Display Ads help a local Vancouver company win business not by waiting for people to search for you, but by putting a picture-led banner in front of them while they are simply browsing, before they have even started looking. Display is a campaign type in Google Ads, served across the Google Display Network, which Google says reaches people across roughly 35 million websites and apps, plus Google-owned properties such as YouTube and Gmail. For a small local business the real payoff is simple: you become familiar before the need arises, so when someone finally does want what you offer, yours is the name that comes to mind first. That means a steadier flow of customers, a lower cost to win each one, and one fewer person who lives right around the corner yet has no idea you exist. This article helps you see exactly which layer Display sits at, what it looks like, and who ends up seeing it, so you can judge whether it belongs in your customer-acquisition mix.
Who is this article for? ❓
If you run a business in Vancouver and waiting for search ads to bring people to you is no longer enough, and you want more local people who don't yet know you to become aware of your shop, this is worth a few minutes. It won't walk you through opening an account and uploading images; it helps you understand what Display Ads actually solve and whether they suit your business, so you can decide whether to run them and brief whoever manages your advertising. If you only want to catch people who are actively searching for you right now, search ads suit you better, and you can skip this one.
Which layer Display sits at: a campaign type, not a targeting method
Get the placement right first and the rest stays clear. In Google Ads, the campaign type decides what your ad looks like and which network it runs on; targeting is a separate layer that decides who sees it. Display refers to the former: it is a campaign type, mapped to the Google Display Network as its delivery channel. People often confuse "Display Ads" with "chasing back people who already visited your site", but that second thing, remarketing, is a targeting method that can run on Display (or elsewhere); it is not Display itself. This article covers only the Display layer; how you define the audience is the job of the targeting articles that follow.
To borrow the old-media comparison: search ads are like a newspaper's classified section, where the customer goes looking and you happen to be listed in the right column; video ads are like television advertising, telling a story with moving pictures on YouTube; and Display Ads are more like a printed flyer through the letterbox or a roadside billboard. Nobody is searching for you, they are merely browsing, and your banner appears in front of them so that your name starts to feel familiar. None of the three replaces the others; each shows up at a different stage of the customer's journey.
Where it appears, and what it looks like
Display Ads run on the Google Display Network. By Google's own account, the network reaches people across roughly 35 million websites and apps, plus Google-owned properties such as YouTube and Gmail. In other words, your ad doesn't sit in one place. It follows the customer's browsing, surfacing in the slots on the news article, blog, recipe page or mobile app they happen to be reading.
In form, a Display Ad is a picture-led ad: an image, some text, or a short piece of motion, rather than the plain-text link you see in search results. Most accounts today use responsive display ads: you upload a handful of images and a few lines of copy, and the system assembles them into large and small sizes that fit just about any slot (the detail of that lives in the separate article on responsive display ads).
The key difference: it reaches people who haven't started searching yet
Search ads catch the person who is actively searching right now, when the need is already on the table. Display is different. As Google puts it, it lets you appear in front of people before they start searching for what you offer, reaching a relevant new audience earlier, near the front of the buying cycle. Put plainly: search ads catch the people who already want to buy, while Display introduces you to more people before they want to. That is precisely what sets it apart from remarketing. Remarketing brings back people who have already visited; the Display layer is about reaching new faces who haven't heard of you yet but are likely to be interested.
Where this fits in your business
Display sits towards the front of the marketing and customer-acquisition stage, and it exists to solve the awareness problem. When you notice that "there are plenty of potential customers nearby who have simply never heard of my shop", Display is what fills that gap: it gets people to remember you, so that when the need genuinely arrives, you are the first they think of. It works hand in hand with your website: the ad gets the right people to recognise you and click through; the website catches them and turns curiosity into an enquiry or an order.
A local bakery example: what the new customer actually sees
Picture a small local bakery in Vancouver that wants more people nearby to know it exists. It runs a Display campaign with mouth-watering photos of its signature croissants and cinnamon rolls, served across the Display Network beside web pages about local food and recipes.
Seen from the new customer's side, the experience goes like this. Someone who lives nearby and has never heard of the bakery is reading "where to brunch in Vancouver this weekend" or scrolling a cinnamon-roll recipe, and partway down, a banner of fresh-baked pastries appears beside the article, with the shop's name and "right in your neighbourhood". They may not click there and then, but an impression is left: there's a bakery within walking distance I didn't know about. Then one weekend, when they suddenly fancy fresh bread, the first name to surface is likely to be that one. That is what Display does for you. It doesn't force an immediate purchase; it plants your name, beside the right content and in front of relevant new faces, ahead of the need. Note that "appearing beside food-related pages", choosing placements by a page's subject, is itself part of the targeting layer, which we cover in the dedicated article on content-keyword targeting.
What happens if you don't get this clear
A common mistake is to run Display as though it were search, and then complain it gives "cheap clicks but no sales". That misreads its role: Display is built to make people aware of you, and shouldn't be held to a "spend and convert instantly" standard. The other common trap is to scatter banners everywhere for convenience without decent images or copy. The result is plenty of impressions and nobody remembering who you are. Budget then goes on impressions that get your name seen but leave nothing memorable behind.
When to give it serious thought
A few typical moments: you're a local shop or service with plenty of potential customers nearby but little recognition yet; your product is the kind people want once they see it (food, baking, home goods, renovation, where visuals do the persuading); you're already running search ads and want to enter the customer's view earlier, before they actively search for you; or you're launching a new shop, product or promotion and need to build awareness first. Any one of these is reason enough to put Display on the table.
How 5U Website helps
Here is our honest view. For most small local businesses on a tight budget, we usually suggest getting search ads working first, because they catch the people already looking for you and tend to pay back sooner. Display earns its place once you have a bit of room to invest in being remembered, or sooner if your product really sells on sight (food, home goods, renovation) or you're launching something new and need people to know it exists. In other words, Display is worth doing on purpose, not as a box to tick. We will tell you plainly when we think it isn't your next dollar's best home.
Display is all too easily turned into "cheap impressions": money spent, volume racked up, and no real awareness to show for it. Across our years building websites and digital marketing for Vancouver businesses, we've seen plenty of accounts like that, with banners spread far and wide yet neither the right visuals nor a clear idea of who should remember what. What we do for clients is work out who your target customer really is, beside which content it's worth appearing, and what image and message will make a new face remember you, then fit Display together with your search ads and your website as one system rather than each running on its own. We also keep an eye on how Google runs Display (it is moving into the newer Demand Gen campaign type), so the platform's changes stay our job to track, not yours. If you want more local people to discover your shop, take a look at our website design and digital marketing services, or drop us an email describing your situation; we usually reply within one to two business days.
To see the whole picture, read on in this series: Google Ads overview: what it is and what it brings, the comprehensive guide to campaign types (to place Display among all the types), and how to choose Display placements by a page's subject (content-keyword targeting).
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