Online display ads in a flash

Google revolutionised contextual text advertising. Now it is trying to make it easy for more of us to switch to display ads.

Many business owners know the merits of Google AdWords. You can create advertisements for your company that appear alongside relevant search results and across websites where the publisher is using Google's AdSense service. And it's easy to try out different ads, to see which gathers the best response.

While text advertisements have been straightforward, there has always been a lot more work involved in display ads. You've had to create the image and upload it, often in Google's six different display sizes. If you want to change a word you have to go back to your editor, make the change, render the image for each size and upload them all again.

That changed late last month when Google introduced its AdWords Display Ad Builder. You select from a range of templates, change the words and upload any images you might require. Then flick through each ad size to tweak the location of text and images. Easy. And there's a hint of animation built in just to draw enough attention.

(Credit: Phil Dobbie/ZDNet Australia)

Sure, your advertising agency might come up with a better-looking creation, but can it guarantee a better result? By being able to make changes quickly and easily you can experiment on-the-fly until you come up with the best response rate.

Try it out. In your online campaign section of AdWords click on the Ads tab, select New Ad, then choose Display Ad Builder.