Display Advertising Strategy Training Course

Duration 10 days 20 modules · 65 contact hours
Level Intermediate Certificate on completion
Who attends Digital Marketing Manager, Paid Media Manager and others
Fee from USD 2,200 KSh 190,000 for Kenyan organisations
Where 52 cities + online See dates by city
Next start 16 Nov 2026 Course code SD-DM-049

Before you join: Participants should understand core digital marketing terms such as impressions, clicks, conversions, CPM, CPC and landing pages.

Dates & prices

Two start dates a month in every city, and live online on weekdays or weekends. Fees are per participant; classroom fees include tuition, materials, lunch and refreshments, and the certificate.

Suggest a date or city

Showing the next six months. Later dates, other cities and private deliveries for your team are available on request.

Course overview

Display advertising can create qualified demand, support account-based sales, protect brand presence and re-engage known prospects. It can also waste budget quickly when objectives, audiences, inventory quality, frequency, creative formats and measurement rules are poorly defined. Marketing teams must make defensible decisions about where adverts appear, which audiences receive them, how bids are set and what evidence demonstrates commercial contribution.

This course equips participants to plan, buy, manage and evaluate display advertising campaigns across programmatic, publisher-direct and major platform environments. Participants work through campaign objectives, media plans, audience architecture, contextual targeting, retargeting, creative specifications, budget allocation, bid strategies, ad verification, brand safety and measurement. The course also addresses privacy changes, consent requirements, first-party data activation, incrementality testing and the relationship between display activity and sales outcomes.

Teaching combines instructor briefings, campaign cases, media-planning workshops, buying simulations, creative reviews and performance-analysis tasks. Participants build a display advertising strategy progressively from the first week, using realistic scenarios such as a bank promoting digital lending, an NGO recruiting programme applicants and a B2B firm generating enterprise leads. They leave with a completed display advertising strategy pack containing campaign objectives, audience definitions, channel choices, budget logic, creative briefs, measurement plan and optimisation rules.

The course suits marketing professionals responsible for paid media decisions, agency management, campaign performance or digital customer acquisition. It is particularly useful where teams need stronger control over media quality, campaign accountability and the connection between advertising investment and measurable business results.

What you will be able to do

  • Define display advertising objectives using funnel, customer journey and commercial KPI frameworks
  • Build audience strategies using first-party data, contextual signals, retargeting and exclusion rules
  • Develop media plans that allocate budgets across programmatic, publisher-direct and platform inventory
  • Specify display creative briefs, responsive asset requirements and dynamic creative decision rules
  • Apply bid, pacing, frequency and optimisation methods to improve campaign efficiency
  • Assess inventory quality using viewability, invalid traffic, brand safety and suitability controls
  • Design measurement frameworks using attribution, conversion tracking, lift studies and incrementality tests
  • Present a complete display advertising strategy with implementation, governance and reporting plans

Benefits of attending

For you

  • Build defensible display media plans for internal approval or client presentation
  • Diagnose wasted spend caused by weak targeting, poor inventory or excessive frequency
  • Brief agencies and media partners using precise buying, creative and measurement requirements
  • Interpret display campaign reports beyond click-through rate and last-click conversions
  • Create a portfolio-ready display advertising strategy for a realistic business case

For your organisation

  • Improve budget allocation between display formats, publishers, audiences and campaign stages
  • Reduce exposure to unsuitable placements, invalid traffic and unmanaged frequency
  • Strengthen agency accountability through clearer plans, KPIs and reporting requirements
  • Increase conversion quality through better audience exclusions, sequencing and retargeting rules
  • Establish repeatable standards for display measurement, optimisation and campaign governance

Course modules

20 modules over 10 days

Participants can position display advertising within a commercial marketing strategy and select suitable campaign objectives.

  • Display advertising roles across awareness, consideration, conversion and retention stages
  • Paid, owned and earned media mapped through customer journey stages
  • Marketing funnel objectives translated into measurable display campaign outcomes
  • Reach, frequency and recency principles for audience communication planning
  • Demand generation versus demand capture in paid media portfolios
  • Business cases linking media investment to revenue, leads or applications

Participants can distinguish display buying routes and select an appropriate procurement model.

  • Publisher-direct, ad network and programmatic buying model comparisons
  • Demand-side platforms, supply-side platforms and ad exchanges explained
  • Real-time bidding auction mechanics and impression-level buying decisions
  • Private marketplaces, preferred deals and programmatic guaranteed arrangements
  • Open-web inventory compared with walled-garden display environments
  • Agency trading desks and advertiser responsibilities within media supply chains

Participants can write campaign objectives and KPI frameworks that match business intent.

  • SMART campaign objectives tied to defined commercial or behavioural outcomes
  • Primary, diagnostic and guardrail metrics structured in KPI trees
  • Awareness KPIs including reach, frequency, viewability and completed views
  • Consideration KPIs using engaged sessions, site actions and qualified traffic
  • Conversion KPIs defined through lead quality, sales value and cost
  • Baseline performance data used to set realistic campaign targets

Participants can construct an audience architecture with clear inclusion, exclusion and sequencing logic.

  • Segmentation built from needs, value, propensity and lifecycle signals
  • First-party audiences created from CRM, website and customer data
  • Prospecting audiences separated from retargeting and customer retention pools
  • Inclusion and exclusion rules preventing wasted impressions and message conflict
  • Audience overlap analysis used to control duplication and excessive frequency
  • Sequenced messaging aligned with awareness, consideration and conversion intent

Participants can plan audience activation while accounting for consent, privacy and data governance requirements.

  • First-party, second-party and third-party data sources compared for activation
  • Consent management platforms and lawful data-processing responsibilities
  • Cookie deprecation implications for targeting, measurement and frequency control
  • Customer Match and similar audience approaches using consented customer data
  • Data clean rooms for privacy-preserving audience and measurement analysis
  • Retention periods, suppression lists and data-access controls documented clearly

Participants can select targeting methods that balance relevance, scale, privacy and media quality.

  • Contextual targeting using page content, keywords and semantic classification
  • Behavioural targeting assessed for data source quality and consent status
  • Geographic targeting designed around service areas, branches and delivery zones
  • Dayparting matched to audience availability, conversion patterns and budget pacing
  • Device targeting based on user behaviour, creative suitability and outcomes
  • Targeting-layer combinations tested against reach, efficiency and audience overlap

Participants can design retargeting programmes that respond to audience intent without overexposure.

  • Website visitor segments defined by pages, actions and recency windows
  • Cart abandonment campaigns structured with suppression and conversion exclusions
  • Lead nurturing sequences matched to content consumption and sales readiness
  • Customer retention messaging separated from acquisition and prospecting activity
  • Frequency caps set by audience value, purchase cycle and message sensitivity
  • Burn pixels and exclusion audiences preventing post-conversion advertising waste

Participants can produce a media plan that allocates budget against audiences, channels and campaign stages.

  • Media plan structure covering objectives, audiences, formats, costs and timing
  • Top-down budget allocation reconciled with channel-level delivery forecasts
  • CPM, CPC, CPA and cost-per-qualified-lead planning calculations
  • Reach curves used to estimate incremental audience delivery by budget
  • Flighting plans designed around launches, seasonality and decision cycles
  • Test-and-learn budget reserves protected within campaign investment plans

Participants can evaluate publishers and inventory packages against audience, context and quality criteria.

  • Publisher evaluation scorecards covering audience, context, reach and commercial terms
  • Premium inventory assessed against open-exchange scale and price advantages
  • Placement reports reviewed for domain quality, relevance and delivery concentration
  • Whitelist and blacklist methods applied to inventory access decisions
  • App inventory evaluated separately from mobile web and desktop placements
  • Native, rich-media and standard display formats selected by campaign purpose

Participants can create display creative briefs that align message, audience, format and action.

  • Creative proposition developed from audience insight, offer and desired action
  • Message hierarchy structured for rapid recognition within display placements
  • Display creative briefs specifying audience, proposition, formats and approvals
  • Calls to action matched to funnel stage and landing-page intent
  • Brand assets adapted for recognition at small display ad sizes
  • Creative fatigue indicators identified through frequency, engagement and conversion trends

Participants can select formats and asset specifications for responsive, rich-media and dynamic campaigns.

  • IAB display ad sizes selected for reach, visibility and publisher compatibility
  • Responsive display assets prepared across images, headlines, logos and descriptions
  • HTML5 creative requirements assessed for file weight and platform compatibility
  • Rich-media formats matched to interaction goals and production budgets
  • Dynamic creative optimisation rules based on products, audiences and contexts
  • Creative QA checklists covering links, rendering, claims and tracking tags

Participants can align display ads with landing pages and conversion paths that reduce abandonment.

  • Message match maintained between ad promise, landing page and action
  • Landing-page hierarchy designed for scanning, trust and conversion completion
  • Form design reviewed for friction, data requirements and lead quality
  • Mobile landing-page performance assessed through speed, readability and interaction
  • Conversion paths mapped from impression through enquiry, sale or registration
  • UTM parameter conventions applied for consistent campaign attribution reporting

Participants can set bidding and pacing rules that support delivery, efficiency and outcome quality.

  • CPM, viewable CPM, CPC and CPA bidding models compared
  • Bid strategies selected by campaign objective, data maturity and conversion volume
  • Manual bidding versus algorithmic optimisation in demand-side platforms
  • Daily pacing controls used to prevent early budget exhaustion
  • Bid modifiers applied by audience, device, geography and time period
  • Win rate, bid landscape and clearing price interpreted for optimisation

Participants can manage exposure levels and assess incremental reach across display activity.

  • Frequency caps set at campaign, audience, placement and device levels
  • Effective frequency assessed against message complexity and purchase cycle length
  • Reach-and-frequency forecasts used for awareness campaign investment decisions
  • Cross-channel duplication identified between display, video, social and search
  • Recency rules adjusted for high-intent visits and long consideration journeys
  • Saturation signals detected through declining response and rising impression waste

Participants can establish controls that protect brands from unsuitable placements and invalid traffic.

  • Brand safety and brand suitability distinguished through risk tolerance criteria
  • IAB content categories applied to placement exclusions and inclusion lists
  • Pre-bid and post-bid verification controls compared for media protection
  • Invalid traffic indicators including bots, data-centre traffic and click farms
  • Ads.txt and sellers.json checked to validate authorised inventory supply
  • Incident-response procedures defined for unsuitable placements and reporting escalation

Participants can document campaign setup requirements and conduct pre-launch quality checks.

  • Campaign naming conventions standardised for reporting and operational control
  • Pixel implementation requirements documented for conversions, audiences and exclusions
  • Conversion events prioritised by commercial value and reporting purpose
  • Tag management plans assign ownership, testing steps and change controls
  • Pre-launch QA verifies targeting, creative, budgets, tracking and destination URLs
  • Launch checklists confirm approvals, inventory controls and escalation contacts

Participants can interpret campaign data and identify practical performance improvement actions.

  • Reporting dashboards structured around objectives, KPIs, trends and decisions
  • Delivery diagnostics separate underdelivery, overspend and pacing issues
  • Creative, audience and placement performance segmented for actionable analysis
  • Click-through rate interpreted alongside conversion quality and post-click behaviour
  • View-through conversions assessed with attribution windows and control comparisons
  • Optimisation logs record changes, hypotheses, outcomes and next decisions

Participants can select measurement approaches that distinguish contribution from coincidence.

  • Last-click attribution limitations identified for display advertising performance assessment
  • Multi-touch attribution models compared using rule-based credit allocation methods
  • Incrementality defined through outcomes caused by advertising exposure
  • Holdout groups designed for retargeting and customer audience experiments
  • Brand lift studies planned using exposed and unexposed audience samples
  • A/B testing protocols specify hypotheses, variables, sample sizes and decisions

Participants can manage agency and platform partners through clear governance, controls and reporting.

  • Agency briefs specify objectives, audiences, budgets, deliverables and decision rights
  • Service-level agreements define reporting cadence, optimisation and escalation responsibilities
  • Media transparency requirements cover fees, inventory sources and data ownership
  • RACI matrices assign campaign approvals, implementation and performance-accountability roles
  • Quarterly business reviews assess results, learning priorities and partner performance
  • Governance calendars coordinate creative approvals, reporting and budget reallocation

Participants can build, review and present a complete display advertising strategy for a defined business challenge.

  • Business challenge converted into objectives, KPIs and campaign success criteria
  • Audience architecture combines prospecting, retargeting, exclusions and message sequencing
  • Media plan allocates budget across inventory, formats, timing and buying routes
  • Creative brief defines proposition, assets, calls to action and landing paths
  • Measurement plan specifies tracking, attribution, incrementality and reporting methods
  • Strategy presentation defends assumptions, risks, optimisation rules and governance arrangements

Exercises and examples are adapted to each cohort's sectors and roles.

What you take back to work

  1. Display advertising strategy template
  2. Audience architecture and exclusion matrix
  3. Display media plan and budget model
  4. Creative brief and asset specification checklist
  5. Campaign measurement and attribution plan
  6. Pre-launch quality assurance checklist

Who should attend

  • Digital Marketing Manager — needs accountable display investment plans and performance controls
  • Paid Media Manager — manages campaign delivery, agencies or advertising platforms
  • Brand Manager — requires display activity that protects brand context and reach
  • Marketing Communications Manager — coordinates campaigns across paid, owned and earned channels
  • Performance Marketing Specialist — seeks stronger optimisation and measurement methods
  • Agency Account Manager — advises clients on display strategy, buying and reporting

Skills and tools covered

Display media planningAudience targeting strategyProgrammatic buyingCreative performance managementAdvertising measurementMedia quality governance

Tools and standards

Google Ads, Display & Video 360, The Trade Desk, IAB Tech Lab OpenRTB

How the course runs

Training methodology

The course uses short instructor briefings followed by applied campaign work. Participants analyse media plans, audience definitions, creative assets and performance reports from realistic display advertising scenarios. Group exercises cover budget allocation, inventory selection, bid decisions, frequency management and measurement design. Buying simulations test responses to underdelivery, rising costs, poor-quality placements and weak conversion rates. Participants apply each module to a developing strategy pack, receive structured peer and instructor feedback, and prepare an implementation plan for their own organisation.

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should understand core digital marketing terms such as impressions, clicks, conversions, CPM, CPC and landing pages. Experience managing paid search, social advertising, website analytics or agency briefs is useful because the course moves quickly into campaign design and performance decisions. Participants should be comfortable interpreting simple campaign reports and working with spreadsheet calculations. Prior programmatic buying experience is not required. Access to advertising-platform accounts, media budgets, coding skills and advanced statistical knowledge are not required.

A typical training day

08:30 – 10:30First session
10:30 – 10:45Refreshment break
10:45 – 12:30Second session
12:30 – 13:30Lunch and networking
13:30 – 15:00Third session
15:00 – 15:15Refreshment break
15:15 – 16:30Workshop and daily review

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in East Africa Time, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

  • Instruction by a practitioner facilitator
  • Full course workbook and materials
  • Exercise files, templates and case studies
  • Refreshments and lunch on classroom deliveries
  • Certificate of completion
  • Post-course application plan

Frequently asked questions

Participants should know basic digital marketing and paid-media terms, including impressions, clicks, conversions and campaign budgets. Previous experience with search, social advertising, analytics or agency management is useful, but programmatic buying experience is not required.

Bring a laptop if attending in person, together with an example campaign, business objective or media challenge from your organisation. Platform access is not required, and participants may use course templates where internal information cannot be shared.

It is designed for digital marketing, paid media, brand, communications and agency professionals who influence display advertising decisions. It also suits managers who need to evaluate agency plans, media reports and advertising investment proposals.

Search advertising focuses primarily on capturing declared intent through keywords, while social advertising centres on social-platform audiences and formats. This course focuses on display inventory, programmatic buying, publisher selection, audience activation, frequency, media quality and display-specific measurement.

Participants develop a strategy pack that can be adapted for an upcoming campaign, agency brief or media review. The planning, governance, creative and measurement templates are designed for reuse in internal approval and campaign-management processes.

Each training day runs from 08:30 to 16:30 and provides approximately 6.5 contact hours. The first part of the course establishes strategy, audiences, planning and creative requirements; later modules address buying, quality controls, measurement, governance and the final strategy presentation.

Questions about this course?

Ask about dates, fees, group bookings or running it for your team. Our training team replies by email.

Ask on WhatsApp info@skillsetdevelopment.com

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