nova Creative Affinity: Google Display

Creative Affinity now analyzes Google Display creative alongside Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and the other Google channels.
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Display is often the hardest channel to evaluate fairly. It runs at the top of the funnel, it's visual, it fatigues fast, and last-click reporting consistently makes it look worse than it is. Bringing it into Creative Affinity changes that — you can now judge Display creative on Affinity Score and LTV rather than on last-click ROAS alone, and see which Display assets are actually bringing in valuable customers versus just cheap impressions.
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It also makes Display a much more useful creative testbed. Because Display delivers volume cheaply, it's often where new messaging gets tried first. Now you can see whether what wins on Display also wins downstream.
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The Google Display Network (GDN) shows visual ads — image, banner, and responsive — across millions of websites, apps, and Google properties including YouTube, Gmail, and partner sites. It's built for reach and visibility rather than intent.
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What it's good at

How clients typically use it

Display data is available at all three levels, same as your other platforms:

Metrics available at every level:

Display creative comes through as responsive display ads, so you can see how a single asset performs across the many placements Google serves it into.
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Display is the channel most often misread, so this section matters more here than anywhere else:
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Low CTR is normal. Display isn't intent-driven. Nobody is searching for the product when they see the ad. A CTR that would be alarming on Search is unremarkable on Display, and judging Display creative on CTR alone will lead you to kill work that's doing its job.
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Judge it on assists, not last click. Display builds awareness that gets converted elsewhere — usually on Search. Last-click ROAS systematically undersells it. Look at View-through Conversions, Views, and Affinity Score alongside ROAS. This is the single most important framing point when you're presenting Display performance to a client.
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Creative fatigue hits faster here than anywhere else. Display audiences see the same asset repeatedly across many placements, and performance drops without regular rotation. If a Display asset is declining, check how long it's been running before you conclude the creative was wrong. Creative Affinity's fatigue analysis is a natural pairing for this channel.
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Audience quality beats broad reach. Remarketing lists and in-market segments consistently outperform broad targeting on efficiency. When Display looks inefficient, audience setup is usually the cause rather than the creative.
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Watch for placement waste. Without exclusions, Display budget can drift into low-quality placements — games, unrelated apps. If spend looks high against weak engagement, that's worth investigating before touching the creative.
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Affinity Score works the same way it does everywhere else — a blended score built from engagement, clickthrough, and conversion signals. It's available for ads with at least $25 in spend and refreshes with every data load. On Display, Affinity Score is especially useful because it gives you a way to rank creative that doesn't depend on the last-click conversions Display rarely gets credit for.
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LTV follows the exact same process as every other platform. It's based on matching a user in GA4 to a real transaction in the client's e-commerce platform, then attributing that customer's lifetime revenue back to the creative they engaged with. LTV is static once calculated and isn't affected by the date filter.
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The combination is what makes Display analysis genuinely better than it was before: a Display asset with a strong Affinity Score and a strong LTV is bringing in valuable customers, even if its in-platform ROAS looks modest. That's the argument you want in front of a client who's questioning their Display spend.
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The Creative Aggregations view is particularly valuable on Display, since it groups by asset and shows you how one image or video performs across the many campaigns and placements it's been served into.
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The more integrations in place, the better the matching algorithm performs, and the more accurate the LTV and CAC figures attached to each creative.
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Is low CTR a problem on Display?

No. Display isn't intent-driven — nobody is looking for the product when the ad appears — so a CTR that would be alarming on Search is unremarkable here. Judging Display creative on CTR alone will lead you to kill work that's doing its job.
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Spend is high but engagement is weak. Is the creative the problem?

Check placements and audiences before the creative. Without exclusions, Display budget drifts into low-quality placements like games and unrelated apps. And remarketing lists and in-market segments consistently outperform broad targeting on efficiency, so a broad audience setup will make good creative look weak.
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Why does Display ROAS look so weak compared to Search?

Because Display builds demand and Search captures it. Display's contribution shows up in assisted conversions and view-through, not in last click. Use View-through Conversions, Affinity Score, and LTV to tell the fuller story.
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Why is LTV missing on more Display ads than Search ads?

LTV needs a successful match between ad engagement and a purchase. Display's journey to purchase is longer and less direct, so matching succeeds less often. The ad set or campaign may still show LTV even when individual ads don't, and Affinity Score is always available.
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My Display creative was strong and then dropped off. What happened?

Most likely fatigue. Display burns through creative faster than any other channel because the same asset is served repeatedly across a huge placement set. Check run duration and frequency before concluding the creative itself underperformed.
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Looking for something else?

Questions about integrations, data load timing, comparing across platforms, and which metrics the date filter affects are answered in the nova Creative Affinity: Google Ads overview article.