Creating dynamic ads: best practices and examples

Today let’s discuss what an ideal dynamic banner should look like. First I’ll remind you that dynamic product banners are ads that are used for dynamic retargeting campaigns.

The CTR of your ads will depend on how your dynamic banners look, as will the cost per click and conversion. Therefore, you should never leave the default banner design when launching a dynamic retargeting campaign through an ad network.

Let’s look in detail at what can and should be customized in the appearance of an advertising banner. I’ll first note that depending on the advertising network where your retargeting is launched, the features may differ to some extent.

Let’s get started.

Banner branding in the colors and style of the main site

When making a purchase on a website, the visitor doesn’t only remember the name of the store and the products they looked at. They also remember the colors and style that are associated with that store.

Now imagine that the visitor leaves without buying anything. After that they go to another site and see your banner:

This is an example of a default template on the Rontar retargeting platform. What is the probability that among all the content of the site where the visitor is now, they will be able to notice the banner and recognize in a split second that this is your store’s banner? The situation is also compounded by the fact that banners from hundreds of advertisers may look exactly the same in an advertising system, since not all will customize the appearance of their ads.

However, with just a few minutes of your time, your banner could look like this:

In this case, exactly the same colors are used as on the site of the store itself. After visiting your store and then seeing your banner a few days later, the visitor is more likely to notice it and click on the ad. This is confirmed by our tests, where the CTR of this type of banner is 50-70% higher than that of a banner without branding. And the higher the CTR, the lower the cost per click and conversion.

Call to action

I’m sure by now everyone already knows that it doesn’t matter whether you’re writing an email, talking to a potential client over the phone, or creating promotional materials, there must always be a call to action.

However, you can go a step further. For example, imagine this is the product page on your site:

It makes sense to use the exact same CTA button style in your dynamic banner. And you might want to change that rather insistent “Add to Cart” text to a softer “Shop Now.” Then your banner might look like this:

This will add a few more points to your ad’s CTR.

Animation

Not all ad networks offer templates with animation. However, when given the option, you should always choose the version with animation, because that will translate to additional points for your banner’s CTR. This is a banner with animation from Rontar:

A few words about A/B testing

Earlier we mentioned that a banner should be done in the colors of the brand, have a call-to-action button (preferably the same as on the site), and it should also have the bare minimum of animation if possible.

However, branding a banner in the style and colors of the main site doesn’t always bring the desired result, in particular, increased CTR.

Recently, minimalist design has become very popular, but the use of greys or dark colors does not help a banner stand out against the general background. In this case, it makes sense to conduct a simplified a/b test: use the banner in the colors of the brand for a week, then in other bright colors, such as red or orange, for another week, and then have a look at the results. There is a chance that the clickability of the brighter banner will be higher than the banner in the colors of your brand.

Although it is worth noting that if you opt for the brighter one instead of the branded one, you’ll lose one of the advantages of such banners: the impact on brand awareness. In this case, you should decide what is more important: lower advertising costs but no brand impact, or brand awareness but a higher cost per click and conversion.

In conclusion

When launching a retargeting campaign, always customize the look of your advertising banner so that it is as close as possible to your site. This will help visitors who have previously been on your site easily recognize your ad. This will increase the CTR of your banner, and hence the effectiveness of the advertising campaign itself.