Display Advertising Stats: SEMrush Study Reveals Top GDN Trends

Want to make the most out of display advertising for your business and maximize your ROI?

Then it’s time to dive into the first large-scale display advertising research for ecommerce businesses on the market.

We recently released Display Advertising Stats 2019 and we’re excited to share the study with you.

Using our Display Advertising Tool, we gathered massive amounts of data, based on more than 40 million impressions from the top GDN ecommerce advertisers and 23 million impressions from the top GDN ecommerce publishers throughout the U.S., U.K., India, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands.

This incredibly valuable data gives unprecedented insights into how audiences interact with online ads in the shopping niche.

Through the research, you will uncover insights that will allow you to use the display network to your advantage while making more data-driven decisions, ultimately resulting in more leads, sales, and profit.

The full report has tons of useful information, including:

• The most popular ad sizes and formats.
• Key industries ecommerce website visitors are interested in.
• Audience demographics.
• The most prominent publishers in the ecommerce industry.

Let’s jump into some of those findings now!

Most Targeted Age Ranges Among Ecommerce Advertisers and Publishers

Both ecommerce advertisers and publishers are most likely to target the millennial audience in the 25-34 year age range.

Here’s the full breakdown of what age brackets advertisers are targeting:

• 18 to 24: 12%
• 25 to 34: 31%
• 35 to 44: 23%
• 45 to 55: 15%
• 55 to 64: 12%
• 65+: 7%

Top Interests for Ecommerce Site Visitors

Looking for new audiences to expand to?

Ecommerce website visitors are most likely to be interested in these five categories, as well:

• Beauty and Fitness
• Business and Industrial
• Hobbies and Leisure
• Food and Drink
• Home and Garden

You can also look to advertisers in these adjacent spaces to find new ideas for your own campaigns.

Most Popular Ad Sizes Among Ecommerce Advertisers

According to our research, the most popular ad size for both advertisers and publishers is the 728×90 leaderboard.

Most Used Ad Sizes in the Shopping Niche Among Advertisers

Most Used Ad Sizes in the Shopping Niche Among Publishers

It’s no surprise that the leaderboard is the most commonly used ad size for both advertisers and publishers – leaderboards immediately capture a viewer’s attention before diving into the site’s actual content.

Google has pointed to this ad type as a top-performing ad size, as well.

Responsive Ads vs. Images

Advertisers and publishers alike are more inclined to use responsive ads instead of image ads.

Advertisers are even more likely than publishers to choose responsive ads, which makes sense: advertisers have so many products to promote, and making ads responsive works in their favor.

Among ecommerce publishers, the split between responsive ads and images is closer to equal, indicating that publishers are keen on testing ad formats to determine which will earn a higher click-through rate.

If you run an ecommerce site and are relying on images alone, consider testing responsive ads, as well!

The Most Prominent Publishers in the Ecommerce Industry

We also investigated who the top publishers are within the ecommerce space, based on web traffic (% from total):

1. coupons.com: 11.58%
2. getitfree.us: 8.79%
3. consumeraffairs.com: 3.10%
4. dealsea.com: 3.02%
5. clark.com: 2.85%

This data doesn’t lie: consider adding these placements to your display campaigns!

Cross-Device Targeting

In cross-device ad targeting, you can interact with your target audience throughout their journey.

Split by Device Among Advertisers

Split by Device Among Publishers

As you can see, ads are targeted fairly evenly across devices.

If you are an advertiser limiting yourself to specific devices, consider cross-device targeting for more reach and impressions.

7 Key Takeaways from Display Advertising Stats 2019

You can use this data (as well as the additional data in the full study) to influence your own campaign strategies.

Here are our top seven takeaways for ecommerce advertisers:

1. The audience who visited the top ecommerce websites the most are in the 25-34 year age range.
2. 36% of the ecommerce websites’ visitors are likely to also be interested in the beauty & fitness industry.
3. 18% of the audience who viewed the ads from the top ecommerce GDN publishers are likely to also be interested in the food and drinks industry.
4. Cross-device targeting is key: the impressions of their ads are distributed pretty evenly across all devices, from 16-22%.
5. Leaderboard ads are advertising leaders: the 728×90 size ads were hands-down the most popular ad size across advertisers in the Shopping niche (57%).
6. There’s a big gap between images and responsive ad: 72% of the display ads we reviewed were from responsive ads.
7. The most popular publishers in the ecommerce industry are coupons.com, getitfree.us, and consumeraffairs.com — consider adding these sites to your ad placements.

Get More Insights with the SEMrush Display Advertising Tool

All these findings within Display Advertising Stats 2019 came from the SEMrush Display Advertising Tool‘s audience insights.

You can harness the power of this tool and further research the major advertisers and publishers in the niches that are most relevant to your business.

With the SEMrush Display Advertising Tool, you can:

• Get ad targeting insights.
• Identify new publishers.
• Analyze display ads from different devices.

The tool tracks ads around the globe, amassing data from publishers and advertisers.

Use it to get unprecedented insights into your competitors’ Google Display Network strategies, find out what locations and devices they’re targeting, and adapt their top ads to match your needs.

Turn insights into action today!