Are you using the most popular and best performing Google display ad sizes to drive success for your campaigns?
As you start to design ad creative for your next online advertising campaign, one of the first things you’ll need to decide is how to size your ad banners. The Google display network supports a diverse range of banner sizes, which can sometimes tempt the uninitiated to simply pick whichever ones seem most convenient and forge ahead to create ads.
Unsurprisingly, this is usually a bad move.
The Google display ad sizes that you choose can and do have a huge impact on the overall success of your campaign. Even if you know how to create display ads, choosing the wrong sizes for your campaign could mean that all your hard work goes to waste.
Every digital marketing professional should be aware of the best performing and most common ad sizes supported by the Google display network. In this resource, we’ll highlight the most popular Google display ad sizes, explain the relationships between ad size and performance and supply you with a cheat-sheet of the top-performing display ad sizes on the Google network.
What You Should Know about Display Ad Sizes
The available data shows that larger ad sizes perform better than smaller ones. That seems fairly logical since a bigger ad takes up more space on the screen and is more likely to draw the viewer’s attention. In addition to having higher average click-through rates, larger ads are also more likely to get conversions after each click.
However, that doesn’t mean that digital marketers should only serve large display ad sizes. In fact, doing so would probably be detrimental in most cases.
This is because of how Google’s ad inventory impacts the availability of display ad space in its network. Google tends to have a lot of inventory for medium and small ad spaces, with relatively less inventory of larger ad spaces. An advertiser that exclusively publishes large-sized ads would likely achieve a high CTR, but not enough reach or diversity of placement.
To maximize the reach of their display ads, digital marketers need to choose a mix of the most popular and best-performing ad sizes for which there is sufficient inventory available. To make it easy, let’s review the ten most popular google display ad sizes.
Top 10 Most Popular Google Display Ad Sizes
Image Sources: Google Display Ad Sizes
250 x 250 – Square
The 250 x 250 ad size is available for text and display ads on both desktop computers and mobile devices. Despite being one of the most common display ad sizes, Google reports that inventory is usually limited and display ads in this size may perform poorly as a result. Square ads are small, so advertisers should expect them to be outperformed by larger ad formats. Some marketers tend to avoid square banner ads due to the general belief that audiences find rectangular shapes more appealing. As it turns out, rectangular banners do seem to perform better than square ones.
200 x 200 – Small Square
The small square ad size is essentially a more compact version of the square ad. It’s also available for text and image display ads on both desktop and mobile networks, but again there are inventory shortages that can lead to poor performance (especially since the advertisement itself is so tiny).
468 x 60 – Banner
At 468 pixels wide and just 60 pixels tall, this display ad size represents the classic top-of-the-page banner ad. Despite being one of the most common ad sizes on the Internet over the past two decades, performance for 468 x 60 ads seems to have declined with the rise of the Leaderboard format. These ads may have been more noticeable in the past when viewers accessed the internet on smaller screens with lower resolution.
728 x 90 – Leaderboard Banner
Leaderboard banners represent a high-performing google display ad size. They have largely replaced the 468 x 60 banner as the first choice for a high-converting, top-of-page or above-the-fold advertising space. When purchasing this ad size, make sure you’re buying top-of-page slots as opposed to bottom-of-page ones that aren’t viewed as frequently.
300 x 250 – Inline Rectangle
Inline rectangle is generally the top-performing google display ad size on the network. You may have also heard this ad size called “MPU”, which could stand for mid-page unit or multi-purpose unit. These ads are typically used in the middle of pages to break up text. They may be used to trigger a lightbox ad experience or to play a video advertisement.
336 x 280 – Large Rectangle
The large rectangle format usually performs well, so it should be considered when designing your PPC campaign, but there’s also a lack of inventory since most ad hosts prefer the high-performing 300 x 250 inline rectangle format.
120 x 600 – Skyscraper
Skyscraper ads are tall and slim so audiences encounter them progressively while scrolling down the page. The 120 x 600 format, while still common on the Google ad network, has fallen out of favor because of the success of the wide skyscraper and large skyscraper ad formats. Google also reports a lack of inventory which can lead to poor ad performance.
160 x 600 – Wide Skyscraper
Wide skyscraper version is a wider version of the regular skyscraper, which means more visibility and higher click through for advertisers. Google also reports having a lot of inventory for this ad size but advises marketers to create both text and display versions to optimize their results.
300 x 600 – Large Skyscraper
Also known as a half-page ad, the large skyscraper format takes up a whopping 180,000 pixels on the screen. The large size makes it easy to grab user attention with video or an expanding ad format.
970 x 90 – Large Leaderboard
Large Leaderboard is an expanding ad format that appears at the top of the page before expanding to 970 x 415 and pushing down the rest of the page contents to make space. Large leaderboards have the potential to deliver exceptional brand experiences, but they are still relatively new and remain underused.
Top 5 Best Performing Display Ad Sizes on Google
The great people of Google have done us a service by publishing the top-performing ad sizes across the Google display network. All of the display ad sizes in this list were among the most common except for the 320 x 100 large mobile banner which occupies the fifth position and is only served on mobile devices.
According to Google, the best performing display ad sizes are:
- 300 x 250 – Medium Rectangle
- 336 x 280 – Large Rectangle
- 728 x 90 – Leaderboard
- 300 x 600 – Half Page (Large Skyscraper)
- 320 x 100 – Large Mobile Banner
Summary
To optimize your next PPC display campaign, it’s important that you choose the top-performing ad sizes with ad placements that are most likely to generate impressions and conversions for your campaign. You’ll need to choose a variety of sizes and include both text and image ads for desktop and mobile devices.
We hope this information about Google display ad sizes helps you design high-performing creative for your future advertising endeavors. If you want to make sure that your revenue goals are met with an optimal marketing mix, let’s get on a call.
Brian Bui
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