Google Display Network (GDN): The Complete Guide

Search ads capture people who are already looking for you — Google Display Network (GDN) ads put your brand in front of them everywhere else: news sites, forums, apps and video partner sites. This guide covers how GDN works in 2026, every format it supports, how to set up your first campaign, and the optimisation habits that stop it quietly burning budget. The most common GDN ad style is image ads (often referred to as banner ads). Here are some examples of the banner ads.

What is the Google Display Network (GDN)? GDN is Google's network of millions of partner websites, apps and video platforms — reached through AdSense and AdMob — where advertisers run image, responsive and video ads on a cost-per-click basis via the Google Ads platform. It is Google's main channel for visual, brand-building and remarketing ads, as opposed to search.

Is the Google Display Network being discontinued in 2026?

No — the Google Display Network itself is not going away. What Google is retiring is the standalone Display campaign type. GDN inventory now lives inside Demand Gen and Performance Max, which serve image, video and carousel creative across YouTube, Discover, Gmail and the Display Network with AI-driven targeting instead of manual placement and topic controls. Since March 2025, Demand Gen has channel controls, so you can pick which surfaces (including GDN) your ads run on. Timeline: from June 2026 a migration tool inside Google Ads moves existing Display campaigns into Demand Gen; after that you can no longer create new standalone Display campaigns, and any remaining eligible campaigns are auto-migrated into Demand Gen after that. Existing Display campaigns stay editable and keep running until they are migrated. For an advertiser today, the network and formats live on — you simply reach GDN inventory through Demand Gen and PMax. See Google Ads Help, "Google Display Network integration with Demand Gen".

How do I know whether the banner ads are from Google Display Network?

Look at the above examples from on.cc and you will see a lot of banner ads on the layout, but how do we know which banner ads are from the Google Display Network? In most cases, GDN ads carry a small info (ⓘ) or AdChoices icon in the corner. Click it and you will see “My Ad Center” with wording like “Ad by Google” — that banner is served through the Google Display Network.

From that same My Ad Center panel, you can see why you are seeing the ad. If you spot a competitor's ad, it is worth clicking through to see how the ad targeted you.

How Google Display Network works?

Google works with websites and mobile apps through AdSense and AdMob. Site and app owners give ad space to Google and share the advertising revenue. Well-known Hong Kong sites such as on.cc, LIHKG and Uwants carry Google Display Network inventory. Advertisers can place banner ads (Banner ads) on these sites through the Google Ads platform, which is what we often call GDN banner.

The Display Network spans a vast network of websites and apps around the world. You can place the ads on particular websites or mobile apps, reaching different target audiences with different interests and devices.

GDN (Google Display Network) ads Presentation Style

Text ads

You cannot set a text-only GDN ad in a Display campaign, but Search campaigns offer “Display Expansion” (the successor to the old Display Select): Google takes your search ads and renders them as auto-formatted display ads across GDN sites and apps. I don’t like using this kind of ad style. First, the performance (measured by click-through rate and conversion rate) isn’t good. Second, I find it unattractive and it looks like a scam!!!

Image ads

This is the most common GDN ad style. We call it GDN banner, banner advertising, or GDN. You can set up image ads in Display Campaign. And you can choose to render your ads in a dynamic or static format. Compared to the text only GDN ads, this is undoubtedly more appealing.

Video ads

This type of advertising is very similar to pre-roll and mid-roll video ads in YouTube. However, it is not played in YouTube, but on the other GDN websites. As with the text ads, you can’t set a GDN ad for a video in Display Campaign, but you can check “Video Partner on the Display Network” when setting up a Video ad. In this way, in addition to having your video ads displayed in YouTube, your ads will also be displayed on some GDN websites or mobile apps (Video Partner). Note that you can’t choose to play video ads only on GDN, you must also advertise on YouTube as well.

Responsive Display ads

You can set up a Responsive Display Ad in Display Campaign. This is different from the pure text GDN ads or image GDN ads; this form of advertising often presents text and images together in one ad. The advantages of this Responsive Display ads are that they will adjust the size, format and length of the ad space automatically to fit in most websites or mobile apps. Also, advertisers can  upload multiple images, titles and descriptions at the same time then Google will automatically show the best combination to improve your ads performance. This kind of ad is simple to make and requires less manual optimization so it is quite suitable for small and medium enterprises. Its presentation can also be displayed as a Native Ad, generally earning it higher clicks and Click Through Rate. For a full walkthrough, see our complete guide to Responsive Display Ads.

Gmail placements (now via Demand Gen)

Standalone Gmail (GSP) campaigns were discontinued back in 2021 — today you reach the Gmail inbox through Demand Gen campaigns, which also cover YouTube and Discover. For the full story, read our guide to Gmail ads today.

Worth knowing in 2026: Demand Gen is effectively GDN’s visual-first sibling — image and video creative across YouTube, Discover and Gmail with lookalike segments. If your goal is social-style visual prospecting, compare Demand Gen before defaulting to classic Display.

GDN Targeting setting

Similar to Facebook Ad, you have a lot of targeting options so you probably need to check it by yourself. In the following, I am trying to categorize countless Targeting into 6 directions.

By Demographic: Target the ads to people of different ages, genders, and countries. You can also target the ads to different income groups in some countries.

By Topic: You can target the ads to a list of websites with a specific theme. For example, if you choose Autos & Vehicles as the theme, then the ads will be displayed on the websites with such theme.

By Placement: Place ads on a given website or mobile app.

By Interest:  Google defines audiences with different types of interests based on their online browsing habits and preferences. Advertisers can place ads to audiences with selected interests.

By custom segments (formerly custom intent): Google uses machine learning to learn the behaviour of the audience. For example, to understand what users are looking at or what they are searching for. It allows the advertisers to set the target audiences that are similar to their products or services, and to advertise. You can also enter keywords, URLs, and applications that are related to your product or service to define your own target audience. Google Ads will display ads on websites, apps, and videos to the people who might be interested in those keywords.

Remarketing: Retarget customers that have interacted with you before (Mainly on Website): Display ads on GDN websites to a specific customer group by creating remarketing ads.

Setup your First GDN Ads

Note: these steps apply while standalone Display campaigns can still be created. From June 2026 Google is moving this into Demand Gen (see above), so going forward you will set up the same inventory as a Demand Gen campaign.

Click the blue + , Add A New Campaign

Then click “Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance” and choose “Display”

Then we need to go to the setting of the campaign and select Standard Display campaign (Smart Display was folded into it in 2022, so Standard is simply the Display campaign now)

Change the name of Campaign, and then choose Languages. For Bidding Part, I personally suggest you choose “Or, select a bid strategy directly” so you can directly choose which bidding strategy you prefer.

If you have a very clear picture on how much you can spend for one conversion, then choose Maximize conversions with a target CPA (formerly Target CPA) and let Google work on it. If you only want to get as many as clicks as possible especially at the early stage of your campaign, then choose maximise clicks with maximum cost per click bid limit ( Suggestedly HKD$3 – HKD$8 based on your targeting for HK Campaign). For a deeper comparison of manual and automated options, see our Google Ads bidding strategies guide.

The next step is targeting. As described above, you can choose the relevant targeting methods, including audience, demographic, keyword, topics, and placement. If you want to have a step by step walkthrough on how to setup Targeting, feel free to watch this Chinese video “GDN廣告 – 如何設定目標對象” (Quoted from <<GDN廣告 (Google 多媒體廣告) 要怎樣做>>)

The next step is optimized targeting (the renamed targeting expansion). We recommend turning it off at the start — it automatically widens your targeting and spends more; switch it on only after conversion data proves the core audience works. In Ad Group Bid, it is recommended to invest HK$3.5 first. In the GDN campaign, since you don’t have Keyword Level, we suggest you modify Bidding on Ad Group Level.

For “Create Your Ads” part, if you don’t have a well-designed visual, you can choose Responsive Display Ad. This is based on the images, text and videos you have uploaded, allowing the system to automatically build your ads. If you want to use your own creative, you can use the JPG, PNG, GIF and HTML5 formats. Remember that the file size should below 150kb, and the dimension is 300×250, 728×90, 336×280, 300×600 or 320×100. These dimensions basically cover 80% of placement.

If you want to learn more about GDN Size and Format, Feel free to check <<Which display ads file format should you adopt?>>

If you have the visual, you can upload the file directly and set the Final URL (Landing Page).

Congratulations when you are seeing this because you have already set up the GDN ads!

Four Tips to optimize your Display Ads

Start with Remarketing

If you have never tried a GDN ad and you don’t have high monthly budget, I would suggest running a remarketing GDN ad (remarketing) to see the results. Simply put, remarketing ads are advertising to guests who have had interaction with you (for example, someone who visited your site or even added a product to a shopping cart). If these guests who have a certain understanding of you cannot be converted into customers, let alone the cold customers? This, for SMEs, we suggest to place remarketing GDN before expanding the audience of the ads.

If you want to know more about the use of remarketing ads, please read our article (in Chinese) <<GDN Remarketing 廣告教學>>

Use custom segments to find potential customers

Compared to defining the target audience by interest or demographics alone, custom segments (the merger of the old custom intent and custom affinity audiences) are more precise and the performance is significantly better.

Here's the current flow, from an ad group's audience settings:

Step 1: In the audience settings, choose Custom segments → New custom segment.

Step 2: Name the segment (e.g. "Digital Marketing Lover") and, under interests or purchase intentions, enter relevant terms (e.g. Google Ads, Google Analytics, GTM).

Step 3 (optional but recommended): Add URLs under "people who browse websites similar to" (e.g. ads.google.com) and apps under "people who use apps similar to" to tighten targeting. The Segment insights panel on the right estimates weekly impressions, gender and age in real time.

Save, and Google finds people who recently searched for or browsed these topics on Search and elsewhere — far more precise than interest or demographic targeting alone.

Exclude ill-Performed Placement (Especially Mobile Game)

Go to the GDN Campaign’s Choice Placement. Click on “Where Ads Shown” or “See Where Your Ads Appeared” (see the picture above) and you will see a lot of placements as shown below.

You will see that there are a lot of placements that are Mobile Applications. The conversion rate on the Mobile App is very low, unless you are going to do remarketing ads. Otherwise, I suggest excluding Mobile Apps.  You could exclude “adsenseformobileapps.com” to block all mobile apps in the past, but Google removed that option in 2018 — today you exclude individual app placements, or use the campaign’s content suitability settings.

Other websites’ placements should also be checked because some websites may be content farms or strange websites. The quality of these placements is generally poor. Remember to exclude these options. For example, topquiz.me CTR goes to a 10+%, they may have a lot of overlays. So, remember to exclude it as well.

Check your CTR and CPC regularly

No matter how well-designed your ad is, you will get aesthetic fatigue from seeing it so many times. When you see your CTR drop significantly and CPC skyrocket, you probably need to change the Ads and/or Copies.  Check the overall CTR regularly to see if it falls to a very low level. If yes, consider changing the creatives to make it more attractive. It is very hard to tell what is low level which really depends. You will have better idea if you monitor your campaign on a regular basis.

FAQ

What is the Google Display Network (GDN)? GDN is Google's vast network of partner websites and apps that show display ads through AdSense and AdMob. Advertisers place banner ads on these sites through the Google Ads platform.

How do I know if a banner ad comes from the Google Display Network? Most GDN ads carry a small info or AdChoices icon in the corner. Click it and you will see My Ad Center with wording like Ad by Google, which means the banner is served through GDN.

What ad formats does GDN support? Image (banner) ads, responsive display ads that adapt to the ad space automatically, auto-formatted text ads via Display Expansion, and video ads on Display Network video partners. Gmail placements are now reached through Demand Gen campaigns.

How much should I bid per click for GDN ads in Hong Kong? If you use maximise clicks bidding, set a maximum cost per click bid limit of roughly HK$3 to HK$8 depending on your targeting. Once you know your average cost per conversion, you can switch to Maximize conversions with a target CPA.

Should I show GDN ads in mobile apps? In most cases, exclude mobile app placements, as their conversion rate is very low unless you are running remarketing. Also review website placements regularly and exclude content farms and low-quality sites.

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