What Google Display ads are
Display ads do not appear in search results. They appear where people read, watch and scroll: news sites, blogs, apps, YouTube and Gmail, together known as the Google Display Network. The essential difference from search is that nobody is asking for your product at that moment. You are interrupting. That makes display useful for visibility and repetition, and weak as a substitute for search campaigns.
Ad formats and sizes
- Responsive display ads. You supply headlines, descriptions, landscape and square images and your logo; Google assembles ads in every shape and size from them. This is the default; see Google's guide to responsive display ads.
- Uploaded banners. Your own designs in fixed sizes such as 300 × 250, 728 × 90, 300 × 600 and 320 × 50 for mobile. More design control, less reach per size and more production work.
Display is moving into Demand Gen
Google is moving Display campaigns into the Demand Gen campaign type. According to Google's Demand Gen overview, eligible advertisers could start migrating existing campaigns voluntarily from June 2026, with automatic migration and Demand Gen-only creation to follow. If you run display today, plan the move rather than waiting for it.
How remarketing works in Google Ads
Remarketing, also called retargeting, shows ads to people who have already interacted with you. Most visitors leave without enquiring or buying; remarketing gives you a second chance with exactly that group. The lists it uses are now called data segments.
- Website visitors. The Google tag on your site fills segments such as all visitors, visitors to a particular service page, or people who started a quote form but did not finish. You choose how long people stay in each segment.
- Customer lists. With Customer Match you upload hashed email addresses or phone numbers of existing customers. You need a lawful basis to use that data this way and must meet Google's Customer Match policy.
- YouTube and app users. People who watched your videos or used your app.
A segment must reach a minimum size before Google will serve ads to it, and the threshold varies by network. On smaller sites, narrow segments may never become usable.
Remarketing in search campaigns
Remarketing is not only banners. You can add data segments to search campaigns to bid more for past visitors who search again, or to use broader keywords only for them. For service businesses this is often the most valuable form of remarketing: the same person searching again a week later is a strong signal.
Dynamic remarketing: showing the products someone viewed
With dynamic remarketing, a visitor sees ads featuring the exact products or services they viewed, plus similar items. For online shops it is usually the form of display with the clearest return. Two things are required:
- A feed. For retailers that is the product feed in Merchant Center; other sectors, such as travel, property or education, can use a business data feed.
- Events with product IDs. The Google tag must report which item was viewed, added to basket and bought, using the same ID as in the feed. Google lists the required dynamic remarketing events and parameters.
When IDs in the tag do not match the feed, dynamic remarketing fails or shows the wrong products. On Shopify this is a frequent issue, because variant IDs and product IDs are easily mixed up between apps. Performance Max uses the same signals. For the feed itself, see our Google Shopping agency page.
Demand Gen and YouTube in brief
Demand Gen, the successor to Discovery campaigns, shows image and video ads on YouTube including Shorts, and in Discover, Gmail, Maps and the Display Network. It is designed to create demand among people who are not yet searching, with ads that fit the feed they are scrolling. You can use your own segments and lookalike segments: people who resemble your visitors or customers.
YouTube video campaigns make sense when your story does not fit in a search ad: a product that needs to be seen working, or a service where trust in a person decides the sale. They need decent video. Poor video costs money and harms the brand.
Both are channels for building demand. Do not expect the same direct enquiries as from search, and do not judge them that way.
Which campaign type fits which goal?
Display, remarketing and video are often lumped together. They serve different goals and need different conditions.
| Type | Goal | What you need | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Display to new audiences | Awareness within a defined audience | Strong visuals, a clear audience, enough budget | Clicks from apps and irrelevant sites with no value |
| Standard remarketing | Bring visitors back | Google tag, consent, enough traffic | Following the same people too often |
| Dynamic remarketing | Show viewed products again | Feed plus events with matching product IDs | IDs that do not match the feed |
| Remarketing in search | Bid higher for past visitors who search again | Data segments attached to search campaigns | Segments too small to use |
| Demand Gen and video | Create demand among people not yet searching | Good image and video assets, enough conversions | Judging on direct enquiries and stopping too early |
Privacy, PECR and consent: the limits of remarketing
Remarketing relies on cookies and behavioural data, so rules apply, and they also determine how large your segments can grow. This is general information, not legal advice; check your own situation with a data protection adviser.
- Consent first. Under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR), non-essential cookies need prior consent, and advertising cookies are clearly non-essential. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 adds exceptions for some low-risk purposes, such as certain statistical analytics, but advertising is not among them. A visitor who declines does not join your segments, so the more people decline, the smaller your lists.
- Google's own policy. Google's EU user consent policy applies to users in the UK as well as the EEA. Your banner should pass visitors' choices to Google through consent mode, including the signals for ad user data and ad personalisation. Without them, segments fill slowly or not at all. Setting this up is covered on our conversion tracking page.
- Sensitive categories. Google restricts personalised advertising based on health, financial hardship and other personal circumstances. A clinic, for example, may not run remarketing based on visits to a page about a specific condition.
- Browser limits. Safari and Firefox block third-party cookies by default, so remarketing reaches part of your audience less reliably.
When Google Display ads waste money
Display is the campaign type where budget most often disappears unnoticed. These are the situations where we advise against it, or fix something else first:
- There is no reliable conversion tracking, so Google optimises for clicks, and banner clicks are cheap for a reason.
- You bid for clicks rather than results, and a share of clicks comes from mobile apps and games where accidental taps are common.
- Your site has too few visitors to fill usable segments.
- Your offer cannot be explained in one image. Complex B2B services rarely work with cold display ads.
- The landing page does not persuade. Remarketing sends people back to the same page that failed to convince them the first time; start with a better landing page.
- Your search campaigns are not yet in order. People actively searching are almost always worth more than people you interrupt.
What makes it work
- Excluding placements that produce nothing, such as apps and irrelevant content categories, and using content suitability settings.
- A frequency cap, so nobody sees the same ad endlessly.
- A message per segment: a visitor to your pricing page is at a different stage from someone who read one article.
- Excluding recent customers, unless you have something new for them.
How to tell whether display and remarketing add anything
Remarketing often looks better in reports than it is. The people it reaches already knew you, and some would have bought without the ad. So we look further than the conversions Google reports.
- Judge view-through conversions separately. A conversion after merely seeing a banner is a weaker signal than one after a click. Do not simply add them together.
- Look at the total. Do total enquiries or sales rise when remarketing is on, or do they simply move between channels?
- Test with a holdout. Switch remarketing off for a period or a region and compare. Less exact than a laboratory, more honest than the platform report alone.
- Use data-driven attribution to see how display works alongside search, rather than rewarding only the last click.
Display and remarketing with Kaptein Beacon
We use display and remarketing as part of an account that already steers on real outcomes, not as a separate campaign to use up budget. Kaptein Beacon is a founder-led studio based in the Netherlands, working remotely with UK companies.
- Strategy session. 50 minutes with the founder about your market, your customer journey and whether we fit, at £225 excluding VAT. Afterwards we decide whether to take on the work, and if so, a proposal with fixed scope and fixed price follows.
- Foundations. Consent banner, consent mode, conversions, the Google tag and, for shops, the feed and product IDs.
- Segments and messages. Which groups exist, what each needs, and which exclusions apply.
- Creative. Images, copy and video where needed, consistent with your brand.
- Management and testing. Placements, frequency, bids and an honest assessment of incremental value.
The account stays registered to your company. For how this fits with search and Shopping, see our PPC agency page.