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10 Display Ad Design Best Practices to Boost Clicks in 2025

10 Display Ad Design Best Practices to Boost Clicks in 2025

In dynamic digital marketing, display advertising is crucial to any brand’s online strategy. Despite the evolution of digital platforms, display ads remain highly effective when executed with precision. 

Display advertising boasts an average ROI of $2.02 for every dollar spent, underscoring its efficiency in reaching and engaging audiences. 

However, with consumers encountering thousands of ads daily, capturing attention necessitates strategic placement, budget allocation, and superior design. 

Let us dive into 10 expert-level best practices for creating display ads that outperform the average, backed by research, case studies, and insights from industry professionals. 

Whether you are managing campaigns in-house or through an agency, these principles can maximize the performance and ROI of your display advertising efforts.

1. Define Clear Campaign Objectives

Every successful design begins with an articulated goal. Before opening a design tool or writing ad copy, advertisers must ask, What do we want this ad to accomplish?

The objectives for display advertising are usually focused on:

  • Brand Awareness: Highlight your brand’s identity, logo, and message without an overt sales pitch.
  • Lead Generation: Driving traffic to a form or landing page and incentivizing users to fulfill that action. 
  • Product Promotion or Sales: Features specific products, offers, or discounts with strong calls to action.
  • Retargeting: Reminding visitors who visited the site to return and finish a transaction. 

Without clarity on these goals, even a visually appealing ad can underperform. Partnering with a digital ad design agency can further streamline this process, ensuring that creative decisions align precisely with campaign objectives for maximum impact.

Expert Perspective: The Fast Track to Digital Marketing Maturity report from BCG and Google, states that brands that are more digitally mature, often having clearly defined goals, have increased their sales, on average, by 18% points more than their digitally less mature peers.

2. Design for Multiple Sizes and Formats

Ads can be found on websites, mobile applications, and video sharing platforms in various locations. If you create one ad or two, you miss out on the wider reach potential. 

display ad sizes

Source: creatopy

To ensure better reach, ad creatives should always be prepared in the most popular and high-traffic generating sizes suggested by Google Display Networks and other programmatic ad buying platforms.

Essential ad sizes include

  • 300×250 (Medium Rectangle)
  • 728×90 (Leaderboard) 
  • 160×600 (Wide Skyscraper) 
  • 300×600 (Half Page)
  • 320×100 (Large Mobile Banner)

Why it matters: Publishers have limited inventory for particular dimensions, and if your creative is not matched, the ad will not be displayed, no matter how generous the bid is placed. More dimensions unlock ad placement opportunities.

Real-World Example: In his guide on Google Display Ads, WordStream explains the importance of using multiple ad sizes simultaneously to improve reach and performance, which greatly enhances return on investment. 

A display advertisement is designed and executed well when it incorporates several formats, such as leaderboard, skyscraper, and square, to be placed on multiple devices and across various locations.

Read Also: 9 Best Display Ad Design Examples That Boost Clicks

3. Prioritize Brand Consistency

A display ad is often the first impression of your brand to a new audience. Consistency in brand presentation builds trust and reinforces brand recall.

Key components to keep consistent

  • Logo placement
  • Brand colors
  • Typography
  • Tone of voice

Brand impression

Source: marq

Whether a Fortune 500 company or a growing e-commerce brand, your display ads should align visually and tonally with your website, emails and social content.

Best Practice: Use brand guidelines or a design system to ensure consistency across campaigns and designers. This consistency is critical not only for aesthetics but for building long-term recognition.

4. Use High-Quality, Relevant Imagery

Images are often the first element users notice in a display ad.  Images that are irrelevant or of low quality can damage engagement and trust. Instead, focus on visuals that reflect your product or service authentically.

Considerations for effective imagery

  • Use in-house or original photography whenever possible
  • Show the product in action or its natural environment
  • Refrain from overtly staged or common stock photos
  • Maintain sharp focus, even at smaller ad sizes

5. Clearly Communicate a Compelling Value Proposition

An informative display advertisement explains to users the brand’s offer and explains its significance to the users. The value proposition should be highlighted as the most important part of the creative.

What makes a strong value proposition?

  • Specificity: Clearer and stronger value phrases, such as “Get 30% Off Running Shoes,” do a lot better than “Big Sale Today.”
  • Relevance: The offer is tailored to a certain audience segment or advertising platform
  • Prominence: Ensuring the value can be read easily within one to two seconds is essential.

Design Tip: Use size, placement and contrast to emphasize the value message.

Data Point: A study by Nielsen Norman Group titled How Users Read on the Web found that 79% of users always scanned any new page they came across, and only 16% read word-by-word. 

This underscores the necessity of promptly presenting a clear, high-impact value statement to engage users effectively.

6. Craft Clear and Action-Oriented Calls to Action

The CTA is arguably the most important element in driving conversions. It guides users on what action to take next and must be visually prominent and textually compelling.

Importance of CTA in display ad

Source: Databox

Effective CTA guidelines

  • Use action verbs: “Shop Now,” “Learn More,” “Get a Free Trial”
  • Make it stand out: High-contrast colors and button formats
  • Keep it short: 2 – 4 words perform best
  • Match the landing page experience

7. Limit Text to Essential Messaging

Less is always more, and that is especially true for display ads. They must deliver information maximally within minimal time. 

Too many text fragments in the design not only impede legibility but also divert attention from the CTA button.

Recommended text limits

  • Headline: 5-10 words
  • Body: Under 20 words
  • Avoid: Disclaimers, terms and conditions in small print

Before and After Example

Less Effective:
“Check Out Our Comprehensive Range of Premium Quality Winter Outerwear and Accessories on Sale Now”

More Effective:
“50% Off Winter Gear – Shop Now”

According to research, Facebook’s creative guidance claims that minimal text advertisements outperform wordy counterparts in almost all engagement metrics, especially mobile devices.

8. Use Animation Thoughtfully

If used correctly, dynamic and animated ads can effectively increase engagement. However, too much movement or overly complex transitions may alienate users or lead to banner blindness.

Best practices for animation

  • Avoid rapid blinking and use smooth transitions
  • Make sure loops are under 30 seconds
  • Ensure key message signposts are visible in the first few seconds
  • Do not depend on core information solely on movement

9. Optimize for Mobile Display

Over 70 percent of all display ad impressions occur on mobile devices, especially within apps and mobile web environments. Ads not optimized for clicks and views are less likely to be seen, read, or clicked.

Mobile design considerations

  • Use larger fonts (minimum 16px for body text)
  • Minimize fine details or excessive elements
  • Place CTAs within the central visual focus area
  • Test load time and responsiveness on mobile devices

Performance Insight: According to Google’s Think with Google research, mobile-optimized creatives in display campaigns achieved up to twice the engagement rate of non-optimized ones.

10. A/B Test Continuously

Optimization does not stop when an ad goes live. High-performing advertisers run continuous improvement tests that work step-by-step, amplifying efficacy over time.  

A/B Testing elements to experiment with

  • Headline messaging
  • CTA language and button design
  • Images and backgrounds  
  • Layout structure and text placement
  • Color Schemes 

Testing Framework

  • Ensure to modify only one variable at a time  
  • Keep tests running long enough to ensure statistical significance
  • Track micro-conversions and conversions

An IDX case study observed a 34% rise in ecommerce conversion rates and a 13% increase in clicks on shopping-related navigation items when optimizing CTA elements. This showcases the importance of designing CTAs that respond to user behavior and preferences.

Design With Strategy, Not Just Style

Effective display advertising campaigns do not rely on visuals alone; they integrate stunning visuals with systematic design choices aligned to target user needs and business goals. Every aspect, including visuals and CTAs, must be calibrated towards the campaign goals.  

Marketers can optimize advertisement engagement, decrease cost-per-click, and boost conversions by adopting these 10 best practices for display advertising design. Most significantly, these strategies make trust and digital brand recognition more easily established in the current market technology landscape.  

Interested in improving your advertisement results? Contact Tangence today to transform strategic design into actual performance metrics.