN offers several display ad formats, each differing in purpose and the degree of automation and advertiser control over their appearance. The format chosen depends on the campaign's goals, available visuals, and the degree of brand consistency required.
Flexible display ads
Responsive display ads have been the default format on the Google Display Network since 2018. Advertisers upload a set of assets to the system—a logo, several images in various aspect ratios, up to five headlines, a long headline, and up to five copy variations—and Google's algorithms automatically combine these elements into ready-made creatives. The system tests various combinations and selects those that perform best for a specific placement.
The advantage of this format is that it automatically adjusts to the size and type of advertising space . The same ad can be displayed as a square in a mobile app, a long banner on a news portal, and a rectangle on a blog, without the need to prepare separate graphics for each variant.
Static banners uploaded by the advertiser
The second option is to upload pre-made banners in sizes specified by Google. This format is chosen by advertisers who want complete control over the visual aspect – this includes custom typography, a carefully designed layout, and consistency with brand identity. JPG, PNG, GIF, and HTML5 files are accepted, with a maximum file size of 150 KB.
The most commonly used banner sizes are (in pixels): 300 x 250, 336 x 280, 728 x 90, and 970 x 250 for desktop, and 300 x 600 and 160 x 600 for portrait. Mobile versions are dominated by 320 x 50 and 320 x 100. It's a good idea to create a set of several sizes to ensure your ad can appear in as many placements as possible.
Remarketing in the Display Network
Remarketing involves displaying ads to users who have already interacted with a brand – they've visited the website, viewed specific products, added something to their cart, but haven't completed the purchase. In GDN, remarketing serves as a reminder that appears as the user navigates the web.
A special form of dynamic remarketing is that which displays ads to users in online stores containing the exact products they previously viewed . We've described in detail how to set up remarketing campaigns and control their budget in our article on remarketing in Google Ads.
The new face of remarketing
It's worth noting that the remarketing landscape is changing due to the phasing out of third-party cookies. Advertisers are increasingly basing their audience lists on first-party data—information sourced directly from users, such as from sign-up forms or purchase history. Effective remarketing in 2026 requires accurate conversion measurement, implemented Consent Mode, and systematically building your own database.
Campaign targeting options in GDN
The effectiveness of a Display Network campaign is largely determined by the precision of targeting. Google offers several ways to determine who sees an ad —from contextual relevance to demographic characteristics to specific websites specified by the advertiser.
Contextual Targeting – Keywords and Topics
Contextual targeting involves matching the ad to the content of the page it's intended to appear on. For keywords, the advertiser provides a list of phrases, and Google analyzes the content of partner websites and displays the ad where those words or related topics appear.
The second option is targeting predefined thematic categories —such as sports, finance, automotive, culinary, travel, and many others. This solution works well when we want to be present in a specific context.
Demographic and interest targeting
The second layer is the audience profile. Advertising can be targeted to people of a specific age, gender, parental status, or approximate income level. Additionally, there are interest-based segments (affinity audiences)—groups of users whose online activity indicates a sustained engagement with a given topic, such as cooking enthusiasts or extreme sports fans.
A separate category is in-market segments, encompassing people actively searching for products in a given category. These are particularly valuable for e-commerce because they combine the visual nature of GDN with a clearly defined purchase intention.
Placement targeting
The third method is to specify specific locations where the ad should appear . Advertisers choose the websites, channels, and specific YouTube videos or mobile apps where they want to appear.
This method gives you full control over the advertising environment and works well when you know the preferences of your target group – you know what websites they read, what creators they watch on YouTube and what applications they use every day.
How much does advertising on the Google Display Network cost?
Campaigns in GDN are billed in two basic models.
- The first is CPM (cost per mille), i.e. the cost per thousand ad impressions – works well when the goal of the campaign is to build brand reach and awareness.
- The second one is CPC (cost per click), i.e. pay per click – the right choice when we care about website traffic and conversions.
Both models come from the broader family of PPC billing , but CPM is used more often in GDN than in search engines, because graphic formats work well in image communication.
Cost per click in GDN and the search engine
Display Network bids are typically lower than search campaigns. This is due to the different nature of their traffic – the user doesn't express active purchasing intent, so a click has lower business value.
The actual cost depends on the industry, creative quality, audience relevance, and competition in a given segment. The more accurate the targeting and the more attractive the banner, the lower the display and click rates – Google rewards ads that truly engage users.
How to measure the effects of a campaign in GDN?
Measuring the results of a display campaign differs from evaluating search ads. Click-through rates (CTRs) on GDN are inherently lower because users often don't respond to an ad with an immediate click, but still remember the brand and return to it later. For this reason, view-through conversions—conversions that occur after viewing an ad, without directly clicking—become a key metric.
It's also worth monitoring viewable impressions, which are impressions in which an ad actually appeared on the user's screen and was visible for a specified period of time . The mere fact of being displayed without being visible has no marketing value.
Larger awareness campaigns also measure brand lift— an increase in brand recognition and trust, assessed based on research conducted by Google . Campaign data comes from the Google Ads dashboard , and the full conversion picture is aggregated in Google Analytics 4.
How to create effective display ads?
Effective advertising on GDN is clear, simple, and consistent with the brand – it includes a single message per banner, a clear headline, and a clearly visible call to action (CTA). Overloading with text, contrasting colors, and animations is counterproductive – it triggers banner blindness in users, where they automatically ignore anything that looks like an ad.
Artificial Intelligence in Google Ads
Since 2024, Google Ads has been offering image generation for ads directly within the dashboard, powered by AI models. Advertisers can describe a scene verbally and receive image variants tailored to the format, significantly shortening the creative creation process – especially for smaller companies without their own graphics department.
Regardless of whether we use an AI generator or ready-made designs from a graphic designer, it is worth testing different ad variants and letting Google algorithms choose the ones that work best.
When is it worth choosing a Display Network campaign?
GDN is especially effective where the advertising objective is to build brand awareness, introduce a new product to the market or maintain presence between shopping moments.
It works particularly well in industries where image is key—fashion, design, automotive, tourism, real estate, and food service. Graphic advertising allows you to showcase a product, not just describe it.
The display network works best as a complement to search engine activities. Text ads address the moment of active purchase intent, while display ads address the earlier stages of the customer journey: awareness, consideration, and brand re-engagement. Together, they provide full coverage of the marketing funnel.
Google Display Network FAQs
This powerful Google advertising network consists of over 2 million partner websites, mobile apps, and services (such as YouTube and Gmail) where display ads are displayed. Its reach covers the majority of active internet users.
The most important formats are:
- Traditional display ads – ready-made banners with specific dimensions provided by the advertiser.
- Flexible display ads – the system automatically adjusts the uploaded text, logos and graphics to the available space on a given page.
- Remarketing ads (standard and dynamic).
- Lightbox ads – interactive formats.
Search engine advertising responds to the user's direct intent (when they type a specific phrase into Google). Display advertising is visual and appears to users while browsing articles, blogs, or watching videos, building brand awareness.
This is a format in which you upload individual elements (headlines, descriptions, images and logos) to the system, and Google's artificial intelligence algorithm assembles them into an optimal whole and adjusts the size of the creation to the space on the website or smartphone screen.
Visual campaigns in GDN are perfect for:
- Building and increasing brand awareness (reach).
- Introducing new products or services using an image.
- Reminding people who have already visited the website about the offer (remarketing).
Google allows for very precise targeting, including:
- Demographics (age, gender, parental status).
- User interests and intentions.
- Context (displaying ads on pages with a specific theme).
- Destinations (indicating specific portals or applications where the banner should appear).
This feature allows you to display banner ads to people who have previously visited your website or app but haven't made a purchase or other desired action. In the dynamic version (for e-commerce), the system automatically shows the user the exact products they viewed in the store.
While automated systems perform well, a personalized, unique design allows you to stand out online. You can include, for example, authentic photos of your employees, your premises, or specific products, which builds greater trust and a higher click-through rate (CTR).
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- The Google Display Network (GDN) is a network of over 2 million websites, apps, and video channels. Google uses it to deliver display ads that reach approximately 90% of internet users.
- GDN differs from search engine campaigns in that the ad finds the user based on their profile, not their active intention – hence its role in building brand awareness.
- The Display Network offers flexible display ads, static banners uploaded by the advertiser, and remarketing.
- Campaigns in GDN can be targeted contextually, demographically, based on interests, or to specific destinations.
- Ads are billed on a CPM or CPC basis, and their effectiveness is assessed primarily based on view-through conversions and viewable impressions, not CTR alone.
