As a designer, I probably should be saying that the design is the most important part of a Google Display ad. But I don’t think it is. If I had to choose between great design and great content, I’d take the content every time. That doesn’t mean design doesn’t matter. It absolutely does. In fact, design has an important job to do: get someone to notice the ad in the first place. But once you’ve got their attention, the content has to give them a reason to care.

Design gets attention. Content gets the click.

I think about a Display ad as having two basic jobs.

1. The design says: “Look at me.”
2. The content says: “Here’s why you should care.”

You need both, but they’re doing different things.

A beautifully designed ad with a weak message might get noticed, but that doesn’t mean anyone is going to click it. On the other hand, an ad with a compelling offer and mediocre design can sometimes perform surprisingly well because the message is doing the heavy lifting.

That’s something that’s easy to lose sight of when you’re coming at digital advertising from a design perspective. It’s tempting to spend a lot of time getting the image just right, adjusting the typography, refining the colors and making sure the logo is perfectly positioned. Those things matter, but none of them can make up for an ad that doesn’t give someone a reason to take action.

Start with the message, not the layout

Before I start designing an ad, I’d rather answer a few questions:

1. Who are we trying to reach?
2. What do we want them to do?
3. Why would they care?

That last question is especially important.

If the answer is something generic like “learn more about our company,” that’s probably not a strong enough reason. Think about the difference between these two ads.

Powering a Better Future
Beautiful photo of a solar installation
Learn More

There’s nothing technically wrong with this ad. It might even look great. But compare it with:

Cut Your Commercial Energy Costs
See how Vermont businesses are using battery storage to reduce peak-demand charges.
See the savings

The second ad may not win any design awards. But I immediately know what it’s about, why it might matter to me, and what I can do next. That’s a much better starting point for an ad.

Don’t make a Display ad into a miniature print ad

I see this happen fairly often. A company takes everything it wants to say and tries to squeeze it into a banner:

• Logo.
• Headline.
• Subhead.
• Body copy.
• Phone number.
• Website.
• Tagline.
• Product photo.
• Three selling points.
• And, of course, a button.

At that point, you’ve created a very small brochure. Display advertising generally doesn’t give you that much time to explain yourself. Someone might see your ad for a fraction of a second while they’re reading something else. The message needs to be understood quickly.

I want someone to be able to look at the ad and get the basic idea almost immediately:

1. What is this?
2. Why should I care?
3. What should I do?

If those three things aren’t clear, adding more design usually isn’t going to solve the problem.

Design still matters—a lot

None of this is an argument for ugly ads. Good design is still incredibly important. A cluttered, poorly designed ad can make a good offer look untrustworthy. The right image can communicate an idea faster than several lines of copy. Typography, hierarchy, color and spacing all help determine what someone notices first.

And there’s another benefit to good design: credibility. If the ad looks professional and consistent with the company’s brand, people are more likely to trust it. So I wouldn’t say content beats design by a huge margin. I’d say they have different jobs. Content creates the reason to act. Design makes that reason easy to notice and understand.

What I’d prioritize

If I’m evaluating a Display campaign, this is roughly how I’d rank things:

1. The offer and message
Is there a compelling reason for someone to click?

2. The audience
Are we putting that message in front of the right people?

3. The call to action
Is it obvious what happens when they click?

4. The creative
Does the design get attention and communicate the message quickly?

5. The landing page
Does the page deliver on what the ad promised?

6. The branding
Does the ad look and feel like the company behind it?

Notice that design is still pretty high on the list. It’s just not at the top. And there’s not much point in having a great ad if you’re showing it to the wrong audience or sending people to a landing page that doesn’t deliver on the promise.

The best-looking ad isn’t necessarily the best-performing ad

This is probably the hardest thing for designers to accept. We naturally want to judge creative work by how it looks. But advertising isn’t a design competition. A campaign that produces leads, sales or qualified traffic is more successful than one that wins a room full of compliments.

Sometimes the ad with the simplest design and most straightforward headline will outperform the one that took twice as long to design. That’s not a failure of design. It’s actually a reminder of what design is supposed to do. The goal isn’t necessarily to make the ad beautiful. The goal is to make the message impossible to miss.

And when the message is good, the design has something worth designing around. That’s where the two really work together.