Use Display Network ads if your marketing objective is to:

1. Generate leads, reach new groups of prospects, or spread the word about special events and sales promotions. Display Network ads are attractive for lead generation because people reading about a topic related to your product often respond to an ad offering more information about that topic. Further, the ads are inexpensive in comparison to other lead generation channels, like trade shows and telemarketing.
2.  Raise brand awareness or sell a product or service that has a long sales cycle. The Display Network is especially useful for expensive or complex services and products that people research, evaluate and contemplate before buying.  Display Network ads keep your name in front of your prospects, so they remember you when it is time to research or   purchase your product.
3.  Research your market and find new prospects. The Display Network lets you reach prospects outside the sites you already know. By using automatic placements as your  targeting method, AdWords finds sites your prospects frequent and gives you a list of those sites. This enables you to learn of sites where you can advertise directly or, possibly, contribute content likely to be read by your prospects.
4. Test different value propositions, messages and ad copy to determine which resonate best with your market. Display Network ads are an inexpensive alternative to surveys or focus groups for researching your best, most lucrative positioning, value proposition and messaging. By experimenting with different ad copy, you gain valuable insights into the messaging that resonates with prospect.
5. Target websites where your prospects gather. Display Network ads provide five targeting methods: keywords, audience (gender, age), topic, interests, managed placement (i.e., website or webpage you specify) and congressional district. By experimenting with different demographics, psycho-graphic and geographic targets, you can gain valuable insights into prospects, enthusiasts, followers, constituents, etc.
6. Target viewers by age, gender and interest. You can select interest categories from AdWords’ predefined Category and Sub-Category lists to reflect the interests of your existing customers if you know them.   One of the interest categories is  “in market,” which lets you target people who are in the market for your product–an amazingly helpful targeting method.

Got a question? Send it along and I’ll try to help you.  –Paige

Optimizing AdWords