Creating display banners can be slow and time consuming. That’s because when it comes to ad campaigns, you typically need multiple banners. In fact, some retail media display ad campaigns require 12 or more ad banners. In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the reasons that creating banners is so time consuming and how the slow nature of creating them can lead to missed opportunities, lack of relevancy, and lost revenue. From there we’ll explore how modern tools like our Banner Builder, combined with more modular approaches to content creation can transform your content creation workflow.

The Challenge

First, let’s take a look at why building creative in general can be very time consuming. Many small and mid size brands have in-house design teams, creative agencies or both. But these teams are typically tasked with creative tasks months in advance–and sometimes for the full year. Plus, they have a huge variety and volume of deliverables to content with, from TV advertising campaigns, to brand refreshes, new product packaging, brand logos, brand standard creation and refresh and more. This makes it challenging for creative teams to fit in frequent requests from e-commerce teams.

The problem becomes even more magnified when you consider the number of retailers and formats that e-commerce teams have to deal with. Combine that with the often opportunistic nature of e-commerce advertising at the top of the funnel, for example, retailer dollar match opportunities; or the need to promote specific products or brands based on product availability or the need to sell-through product. When you take all of this into account, it becomes increasingly difficult for in-house creative teams or external design agencies to meet the needs of e-commerce teams. Design teams and the e-commerce teams often become frustrated as a result.

With that backdrop, let’s dig further into the particular challenges of creating banner ads. When it comes to building banner ads, there are a few major challenges. First, each campaign typically requires a number of different sizes. Second, while some sizes are horizontal, others are vertical. The different design aspects means that the graphics and text need to be customized for each specific banner size. When it comes to advertising a wide soundbar for example, one size will work for horizontal banners, while another size will be needed for vertical display banners.

Third, the design process itself often requires multiple iterations, based on the feedback of various constituents in the organization. These iterations often require text changes and image changes before creative is finalized.

Finally, to achieve optimal performance, it’s critical to A/B test creative to see what performs the best. That means creating a variety of different offers, headlines and CTAs. Without the right tools, the process to build and iterate all this creative can be much slower than desired.

Here then are 5 key ways that leading brands are increasing relevancy with display ads:

1. Align top of funnel display ads with bottom of funnel PDP images and videos to give shoppers a cohesive experience that will convert.

If you’ve ever clicked on a display ad only to land on a product detail page (PDP) that seemed to have no relation to the display ad, you’ll be familiar with that all too jarring experience that happens when top and bottom of funnel advertising and content marketing approaches are out of alignment. That lack of alignment leads to a disconnected shopping experience, causing potential shopper to fall out of the funnel rather than clicking to ad to cart and convert. That’s why leading brands are aligning their top and bottom of funnel marketing efforts, with ads and on-page content that are highly aligned.

2. Take advantage of seasonal and occasion-based marketing opportunities to stay relevant to shoppers throughout the year.

So many brands miss out on key opportunities during the year. They market for one occasion every year, when they could be refreshing every month to be relevant to shoppers. Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Back to School… the list goes on. But even more than that – think of all the occasions that aren’t holidays that you can market to. Selling gum? Think about all the occasions… outdoors, indoors, at work, at the desk, at the game, and so on. All of these are amazing display advertising opportunities, and yet many brands are passing them up. Instead of seeing relevant ads, shoppers tune them out. But when those ads are made relevant–through a focus on specific occasions or holidays, leveraging tools like our Banner Builder, they dramatically increase the relevancy of display creative. And more interest at the top of the funnel means more conversions at the bottom of the funnel.

3. Repurpose existing marketing assets into new shopper relevant advertising so that you can maximize the value of your existing marketing content.

With the right toolset, like our tools for building display ads, you can take existing marketing assets, no matter how limited they may seem to be, and turn them into engaging, highly relevant display ads. Even if you have just a few product images, with the right toolset, you can overlay those images on backgrounds, with compelling headlines and CTAs that will increase top of funnel awareness. Virtually any existing marketing asset you have on hand can be resized and repurposed into a full set of creative.

4. A/B test multiple offers in display ads to see which ones shoppers find the most relevant.

All too often, opportunities to test multiple offers to to waste. Brands run out of time while building creative, or the cost of building that creative is too high. And as a result, they don’t have time to version their display ads. And yet with the right tools, multiple versions can be created with the click of a button. With our template import tool, you can even create a google sheet or Excel file with all the outputs you want to create, and then generate dozens or hundreds of variations in one go.

5. Feature new products and new product combos in display advertising so that you can create visibility and awareness for any new products you launch.

Finally, leading brands maximize awareness around new product launches with compelling display ads. That’s because display ads are no longer just available as a format on publisher sites — they’re also available on .com sites like Amazon, Walmart, Instacart, Kroger and many more. These banner ads create awareness for new products. And because display ads can include headlines, and CTAs, you can communicate offers, messages, and more all in your display ads. With retail media support for display ads growing every day, there’s never been a better time to leverage display ads to drive awareness around new product launches.

These are just a few of the ways that leading brands are leveraging a continuous refresh strategy for their top of funnel display advertising to stay relevant all year long.