This blog is written for brands, marketers, startups, and businesses of all sizes who want to understand digital display advertising in simple terms and learn how to use visual online ads to increase brand visibility and reach the right audience.
- Digital Display Advertising Uses Visuals to Grab Attention: Display advertising relies on images, videos, banners, and interactive creatives shown across websites, apps, video platforms, and digital screens to help brands stand out and stay memorable.
- Multiple Ad Formats Serve Different Goals: From banner ads and video ads to interactive, responsive, shopping, and DOOH ads, digital display advertising offers flexible formats that work across devices, locations, and user behaviors.
- Ads Work Through a Smart Technology Ecosystem: Digital display ads operate via advertisers, publishers, ad networks, and ad exchanges, using real-time bidding (RTB) to show the most relevant ad to the right user in milliseconds.
- Trusted Publishers Improve Results: Running display ads on our credible platform HT Media ensures higher visibility, safer ad environments, real audiences, and stronger brand trust making campaigns more effective for awareness, traffic, and long-term growth.
You’ve seen ads while reading news online, playing games, or watching videos, right?These advertisements belong to online display ads. It is one of the simplest ways for brands to showcase their products to millions of internet users.
In this blog, this is what digital display advertising is and how it functions in very simple terms.
Definition of Digital Display Advertising
Digital display advertising means online ads that use pictures, videos, or banners to share a message. These ads appear on:
- News websites
- Blogs
- Apps
- Video platforms
- Shopping sites
- Digital screens in public places
Display ads are not just words. They use visuals, so people can notice them quickly.
Why digital display advertising is popular
- It helps brands reach more people
- It shows ads using pictures or videos
- It can bring more visitors to a website
- It helps people remember a brand after seeing it many times
Types of Digital Display Ads
These are the most widespread types of display ads:
- Banner ads: rectangular-shaped picture ad.
- Video advertisements: advertisements that are presented prior to or within a video.
- Interactive advertisements: advertisements that are easy to click or interact with.
- Responsive advertisements: advertisements which adapt to the screen.
- Shopping display advertisements: advertisements which post pictures of goods and their prices.
- DOOH ads: a digital display on the real screen placed outside, such as in the malls and airports.
All types appear different, yet they all involve the use of visuals to capture attention.
The Digital Display Advertising Ecosystem
A few important groups help digital display ads work:
1. Advertisers
These are brands or businesses that want to run ads.
2. Publishers
These are websites or apps that show ads to people.
3. Ad Networks
These are platforms that connect advertisers and publishers. They collect ad spaces from many websites and apps and sell them to brands.
4. Ad Exchanges
These are digital marketplaces where advertisers can bid to show their ads.
How Digital Display Advertising Works: A Step-by-Step Guide
Let’s understand the process in the easiest way:
Step 1: Advertisers Choose Their Audience
Brands determine who they would like to show their ads before placing their ads. People can be selected by them on the basis of:
- Age group
- Interests (sports, news, business, movies, and so on).
- Device (mobile or laptop)
- Online behavior
- Website message (contextual advertisements)
Step 2: A Fast Auction Happens
Many display ads use a super-fast auction. This is called real-time bidding (RTB).
Here is an easy example:
- You open a website that has an ad space
- The website asks an ad exchange: “Who wants this space?”
- Advertisers give a price (bid)
- The highest bidder wins
- The winning ad appears on your screen
This happens so fast that you don’t even notice it.
Step 3: The Ad Shows on the Screen
After the advertiser wins the auction, the ad appears on the website or app. The ad creative (image or video) is delivered to the user.
Step 4: Performance Is Checked
Advertisers check how well the ads worked using:
- Impressions : number of times the ad was seen
- Clicks : number of times people clicked the ad
- CTR : click-through rate
- Conversions : people who completed an action
- ROAS : return on ad spend
Brands use this data to improve their campaigns over time.
Digital Display Advertising with HT Media
Our digital display campaign will be powered exclusively through HT One Audience targeting, enabling brands to reach high-intent audience cohorts at scale across HT Media’s unified audience ecosystem. This ensures precise segmentation and maximum impact using real and active users identified through the HT One platform.
When brands use digital display advertising with us, they can reach millions of real and active users.
Why Advertise with HT Media
- A very large audience
- Trusted news platforms
- Safe and high-quality websites
- Strong brand value
- Good visibility for ads
- Great for businesses that want more people to know their brand
Benefits of Digital Display Advertising for Businesses
- Easy to notice because of visuals
- Reaches many users
- Good for brand awareness
- Supports retargeting
- Works on apps and websites
- Helps improve sales, website traffic, and engagement
Best Practices for Digital Display Advertising
To make display ads work better:
- Use clear pictures or videos
- Keep text short and simple
- Make ads mobile-friendly
- Use the right ad sizes
- Avoid showing the same ad too many times
- Track results and improve often
- Choose trusted publishers like us.
Who Should Use Digital Display Advertising?
Display ads are great for:
- eCommerce brands
- Local shops
- News or entertainment apps
- Startups
- Big national companies
- Job, health, business, and tech platforms
- Any business that wants more people to see their brand online
Conclusion
Digital display advertising is a simple and strong way to show visual ads on the internet. It works through ad networks, exchanges, auctions, delivery, and tracking. It helps brands grow by reaching more people and staying memorable.
Through our company HT Media digital display advertising is even more powerful because of our huge and trusted platforms.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do you mean by digital display advertising?
Digital display advertising is a form of online advertising that involves the use of visual images such as banner images, videos, GIFs, and interactive graphics in the promotion of brands, products or services on websites, apps and social media. The purpose of these ads is to capture their attention, create brand awareness, and make users make clicks on landing pages or products after audience targeting.
What is an example of display advertising?
An ordinary representation of display advertising is a banner or picture-based advertisement of a product that is displayed on a webpage or application. An example would be a graphic advertisement of shoes, headphones or a phone placed at the top of the page or in the middle of a news article or a blog page, which is display advertising, intended to capture the eye so as to get people to click on a product page.
What are the 4 types of digital marketing?
Digital marketing has 4 primary categories, namely social media marketing, search engine optimization, content marketing, and email marketing. Social media marketing offered brands via posts and paid advertisements on such platforms as Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and LinkedIn. SEO specialises in ranking websites so that they appear higher in the organic search results hence generating free traffic. The content marketing generates informative blogs, videos, and infographics to appeal and inform consumers. Email marketing is used to send specific campaigns and newsletters to achieve loyalty and sales.
What are examples of digital advertising?
Digital advertising encompasses the banner or display advertisements in websites, ouTube video ad, Google paid search advert, and promotion in Facebook or Instagram paid. Other forms are shopping advertisements involving images and prices of the products, mobile app advertisements displayed within the game or utilities, and native sponsored ads that are integrated into webpage content to enhance the visibility and purchase.
What are the 7 types of digital marketing?
There are 7 key forms of digital marketing, which are SEO, SEM, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and influencer marketing. SEO enhances the ranking of organic search whereas SEM involves the use of sponsored advertisement such as Google Ads to be ranked immediately at the top of a search engine. Content marketing develops valuable videos and blogs in order to draw audiences. Affiliate marketing makes a commission off referral links and influencer marketing involves creators to market products. These are combined strategies that promote the growth of brand and sales.
Ready to take your brand to the next level? Connect with us today to explore how HT Media can amplify your presence across our diverse portfolio of 25+ brands and properties. Let's turn your brand vision into reality!
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