How brands are using the Olympics in display ads (feat. Gillette, Intel, Toyota & more)
Not normally a big fan of weight lifting or equestrianism or modern pentathlon? You might change your mind, because the 2024 Summer Olympics (July 26 – August 11) are here. Given that the two previous editions of the summer Games both surpassed three billion viewers, it’s expected to be one of the most-watched televised events of the past decade. In fact, with the last three Games (two Winter Olympics and one summer Games) all taking place in Asia, viewing...
Phil Norris
Advertising Basics › 6 min read
Airbnb, Booking.com and VRBO: Analyzing the display ad strategies of big travel brands
Now that summer is in full swing, many of us have one thing on our minds: travel. Interest in travel-related search topics like “hotel” spikes during the hottest months of the year… …prompting travel brands large and small to battle it out for our vacation bucks. But how do the travel industry’s biggest advertisers leverage display ads to differentiate themselves? Where are they spending their money? And what types of creatives and landing pages do they use? To answer...
Phil Norris
Landing Pages › 7 min read
How Shopify, Squarespace & Wix use display ads to fight for ecommerce supremacy
By 2027, global online sales are expected to surpass an eye-watering $8 trillion. So it’s no surprise that starting an ecommerce business consistently ranks as one of America’s most popular side hustles: Of course, to start an ecommerce business, you first need a website. And if you don’t have the coding skills to create one from scratch, your best alternative is to use a website builder. While there’s no shortage of options, not all are a natural choice for...
Phil Norris
eCommerce › 8 min read
8 persuasive Pride display ad campaigns (featuring Hulu, Tinder & more)
About one in 13 adults in the US now identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or some other sexual orientation besides heterosexual. Which makes Pride month a massive deal for pretty much every brand. And it’s even more essential for those with younger-skewing audiences, given that almost one in 10 millennials and more than one-fifth of Gen Z adults identify as LGBTQ+. Unsurprisingly, this means Pride has become a battleground for brands looking to target LGBTQ+ consumers —...
Phil Norris
Advertising Basics › 5 min read
How Grammarly’s $210M display ad strategy helped it become a unicorn
Whether you write professionally, like to keep your masterpieces within the notes app, or just stick to writing work emails, you’ve probably heard of (and even used) Grammarly. With a motto of “better writing, better results,” this writing assistant app was founded in 2009 to help people write better, plagiarism-free content. Since its inception, this company has spent a fortune on display ad campaigns, with an estimated ad spend of $210.8M in the last year alone. Clearly, this has...
Rupali Jeganathan
Case Study › 5 min read
How flower delivery brands use display ads to boost Mother’s Day sales
There are two classic ways to show your mom how much you love her on Mother’s Day. One is to write it in a blog post for a leading competitive intelligence platform (I love you mom!). And the other is to say it with flowers. Most Americans choose option #2. Per the National Retail Federation, 74 percent of consumers sent their mom flowers for Mother’s Day 2023, making them the nation’s go-to Mother’s Day gift. On average, households spent...
Phil Norris
eCommerce › 6 min read
More than music: How Spotify, Apple & Amazon promote their streaming platforms with display ads
Remember the days when listening to your favorite artist meant buying a record or CD? While vinyl album sales are on a strong upward trajectory, it’s fair to say we’re living in the digital music age. Streaming overtook physical sales and downloads for the first time in 2018, and it’s hard to see that trend reversing any time soon. Which is music to the ears of the streaming industry, with 91 percent of US internet users listening via some...
Phil Norris
Copywriting › 6 min read
The battle of Tax Day: Analyzing TurboTax, H&R Block and TaxAct’s display ad strategies
Tax Day wouldn’t rank too highly on most people’s lists of favorite dates. But for the tax software industry, it’s like Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, and Black Friday all rolled into one. Per CivicScience, 39 percent of Americans in 2024 prepared (or planned to prepare) their taxes using tax software, with 23 percent using a free tool and 16 percent choosing a paid platform. Intuit TurboTax is comfortably the most popular tax tool, but there are a bunch of...
Phil Norris
Finance › 6 min read
Crafting Powerful Testimonial Ads That Convert
Here’s a thought exercise. How many times have recommendations from other people driven your purchase decisions? And how many times have you bought something online without checking the reviews first? As for me, I have done that a sum total of zero times. That’s right. I never buy anything without reading the reviews first. And I’m not alone in this. 9 out of 10 customers read reviews before they buy something online. This is the power of social proof....
Rupali Jeganathan
Advertising Basics › 7 min read