Guide
Best display ad examples
A guide to creative display ad design
Display ads are advertisements that are delivered online that combine copy, visual elements, and call to action messaging that link to a landing page. Discover display ads examples, why they work, and the elements of effective display ads.
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Display advertising is used effectively by advertisers (or brands) across industries. But what goes into great display ads? And how can you create the best ads for your campaign? The following provides an overview of display advertising with tips, examples and ideas for how you can leverage Amazon Ads' solutions to help drive results.
What is display advertising?
Display advertising refers to ads that are delivered online—via social media, stores like Amazon, or apps. These ads can feature text, images, animations, video, and/or audio. Display ads are often measured by cost per click (CPC) or cost per impression (CPM). CPC is the price an advertiser pays each time a customer clicks on a display ad. CPM is the price an advertiser pays per one thousand advertisement impressions.
What is the difference between display ads and banner ads?
Some people use the terms “display ad” and “banner ad” interchangeably. Creative banner ads are just one size of display ad. The best banner ads are complemented by ads in other sizes within the same site or app. Other common sizes include square, leaderboard, skyscraper, and wide skyscraper.
What are the benefits of display advertising?
There are many benefits. For example, display ads are:
- Measurable, typically through cost per click or cost per action metrics
- Flexible, so you can easily edit copy or swap out different images.
- Testable, as you can try different creatives to discover which colors, images, or calls to action (CTAs) customers respond to best.
- Cost-effective, particularly when comparing CPCs with other traditional advertising formats, such as search engine marketing.
- Tailored to your audience.
- Complementary to other marketing strategies, such as social media marketing, so you can reinforce your message.
- Remarketable, as you can engage with audiences who encountered your brand or product but didn’t make a purchase.
Five elements of effective creative for display ads
There are five basic elements of effective creative for display ads. Every element in your creative needs to be chosen carefully and strategically to align with your objective and help engage audiences.
1. Imagery
Depending on your goal, you must decide whether to feature a product image or lifestyle image. For example, if your goal is to increase consideration, you might want to use a product image. If your goal is awareness, you may want to showcase a lifestyle image to demonstrate how customers might use the product in their day-to-day.
2. Call to action (CTA)
CTAs are a way to guide the customer through their journey. For example, if the CTA is “Learn more,” then you are letting the customer know that they will be able to gain more information about the product when they click on the creative. CTAs should be strategic and align to your objective.
3. Brand logo
Always include a clear brand logo on ad creatives to help increase your brand exposure, build credibility for your product, and help customers make a connection between your brand and offerings.
4. Headline
Communicate a strong statement that is impactful, as the headline is often the first—and perhaps the only—thing a customer will see. Use plain language to appeal to your widest possible audience. Consider posing a question, solving a problem, incorporating humor, or conveying empathy. Impactful headlines often begin with an active verb illustrating how a product can benefit consumers.
5. Body copy
Use simple and concise language to highlight specific, unique features of the product, support the claim in the headline, or answer a posed question.
Three tips for creative ad design
There are three main pillars that you should take into account to help achieve optimal creative ad design:
1. Keep the design simple
Your product or brand should be immediately identified, with minimal clutter in the creative. Remember, online users typically only glance at ads for a few seconds. In this brief window, they need to grasp your brand identity and core message. An uncluttered, simple design helps to catch the eye and improve message retention. The more you keep the visuals straightforward, the more likely it will resonate with your audience.
2. Use contrast and size variation
Create strong contrast between the foreground and background to make your product easily identifiable. Contrast, the degree of difference between design elements, can make your ad pop and draw focus, but use it thoughtfully to avoid overwhelming the viewer. Vary the sizes of your objects strategically through scaling, which involves deliberately sizing each element to signal its importance. This helps guide the audience's understanding without explicit instructions, creating a visually striking ad that communicates clearly in the brief moment users spend looking at it.
3. Keep messages concise
Craft a concise message that clearly communicates the value proposition of your product. This should highlight what makes your offering unique or superior to competitors—whether it’s an innovative feature or an attractive offer. Make this standout element the focal point of your ad, using fewer words to help create a more impactful message. The primary message should provide essential details to increase the likelihood of generating interest and potential purchases.
Amazon Ads creative display advertising example
An example of an effective creative ad that brings the key elements together is what Arlo did for its Arlo Pro 3 internet-connected security camera.
Arlo Pro 3 display ad
Features:
- The brand’s logo is clear and easy to distinguish.
- The headline “Shine like a Pro” is aspirational, beginning with an active verb. The body copy is short and concise. It highlights the benefits of the product and helps customers make an informed decision.
- The imagery gives us a sense of what we should expect when buying the product. We know its size, color, functions, and that it’s compatible with other devices.
- It features a “shop now” CTA, making it easy for customers to quickly take action upon seeing the ad.
Experiment with display ads for best results
There are many questions that can be answered through experimentation with different creatives. Through A/B testing, you can offer two slight variants of the same display ad to see which one is more effective.
For example, you can test:
- Headlines
- Whether a product image outperforms a lifestyle image
- Which background colors resonate best
- The shape and messaging of the CTA button
When running experiments, make sure to:
- Consider testing opportunities that are aligned with your campaign goal
- Apply the above creative best practices
- Implement insights from the experiment into your campaigns
- Only alter one variable between your creatives. All other aspects of the test should be exactly the same between the treatments, in order to gather reliable results
For example, if you want to test two background colors to see which one performs better, you should make sure that only the background color changes. If you change background color and CTA button shape, you won’t be able to determine whether background color or CTA button shape impacted performance.
Maybelline ad with logo on black background
Maybelline ad with logo on white background
Elements of effective display ads
Foundation
Display ads are only as effective as their destination pages. Regardless of the platform, it’s crucial to have a strong foundation for the landing page of your ad. A landing page should include detailed, high-quality information to increase your chances of converting visitors into customers. An effective landing page typically features strong product titles, high-quality images, and helpful body copy that inspires customers and tells your brand’s story.
When creating display ads for Amazon, consider the Stores creative guidelines and follow best practices for optimizing your Store or product detail page before leveraging Amazon’s solutions for creative display ads.
Detail page example
Re-engage audiences
We recommend re-engaging audiences who already had a positive interaction with your brand to increase your chances of sales and conversions. This allows your brand to stay top of mind with familiar audiences and helps to reinforce your brand’s message.
To implement this strategy on Amazon, consider dynamic e-commerce ads (DEAs). DEAs automatically optimize to serve the highest performing creative by rotating products and calls-to-action to maximize engagement. The best part is that no new creatives are needed, as the image and product information pull directly from the product detail page.
Example of a DEA
Stand out
It’s crucial for any brand looking to stand out to secure a prominent place on the “digital shelf.” This concept, often referred to as “owning your aisle,” involves strategically positioning your brand to make it easier for shoppers to discover and connect with your products online. Effective display ads play a key role in this strategy by increasing visibility and engagement.
For Amazon sellers, this strategy can be implemented using dynamic e-commerce ads, which displays customer reviews, or static ads, which offer creative flexibility. When used strategically, both ads can effectively help your brand gain prominence on Amazon’s digital shelf, making it easier for shoppers to connect with your products.
Example of a static ad
Change perception
To keep your brand top-of-mind with customers, we recommend crafting effective brand messaging during the consideration phase to help influence purchasing decisions. By leveraging the right advertising tools, brands can change their perception among customers, showcase their unique value propositions, and guide customers towards their products.
Streaming TV ads and Fire tablet ads are display ad formats on Amazon that can help enhance your brand’s perception and drive product consideration among potential customers. Streaming TV ads appear either before, during or after streaming TV content. Fire tablet ads reach customers with a full-screen ad experience as soon as they turn on their device. Both of these formats can help your brand stay visible with potential customers and reinforce brand perception.
Example of Fire tablet ad
Build brand discovery
Building brand discovery is a crucial step in any marketing strategy. It involves making your brand message and products consistently visible across touchpoints to stay top-of-mind with potential customers. This visibility is key to driving awareness, consideration, and trust, ultimately influencing purchasing decisions. Effective brand discovery often relies on a combination of ad solutions to tell your brand story, showcase products, and deliver simple brand promises in a dynamic format.
Solutions like Streaming TV ads and compelling static ads can help achieve these goals. Streaming TV ads appear during video content, delivering your brand message to a captive audience. Static ads can highlight new products and deliver simple brand promises, keeping your offerings visible to potential customers as they browse.
Example of a Streaming TV ad
Amazon Ads solutions for creative display ads
No creative? No problem. Amazon Ads offers a range of creative services and tools that can help you develop creative display ads. Our in-house and partner services cover creative strategy, creative optimization and editing, and net-new creative production.
Sponsored Display is designed for advertisers of any size and budget to create campaigns for their specific business goals, regardless of whether they sell products on Amazon. Discover, reach, and engage audiences wherever they spend time, with machine learning and multiformat, dynamically optimized creatives.
Programmatically scale your advertising with display ads via Amazon DSP and engage audiences across thousands of websites. Connect with an Amazon Ads account executive to see how we can help you achieve your goals.
Device ads run across Amazon devices with screens (like Fire TV, Fire tablet, and Echo Show) and on services (like Prime Video) to deliver high-impact, immersive, and natively integrated ad experiences that make it easy for customers to engage and take action.
Examples of successful display ad campaigns
Case Study
Goodway had long been using search and social solutions from Skai, a leading omnichannel marketing platform that uniquely connects insights and performance media for informed decisions, high efficiencies, and optimal returns. As an Amazon Ads advanced partner, Skai gave Goodway the opportunity to participate in an Amazon Ads closed beta program for Sponsored Display, a display advertising solution for businesses that don’t sell on Amazon.
Case Study
One of the early adopters of Prime Video ads, Hasbro has seen success throughout the first months of 2024, reaching Peppa Pig and Play-Doh consumers through campaigns in the U.K. and the U.S., respectively. 2024 marks the first year in which brands can reach millions of Prime Video viewers with Streaming TV ads in shows and movies. Ads in Prime Video content have been introduced in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Austria, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia. This year, Hasbro identified Prime Video as a place to reach viewers alongside the content their customers are passionate about.
Case Study
Bagail realized that a blend of ad solutions would help them obtain the results they wanted and keep the brand top of mind for shoppers. After careful consideration, Bagail chose to use the following ad solutions: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Sponsored Display, alongside Amazon Ads brand shopping experiences such as Stores and Posts.
Display ads courses
Interested in brushing up on your display ads knowledge before you start creating? The following free courses from Amazon Ads Academy will teach you strategies on how to engage shoppers, identify placements, review campaign metrics, and more with Sponsored Display.
“Introduction to Sponsored Display” teaches you how to recognize basic components of Sponsored Display, identify key difference between Sponsored Display and Amazon DSP, and explain the benefit of incorporating Sponsored Display into your advertising strategy.
“Reach audiences with Sponsored Display” teaches you how to identify different targeting types and placements available for Sponsored Display campaigns. You will also learn how to match Sponsored Display audience and product targeting strategies to your growth marketing objectives.
“Optimize your Sponsored Display campaign” teaches you how to measure campaign performance against your goals, apply campaign budget strategies to optimize your reach, understand campaign metrics to make bidding optimizations, and leverage ad creative tactics to understand your audience.