Display ads produced by B2B advertisers are viewed 68% by men, only 17% on desktop

A new report by Boston-based software-as-service company SEMrush shows that business-to-business ads that are produced by advertisers and displayed on third-party sites on the Google Display Network (GDN) - which reaches 90% of Internet users worldwide - are viewed 68.4% by men, and 83% on mobile devices.

The SEMrush findings are based on 96M impressions of ads that were produced by 61,462 B2B advertisers and displayed during the past 3 months on third-party sites on the GDN across almost all English-speaking countries including the USA, UK, India, Canada and Australia.

Key findings:

• Ads were viewed 68.4% by men, 31.6% by women.
• 52% of ad views were by persons aged 25-44.
• Earlier research found that 46% of persons aged 18-34 prefer video as the primary form of brand communications, and men prefer brighter colors in ads than do women.
• Advertisers reported that B2B audience members were also interested (presumably from a B2C perspective) in:
  • Home and garden (29%)
  • Internet and telecom (16%)
  • Computers and electronics (13%)
  • Jobs and education (6%)
  • Autos and vehicles (6%)
• Devices used to view B2B advertisers' ads on third-part sites were:
  • Mobile android (23%)
  • Mobile iOS (20%)
  • Tablet Android (20%)
  • Tablet iOS (20%)
  • Desktop (17%)
• Most popular ad sizes were:
  • 720x90px Leaderboard (39%)
  • 300x250px Medium Rectangle (20%)
  • 336x280px Large Rectangle (16%)
  • 468x60px Banner (14%)
  • 160x600px Wide Skyscraper (11%)
• Responsive ads dominated (80%) vs. image ads (20%).

Comment:

Takeaways here for B2B advertisers are:

• Begin with the assumption that your prime target group is men aged 25-44 who will view your ads on small screens and like bright colors in ads.
• Use responsive ads for optimal results across devices.
• Test Leaderboard and Medium Rectangle ads first.
• If budget permits, place some ads on B2C sites - but considering mainly male target demographic, maybe initially pass up Home and Garden sites.
• But be aware of differences among industries, and fine-tune advertising as you begin to accumulate data.