Marketing mistakes are costly. B2B display advertising demands precision: get your targeting right, and you'll reach decision-makers actively researching solutions. Get it wrong, and you're burning budget on the wrong accounts.
This guide walks through what works in B2B display advertising: the formats, the channels, the targeting tactics that separate efficient spend from waste.
What Is B2B Display Advertising?
B2B display advertising is a digital marketing tactic that places visual ad units (banners, video, rich media) across websites, social platforms, and industry publications to reach buying committees where they research solutions online.
Display ads operate on an impression-based model where advertisers bid on ad inventory through programmatic exchanges or buy placements directly from publishers. You pay per thousand impressions (CPM) or per click, depending on campaign objectives.
B2B display differs from B2C in three critical ways:
Audience composition: B2B targets buying committees (multiple stakeholders across departments) rather than individual consumers.
Sales cycle length: B2B buying cycles span months, not minutes. Display supports long-term pipeline influence rather than immediate conversions.
Success metrics: B2B measures pipeline impact and account engagement, not just clicks and impressions.
Why B2B Display Advertising Matters for Pipeline Growth
Display advertising puts your brand in front of buyers during research phases, before they ever fill out a form. It reaches multiple stakeholders in a buying committee simultaneously, something email and search can't do at scale.
Here's why display still matters for B2B pipeline:
Buying committee coverage: Display lets you reach multiple decision-makers across an account at the same time.
Multi-touch influence: B2B buyers consume content across channels over months. Display keeps you visible throughout the journey.
Full-funnel support: Display works for awareness (reaching cold accounts), consideration (nurturing engaged prospects), and decision (accelerating deals in late stages).
Account-based precision: Modern display platforms let you target specific companies on your ICP list, not just broad demographic segments.
Types of B2B Display Ad Formats
B2B display advertising spans multiple formats. Each serves different objectives across the buyer journey.
Banner, Rich Media, and Video Ads
The core display formats include:
Format | Description | Key Characteristics |
|---|---|---|
Banner ads | Static image-based units in standard sizes (300x250, 728x90, 160x600) | Simple to produce, easy to scale across networks |
Rich media ads | Interactive HTML5 units with animation, expandable elements, or embedded forms | Higher engagement than static banners but require more production effort |
Video ads | Pre-roll (before video content), mid-roll (during content), outstream (in-article placements), and connected TV (CTV) | Video increasingly matters in B2B as buyers expect more engaging content formats |
Native and Programmatic Advertising
Two additional approaches shape how B2B display ads get delivered:
Native advertising: Ads that match the look and feel of editorial content on publisher sites. They blend into the page design, appearing as recommended articles or sponsored content.
Programmatic advertising: Automated buying and placement of ads through real-time bidding on ad exchanges. Programmatic is a buying method, not a format. It can deliver any ad type (banner, video, native) and lets you target specific accounts at scale.
Programmatic matters for B2B because it enables account-level targeting. You can upload your ICP list and bid only on impressions served to those companies.
Where B2B Display Ads Appear
B2B display ads run across four main channel categories:
Display networks: Google Display Network and other open web inventory. Broad reach across millions of sites, but requires careful targeting to avoid waste.
Social platforms: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. Built-in professional targeting on LinkedIn; broader reach but less B2B-specific on Facebook.
Industry trade publications: Contextually relevant placements where your buyers research solutions. Higher CPMs but better engagement from qualified audiences.
Publisher direct buys: Negotiated placements with specific publications or media properties. More control over ad placement and audience context.
Placement context matters in B2B. An ad on a trusted industry site carries more weight than one on a random blog. Buyers notice where your ads appear.
Targeting Tactics for B2B Display Campaigns
Effective B2B display depends on precision targeting powered by data quality. Generic audience segments waste budget. Tight targeting based on firmographics, technographics, and buyer intent signals drives results.
The foundation: know your ICP. Define it by company size, industry, revenue, tech stack, and buying signals. Then layer targeting tactics to reach the right accounts.
Targeting Tactic | What It Does | Best For |
|---|---|---|
Account-Based Targeting | Serves ads only to companies on your ICP list using firmographic and technographic data | Precision account penetration, ABM campaigns |
Intent-Based Targeting | Reaches accounts showing active research behavior in your product category | Capturing in-market buyers, demand generation |
Retargeting | Re-engages qualified visitors who previously interacted with your site | Nurturing engaged prospects, conversion acceleration |
Account-Based Targeting
Account-based targeting means uploading account lists to ad platforms so your ads reach only companies that fit your ICP. You define the target accounts, not the platform's algorithm.
Build account lists using firmographic and technographic criteria:
Firmographics: Company size, industry, revenue range, location, growth stage.
Technographics: Tech stack indicators that signal fit (CRM platform, marketing automation tools, data infrastructure).
Don't rely solely on native platform audiences, which vary in quality across social channels. Add in dynamic data that stays current with your audience's most recent behaviors.
With ZoomInfo Marketing, you can quickly configure your audience and push it into LinkedIn, Facebook, and other display networks. Smartsheet achieved a 3X increase in average audience match rate using ZoomInfo Marketing for advertising campaigns. High match rates mean less wasted spend on unidentified impressions.
Intent-Based and Behavioral Targeting
Intent-based targeting uses buyer intent signals to reach accounts actively researching solutions in your category. These signals come from third-party content consumption data, showing which companies are reading about topics related to your product.
Behavioral targeting uses browsing behavior and engagement signals to identify in-market buyers. This includes on-site engagement patterns and content consumption history.
Key differences:
Signal Type | Definition |
|---|---|
Intent signals | Third-party research activity indicating buying interest across the web |
Behavioral data | On-site engagement and content consumption patterns from your own properties |
When you A/B test, layer intent data into audience segments in separate campaigns to see what performs best. Signal quality and recency matter. Stale intent data doesn't predict current buying behavior.
Retargeting Known and Anonymous Visitors
Retargeting brings people back after they've visited your site, but not all website visitors are good-fit prospects. If you simply remarket to all visitors, you end up with significant waste.
Qualify your retargeting audiences:
Suppress competitors and employees: Keep these audiences dynamic so you're not wasting impressions on people who will never buy.
Qualify website visitors: Not every visitor is a good-fit prospect. Segment by pages viewed, time on site, or form fills.
Distinguish known vs. anonymous: Known visitors (identified through forms or enrichment) get different messaging than anonymous browsers.
Don't forget to exclude competitors, employees, and anyone outside of your target audience from your campaign, and keep these audiences dynamic. The more targeted your audience is, the less money you'll waste.
How to Measure B2B Display Advertising Performance
B2B display metrics go beyond impressions and click-through rates. Track what matters for pipeline:
Account reach: How many target accounts saw your ads.
Engaged accounts: Which accounts clicked, visited your site, or consumed content after ad exposure.
Down-funnel conversions: Form fills, demo requests, trial signups from ad-exposed accounts.
Pipeline influence: Correlation between ad exposure and deal progression. Did accounts that saw ads move faster through stages?
View-through conversions: Conversions that happen after ad exposure but without a direct click. Critical for understanding display's assist role.
Understand the difference between "cost per lead" and "cost per MQL." High volumes of low-cost leads sound great, but optimizing for MQLs (though more expensive) is where you'll see real return on investment.
Don't optimize for vanity metrics. Ad platforms want you to optimize for clicks because it's easy to measure. But B2B buying committees don't convert on first click. Measure pipeline impact, not just ad platform metrics.
Best Practices for B2B Display Advertising
Always put the goal first: are you trying to gain brand awareness, generate pipeline, penetrate a market segment, or accelerate deals?
The first step should always be examining the objective. Then ask yourself who the audience is. From there, you should be able to dictate which channels and how many to tap into, the content offer, and how much budget to put behind it.
Key best practices for B2B display campaigns:
Start with the objective: Brand awareness, pipeline generation, and deal acceleration require different tactics and measurement approaches.
Test one variable at a time: When you A/B test, only change one variable at a time. If you change more than one, you won't be able to determine which variable made the difference.
Segment with precision: Your audience shouldn't be too narrow or too broad, but just targeted enough that your content and message can accurately speak to their needs. For example, you may want to segment and target by job title (VP of sales), industry (financial services), and level of intent (high intent) depending on your offer.
Maintain audience hygiene: Keep suppression lists and account data current. List freshness matters. Companies change. People change jobs. Stale data kills match rates.
Don't pigeonhole channels: Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, and Reddit all serve multiple objectives. Look at social channels as "how do people use this?" rather than "how do I need this to be used?"
Reduce friction: Not all content offers need to be gated; remove obstacles that could prevent your target audience from converting.
The C-suite is busy, so employees lower on the org chart (directors, managers, individual contributors) typically research and advocate for your product before it reaches executives.
For top-of-funnel content offers, start by targeting potential influencers and company champions. The C-suite will come later.
If your offer is gated, use built-in lead forms to minimize clicks so users don't travel to a different page. With FormComplete, you can minimize required form fields to just one or two pieces of information and let the database fill in the missing pieces on the back-end.
Always maintain a customer-centric mindset and prioritize getting your audience right, and the rest will fall into place.
Above all, make sure you have the right tools to set yourself up for success. With ZoomInfo Marketing, you can quickly and easily configure your audience and push it into LinkedIn, Facebook, and other display networks. With exceptional match rates, customer suppression, and the ability to target specific accounts, you can accelerate opportunities and drive unprecedented MQLs.
Talk to our team to see how ZoomInfo Marketing can improve your display advertising results.
Frequently Asked Questions About B2B Display Advertising
How Does Data Quality Impact B2B Display Advertising Results?
Poor data quality leads to wasted spend on wrong accounts and low match rates when uploading audiences to ad platforms. Accurate, continuously refreshed contact and account data ensures your ads reach actual decision-makers at companies that fit your ICP.
How Does B2B Display Advertising Support ABM Strategies?
Display advertising enables ABM by delivering targeted ads to specific accounts on your priority list, reaching multiple buying committee members simultaneously. When paired with accurate account and contact data, display becomes a precision tool for account penetration rather than broad-reach brand awareness.