The Quality Shift: Driving Real Engagement Through Smarter Display Targeting
Head of Digital
Ardent Communications
In our pursuit of constant improvement, we went beyond surface-level KPIs and analysed how people were actually engaging. That’s what revealed the opportunity. Once we reengineered the display strategy with quality in mind, the uplift in performance spoke for itself.
Increase in time on page
Lift in engagement rate
%
Rise in events per session
%
The Business
World Business Forum New York and Sydney targets a mature, educated, and professional audience with mid-to-high income levels.
The strategy was implemented with a tactical approach for four to five months across the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand to build brand awareness and qualified traffic to their landing page, while additional campaigns focused on generating leads.
The Challenge
In traditional display advertising, low CPMs and CPCs are often seen as wins. But digging deeper, we noticed a problem: the platforms were prioritising volume over value.
Awareness ads frequently landed on low-quality sites, and traffic campaigns drove visits that lasted five seconds on average, hardly an engagement worth celebrating.
We realised that while we were hitting reach targets, we were missing the mark on true quality. It wasn’t just about visibility. It was about valuable visibility.
Our Process
Ardent led a full strategic overhaul. We began with a deep dive audit of campaign performance in DV360 alongside user behaviour insights from GA4. This analysis revealed that many impressions and subsequent clicks came from sites that didn’t align with the calibre of the audience we were trying to reach.
Our response was to pivot away from mass targeting and instead build a curated list of 250 high-quality domains. These included trusted news publishers, finance and business outlets, and high-traffic lifestyle titles, each vetted for relevance, reach, and reputation.
Using a combination of manual research, industry tools, and AI-powered analysis, we honed in on sites with meaningful traffic and strong editorial standards. We then configured DV360 campaigns to exclusively target these premium placements, trimming back wastage and boosting relevance.
The Impact
The results were immediate and only got stronger over time:
- Time on page from display campaigns surged 3.3x, from 5 to 18 seconds within a month, eventually reaching 33 seconds after two-and-a-half months.
- Engagement rate on page climbed from 27% to 43%, a 57% improvement.
- GA4 events per session ticked up 11%, from 3.53 to 3.91.
This approach proved that in the crowded world of display advertising, smarter doesn’t have to mean broader. It can mean better.