What is the Display Network?
When you create a Search campaign in Google Ads, there's a setting that allows your ads to also appear on the Google Display Network — a collection of over two million websites, apps, and videos where your ads can show alongside content.
This setting is sometimes enabled by default or switched on without realising the implications. While Display can work well for awareness, mixing it into a Search campaign often dilutes performance because the two networks serve very different intent levels.
Why should I turn it off?
Search and Display traffic behave very differently. Search users are actively looking for something with intent. Display users are passively browsing content and may not be in a buying mindset at all.
When both networks run inside the same campaign, a few problems can arise:
Inflated click volume with poor conversion rates. Display clicks are typically cheaper but convert far less often, dragging down your overall campaign efficiency.
Budget leakage. Spend that should go to high-intent Search traffic gets diverted to lower-quality Display placements.
Misleading performance data. Blending Search and Display metrics in one campaign makes it harder to evaluate either channel accurately.
Smart bidding confusion. Automated strategies may struggle to optimise effectively when the campaign spans two fundamentally different networks.
If you want to run Display campaigns, best practice is to create dedicated Display campaigns where you can control budgets, targeting, and creative separately.
How does this Improvement work?
Opteo checks whether any of your Search campaigns have the Display Network enabled and compares performance across both networks.
When Display traffic is underperforming compared to Search (with a significantly higher CPA or lower ROAS) Opteo recommends disabling the Display Network for that campaign.
From the Improvement, you can disable the Display Network with a single click, ensuring your Search campaign budget is focused entirely on Search traffic.
When can the Display Network be helpful?
There are cases where keeping the Display Network enabled on a Search campaign might make sense:
Brand awareness goals. If reach matters more than conversions for a specific campaign.
Very low-volume niches. Where Search alone doesn't generate enough impressions.
Remarketing layered in. Some advertisers use Display within Search campaigns to reach past visitors across both networks.
If it makes sense to keep the Display Network enabled, you can dismiss the Improvement.