Little-Known Ways to Leverage Google Display Ads for Maximum Reach and Conversions

The advertising landscape is undergoing a seismic shift, with retail media emerging as one of the fastest-growing sectors. Projections indicate that the European retail media market will reach €25 billion by 2026, up from just €10 billion in 2025. This explosive growth is fueled by three key drivers: the shift of budgets to digital channels, access to first-party data, and the ability to engage consumers at the point of purchase.

At the heart of this transformation lies Google Display Ads, a powerful tool that enables brands to reach audiences across multiple touchpoints—from search and Gmail to apps and display networks. Retailers like Obi, Douglas, and MediaMarktSaturn are already leveraging AI-driven display campaigns to enhance personalization and drive omnichannel sales. But as the industry evolves, advertisers must rethink their strategies—balancing brand awareness with performance-driven tactics while harnessing first-party data for precision targeting.

This article explores how Google Display Ads can maximize retail media success, from strategic budget allocation to AI-powered automation and long-term measurement.

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Ⅰ. Strategic Budget Allocation: Balancing Brand and Performance

One of the biggest challenges in digital advertising is finding the right balance between brand-building and performance marketing. According to a Google and WARC study, the optimal split is 50-60% for brand awareness and 40-50% for performance campaigns, as revealed by an analysis from Ipsos MMA, a subsidiary specializing in marketing performance measurement. This approach ensures long-term growth while capturing immediate demand, with research showing that advertisers typically see an average short-term profit ROI of £1.87 for each £1 invested, rising to £4.11 when sustained effects are measured.

For Google Display Ads, this balance translates into investing in upper-funnel creatives to build brand recognition, which Nielsen research commissioned by Google confirms can drive tangible business outcomes—a 1% increase in brand awareness leads to a 0.4% boost in short-term sales and a 0.6% lift in long-term sales. Simultaneously, marketers should adopt agile budgeting strategies for lower-funnel activities, ensuring performance tactics like Google Display Ads remain demand-led to capitalize on unexpected opportunities. Traditional attribution models often fail to capture the full impact of brand-building efforts, underscoring the need for modern measurement frameworks like marketing mix modeling (MMM) to holistically evaluate both upper- and lower-funnel contributions. By maintaining this equilibrium—50-60% brand, 40-50% performance—advertisers can unlock the full potential of their media investments, as evidenced by Domino’s experience in achieving a 45% increase in ROI after integrating concurrent brand and performance campaigns.

Ⅱ. Leveraging First-Party Data for Precision Targeting

With the decline of third-party cookies, first-party data has become the gold standard for ad targeting. Retailers like MediaMarktSaturn (MMS) are leading the charge by building AI-driven Customer Data Platforms on Google cloud enabling advanced audience segmentation and campaign optimization. MMS leverages its cloud-based AI platform, integrated with Google AI in ads, to prioritize high-value products and maximize return on ad spend.

The platform, PIPA (Product Insights & Performance Automation), collects and analyzes data from multiple sources—including cost structures, fulfillment metrics, web analytics, and external factors like competitor pricing and seasonality—to generate real-time purchase probability forecasts. These insights are directly activated in ads to optimize Google Display Ads and Shopping campaigns through AI-powered formats like Performance Max (PMax) and value-based bidding. By dynamically adjusting bids based on product relevance, MMS achieves higher efficiency, reducing cost per click by 21% while increasing ROAS by 22%.

Google cloud serves as the technical backbone, ensuring seamless integration with tools like BigQuery and Google Analytics while maintaining privacy compliance. Additionally, Google Studio automates the creation of dynamic display banners, populating them with AI-selected high-relevance products, saving marketers significant manual effort. The result is a scalable, data-driven approach that aligns ad spend with business goals, delivering double-digit growth across channels.

Key takeaways from MMS’s success highlight the importance of centralizing AI services on Google cloud, ensuring high-quality data inputs, and leveraging robust interfaces for activation. This strategy not only enhances display ad relevance but also future-proofs targeting capabilities in a cookieless landscape.

Ⅲ. The Upper-Funnel Impact: Why Brand Awareness Matters

Many advertisers focus solely on lower-funnel KPIs like conversions, but Nielsen research reveals that a 1% lift in brand awareness drives 0.6% long-term sales growth. Despite this, 50% of brands criticize retail media for lacking standardized upper-funnel metrics.

To bridge this gap, retailers must prioritize transparent reporting on brand lift studies and impression share, ensuring alignment between KPIs and brand objectives—such as CPM (cost per mille) for awareness and CTR (click-through rate) for engagement. Google Display Ads serve as a powerful tool to reinforce brand messaging across multiple touchpoints, leveraging Topkee's expertise in multimedia advertising solutions to accurately target audiences and maximize reach.

Topkee's approach to Google Display Ads focuses on precise audience segmentation through behavioral data analysis, enabling personalized ad experiences that minimize costs while maximizing impact. Their AI-driven creative production accelerates material iteration, ensuring ads resonate with target audiences through high-quality visuals and compelling messaging. Additionally, Topkee's performance analysis framework provides real-time insights into campaign effectiveness, including conversion reports and ROI tracking, allowing brands to optimize upper-funnel strategies dynamically.

By integrating first-party data with GDN, Topkee helps brands achieve higher omnichannel ROAS, as demonstrated by their ability to double conversions while maintaining transparent metrics. This holistic approach ensures brands not only enhance brand awareness but also drive measurable long-term growth.

"Google Display Ads" on red paper, office items

Ⅳ. Automation & AI: The Future of Google Display Ads

AI is transforming Google Display Ads by enabling advanced automation and data-driven optimization. Google Studio streamlines creative workflows by dynamically populating banners with high-converting products, saving marketers one workday per month in manual effort. The PIPA platform, developed by Pia Media and integrated with Google cloud, leverages AI to prioritize high-value products in Shopping and Display campaigns, driving a 22% increase in ROAS. Additionally, AI-powered forecasting models analyze return-adjusted sales, allowing brands to allocate budgets more efficiently across campaigns.

As GenAI advances, advertisers who adopt these tools gain a competitive edge in scalability and efficiency. For instance, MediaMarktSaturn (MMS) combines Google AI with first-party data to optimize Display Ads, achieving double-digit growth in performance metrics. By centralizing AI-driven insights on platforms like Google cloud, businesses can enhance targeting, reduce wasted ad spend, and maximize long-term ROI. This integration of automation and AI ensures that Google Display Ads remain a cornerstone of modern digital marketing strategies.

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Conclusion

The future of retail media lies in data-driven, AI-optimized display advertising, as evidenced by Google and WARC research highlighting the missed potential of short-term-focused strategies. Brands adopting a 60/40 brand-performance split—backed by Ipsos MMA’s analysis—can maximize returns by balancing upper-funnel brand building with lower-funnel performance tactics like Google Display Ads. Leveraging first-party data and AI-driven tools ensures holistic measurement, capturing both immediate conversions and long-term growth. For brands seeking to refine their Google Display Ads strategy, integrating these insights with expert guidance can unlock sustained ROI. Reach out to our team to explore how retail media can transform your marketing mix.