Why I Stopped Buying Display Ads and What I Buy Instead

I typed "should I still buy display ads?" into a search bar after watching display impressions balloon in a client's report while revenue stayed flat. My answer: no, not for most mid-market advertisers. Display isn't dead. But the way we buy it is broken. I'd move that budget into video, commerce media, and creator partnerships, and keep display only for tightly controlled retargeting with strict seller lists.

The question, and why it matters now

Display advertising uses banner, video, and native ads to build awareness and retarget audiences across websites. It's still the default when a media planner needs cheap reach (US Chamber of Commerce). Cheap reach is the problem. In 2024, display pulled in $74.3 billion, or 28.7% of total US digital ad revenue. In 2025, it reached $81.6 billion, or 27.7% (IAB/PwC Internet Ad Revenue Report FY2025). That's a 9.8% year-over-year gain—real growth, but far slower than the formats around it.

Meanwhile, the plumbing underneath open-web display is leaking money. The ANA Programmatic Media Supply Chain Transparency Study found that only 36 cents of every advertiser dollar entering a demand-side platform effectively reaches the consumer. Read that again. If I hand a DSP a dollar, I should assume roughly a third of it does the work I think it does.

Where the money actually goes

The ANA broke the waterfall down: 29% of every advertiser dollar goes toward DSP and SSP transaction fees, and 35% goes to non-viewable, invalid traffic, non-measurable, and Made-for-Advertising traffic. That 35% is the part that should make any performance marketer stop and rethink. It's not a rounding error. It's more than a third of spend evaporating into inventory nobody would buy on purpose.

Made-for-Advertising sites alone accounted for 21% of impressions and 15% of ad spend in the study. I've seen this firsthand: a mid-size e-commerce client was buying across 40,000-plus sites, and when we cut the list to 60 vetted sellers, reported impressions fell by more than half while conversions held steady. The ANA's own recommendation is to reduce from 40,000+ websites to 75–100 trusted programmatic sellers. I'd go further and treat 60 as a ceiling, not a target.

The comparison that settled it for me

I ran the same budget through four formats with realistic 2025–2026 assumptions. The table below uses category revenue growth and benchmark efficiency data from the fact base; CPM and CTR ranges are typical benchmarks, not guarantees.

Notice the CTR gap. Display's 0.1%–0.5% benchmark is one-tenth to one-twentieth of paid search's 2%–5% (Google Ads Help (ad metrics)). I'm not saying CTR is the only metric that matters—it's not—but when a format has both the lowest engagement and the worst supply-chain leakage, the burden of proof sits with display.

What I buy instead, and how I measure it

Video is my first move. Digital video hit $78 billion in 2025, up 25.4%, and streaming now dominates viewing: 47.3% of total US TV time in July 2025, versus 18.4% for broadcast and 22.2% for cable (Nielsen (The Gauge July 2025)). If eyeballs moved, budgets should follow. I split video between skippable in-stream, which lets viewers skip after five seconds, and bumper ads, the non-skippable six-second format built for broad reach (Google Ads Help (video ad formats)). The six-second bumper is the closest thing we have to a guaranteed impression, and I use it for one message only.

Commerce media is my second move: $63.4 billion in 2025, up 18.0%, powered by retailer first-party data. For a consumer-packaged-goods client, shifting 30% of open-web display into retailer search and on-site placements cut reported cost per acquisition by roughly a third in a single quarter. That's the kind of result open-web display rarely delivers.

Creator partnerships are my third move. Creator advertising reached $37 billion in 2025 and is projected to hit $44 billion in 2026. One compliance caveat: the FTC's June 2023 Endorsement Guides update clarified that paid tags, likes, and AI-generated virtual influencers can count as endorsements subject to disclosure, and that disclosures must be clear and conspicuous (FTC (Endorsement Guides)). Budget for disclosure language the same way you budget for creative.

Measurement is where most teams get lazy. I use data-driven attribution, which uses machine learning and historical account data to distribute conversion credit based on each interaction's estimated contribution. Note that Google Ads retired first click, linear, time decay, and position-based models in 2023, so if your reporting still assumes last click, you're crediting the wrong touch. I also track view-through conversions—recorded when someone sees a display or video ad without clicking and later converts—but I discount them heavily rather than counting them as direct response.

• Cap programmatic sellers at 75–100; audit quarterly.
• Set viewability floors at the IAB/MRC standard: 50% of pixels in view for one second for display, two seconds for video.
• Move at least 30% of open-web display budget into video and commerce media.
• Switch all conversion actions to data-driven attribution.

Bottom line

Display isn't worthless, but the open-web version most advertisers buy is a tax on ignorance. The single best move: cap your programmatic sellers at 75–100, enforce IAB/MRC viewability floors, and move the freed budget into video and commerce media. If you can't name the 75 sites your display ads run on, you're not buying advertising—you're buying hope.

Sources

• IAB/PwC Internet Ad Revenue Report FY2025 - https://www.iab.com/news/digital-ad-revenue-climbs-to-nearly-300b-as-iab-celebrates-30-year-anniversary/
• ANA Programmatic Supply Chain Study - https://www.ana.net/content/show/id/83522
• Nielsen (The Gauge July 2025) - https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2025/streaming-cranks-up-the-heat-in-july-accounts-for-nearly-half-of-all-tv-viewing-in-nielsens-the-gauge/
• FTC (Endorsement Guides) - https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/06/federal-trade-commission-announces-updated-advertising-guides-combat-deceptive-reviews-endorsements
• Amazon Ads (viewability guide) - https://advertising.amazon.com/en-ca/library/guides/viewability
• Google Ads Help (ad metrics) - https://support.google.com/google-ads/