Are your ads giving the kind of returns you want? Analyzing display advertising benchmarks is one way to find out!

But, what are the best display ads metrics?

The truth is, one size does not fit all with displaying advertising benchmarks. This is because not all metrics work for all industries. Therefore, you want to focus on those that measure success in your specific niche — even in eCommerce.  

That said, this article will focus on the display advertising benchmarks to understand eCommerce rates. 

But first, let's define display advertising benchmarks.

What are Display Advertising Benchmarks?

Display advertising benchmarks are simply measurements that you use to compare your results against those of your competitors and industry. In other words, you are measuring your results by comparing them to a point of reference in your industry. 

Benchmarks are particularly useful in helping you to discover what progress and results you are getting from your advertising efforts — in this case, display ads. 

With display ads, you’d want to know how many people click on your ads and follow through on your call-to-action. 

By knowing how you are performing compared to your competitors, you can use this data to improve the performance of your display ads campaign. 

Now, let’s examine how to approach display advertising benchmarks.

How to Approach Display Ads Benchmarks

Here is the thing — measurements and interpretation of results from display ads differ across industries.

For example, imagine an eCommerce business owner in the fashion industry. The time users spend on fashion web pages will differ from a medical resource website. 

This means that your approach to display ads benchmarks should be specific to your industry and competitors!

Display Advertising Benchmarks for eCommerce: How High Are They?

Understanding display advertising benchmarks is vital in recognizing success relative to your competitors. 

For eCommerce, the ads benchmarks are typically not high. For example, the click-through rate for eCommerce is around 0.64%, with the Cost per Click is below $0.50 per click. 

That said, let’s check out some common types of marketing benchmarks for eCommerce:

1. Brand Recognition: Your brand recognition is used to compare how well people can recognize your brand symbols compared to your competitors. 

This is how well they can identify your brand elements such as logos, slogans, and packaging colors. 

2. Brand Recall: This is the measurement of a customer’s ability to remember your brand when they need your products. 

3. Customer Satisfaction: How satisfied are your customers when they patronize you compared to your competitors? This covers everything from the purchase process to the products. 

4. Customer Loyalty: This is a measure of how willing your customer is to engage with and repeatedly buy from you versus your competitors. For example, the frequency of purchase in the fashion industry will differ from that of an automobile company. 

5. Market Share: This is the percentage of an industry’s total sales earned by your business over some time. 

6. Ratings: This is the review of your product by a customer who has made a purchase. 

7. Product Performance: This is simply a measure of the quality and performance of your products compared to other products in the same category. 

8. Customer Acquisition Cost: This is the money spent to get a customer. In digital ads benchmarks, this is simply how much you spend to acquire a customer compared to others in your industry.

9. Customer Retention Rate: This is a measure of customers you retain over time. 

10. Reach: With display ads, reach is the measure of the number of people who saw your ads based on your targeting setting. Reach measures how wide your display ads travel on the internet.  

11. Conversion Rate: This is the percentage of people who take action after seeing your display ad. An example is the number of people who purchase from your website after clicking your display ads. 

12. Engagement: How much time do customers spend on your website? How many pages do they visit and engage with? Engagement occurs when a customer engages with your ad. 

Are You Gaining Or Losing Money from Your Display Ads?

Now that we understand the crucial benchmarks to consider in display ads, the next thing to consider is whether you are gaining or losing money? 

Let’s consider key display ads Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that help us discover this.

Viewable Impressions 

This is how you measure if your ad is reaching your target audience. With display ads, your ad is considered successful when 50% of the ad displays on the screen for one second or more for image ads and 2 seconds or more for video ads. 

Display Impression Share

This focuses on your targeting settings. In other words, display impression share (DIS) tells you the percentage of your target audience that is getting your message. With display ads, the measure is usually a 10% DIS threshold. 

Positive Upheaval

You are gaining money from your display ads when there is a positive upheaval in engagement with your content. In other words, you must notice a higher engagement with your content compared to when you weren’t running paid ads.  

Direct, Organic, and Paid Search Channel Health

Because you are spending money to display your content, you also want to focus on what content, page, and conversions yielded positive results when your paid campaign was live.

Conversion Data

In retail, conversion is simply the number of sales gotten from the products you are displaying in your ads. Therefore, you know you are gaining money when there is an increase in sales during your campaign.

As a rule of thumb, once your numbers for the parameters above keep increasing, you’re most likely gaining money from your display ads.

Now That You Know Your Display Advertising Benchmarks Better

Knowing your display advertising benchmarks is essential if you want to measure the success of your display ads campaign.

This way, if your results fail to compare positively in your industry, you can know that you need to switch things up. Besides, your display ad benchmarks can also indicate where you need to concentrate your efforts.

Hopefully, we’ve helped you understand the metrics to look out for and how they measure up in your particular industry.