Display advertising in B2B: recognition, not cold reach

What is display advertising?

The best-known form is the banner: an image with a short text and a button, in a fixed format on a news site, for example. You usually buy that space through an ad network that bundles the ad slots of many sites. You can also buy directly from a publisher.

Many advertisers use the Google Display Network, with placements on websites, in apps, on YouTube and in Gmail. In short, it works like this:

• You choose who sees your ad: based on who someone is, what they are interested in or what the page is about.
• You pay per thousand impressions or per click.
• An impression is cheap, attention is not. Most people never click on a banner.

Why display advertising in B2B rarely works cold

A lot of advice on display is about visibility at scale. In B2B that works less well, for three reasons.

You sell to a company, not to a person. An open display network knows what someone reads, but not where they work. On LinkedIn you can target a list of company names.

A B2B purchase often takes months. In that time, a banner from an unknown name simply fades into the background.

And every euro that goes to cold reach is a euro you cannot spend on people who have already visited your site.

That is why display works best in B2B as a second step: with people who have visited your website before. This is called retargeting.

Where to run display advertising: after LinkedIn or search traffic

So the first contact comes through another channel. With LinkedIn you reach the job titles and companies that fit you (read how LinkedIn advertising works in B2B). Through Google you reach people who are already searching with a question. Anyone who reaches your site this way, you can keep reaching with display. In practice it looks like this:

1. First visit. Someone from a company that fits you lands on a page about a specific problem via LinkedIn or Google.
2. An ad on the same topic. In the weeks that follow, they see an ad about that problem, on sites and in apps they already use.
3. Back on the site. In our campaigns this happens more often through a search for the company name than through a click on the banner.
4. Enquiry. The enquiry reaches the account manager, together with the pages viewed earlier.

You do not always need a separate display network for this. LinkedIn reaches website visitors again through the Insight Tag, and Google Ads does so with remarketing lists. That is also how we work in our approach to LinkedIn advertising in B2B. Through LinkedIn, companies get to know you, search ads capture the demand and retargeting keeps you in view in between.

At Templari Benelux we started by redefining the customer profile. Then we aimed LinkedIn and Google Ads at those companies. Retargeting for site visitors came last.

What to show: the visitor's problem, not your logo

Many banners consist of a logo, a slogan and a button. To someone who has just read about a specific problem, that says little. An ad about exactly that problem does stick. In our campaigns, this works best:

• A separate ad per page or topic. Someone who read about maintenance costs sees an ad about maintenance costs, not a company film.
• One sentence that names the problem, in the visitor's own words.
• A logical next step, such as a worked example, a case or a checklist. It is still too early for a quote button.
• A frequency cap, so nobody sees the same banner all day.

The goal is not for as many people as possible to see you. The goal is for the right companies to recognise you when the question comes up again.

What we saw

In our campaigns, an enquiry rarely comes directly from the ad someone clicked. Whoever fills in the form has usually come across the company a few times already: on LinkedIn, in Google and then on other sites. In that sequence, display only works if a visit came first.

For Mitsubishi Forklift Trucks we applied this on Meta. We created separate ads for logistics, manufacturing and wholesale. Alongside that, retargeting ran for people who had already visited the website. The sector campaigns made the first contact and the retargeting brought visitors back.

See the Meta ads for Mitsubishi

What to measure display advertising on

Not on clicks. Few people click on banners, and whoever clicks is often not the person who later makes an enquiry. You are better off looking at these points:

• Return visits: how many people from the retargeting list come back within a few weeks, through any channel?
• Searches for your name: are people searching for your company name more often since the campaign started?
• Enquiries from companies that visited the site before: a tool like Leadinfo shows you which companies they are.
• What sales hears, for example: "We kept seeing you."

Take a critical look at the advertising platform's own figures. They also count view-through conversions: conversions from people who only saw the ad, without clicking. That tells you something, but it does not prove the banner made the difference. You build recognition over months, not per click. Read more in staying top of mind in complex B2B sales.

Display in B2B: run it after the first contact

In B2B you do not start with display advertising. You use it to stay in view with people who already know you. Run it after LinkedIn or search traffic, show the topic the visitor looked at and measure whether they come back and make an enquiry. Whoever buys display as cold reach mainly pays for impressions to people who will never become customers.