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Sponsored Display Ads

What is a Sponsored Display Ad?​

Sponsored Display ads are banner advertisements served on your site that are not tied to a specific product. Instead of blending into product listings, these ads typically appear as dedicated banner placements – for example, a leaderboard at the top of a page, a mid-page banner, or a sidebar box. They often feature an image or graphic provided by the advertiser, and clicking the banner directs the user to a landing page (such as the advertiser’s website, a promotional page, or elsewhere).

In GoWit’s retail media platform, Sponsored Display is the format that allows advertisers to run traditional display campaigns on your e-commerce site, complementing the native product ads. This format is useful for brand awareness and general promotions – a seller or brand can showcase a banner (maybe with a lifestyle image or a brand message) to all visitors of a certain page type, even if the banner isn’t about a specific product.

Crucially, you do not need product data integrated to run Sponsored Display ads. That means a marketplace can start with display ads as a quick win, since the ads use creative assets (images/HTML) supplied by advertisers rather than your product feed. Sponsored Display placements are common on high-traffic pages like the homepage (e.g. a big hero banner), category landing pages, or even sprinkled between products in a grid as a banner slot. The goal of this format is to monetize screen real estate with relevant but visually striking ads, without requiring deep integration of catalog details.

Unlike Sponsored Product ads which return a product ID and rely on your catalog for content, a Sponsored Display ad response returns a ready-to-render creative asset (like an image URL) and a click-through URL provided by the advertiser. Your system’s role is to fetch that ad asset and display it in the designated container on the page. Because display ads are more “graphic”, they can include branding elements, promotional text, or multiple products within the image itself – but all that is baked into the creative image or HTML.

In summary, Sponsored Display offers a turnkey banner advertising capability on your marketplace: you allocate slots, and GoWit delivers creatives and tracking links for those slots based on which campaigns are eligible.

Required Fields for Sponsored Display & Sponsored Brand Display Ad Requests​

Sponsored Display ad requests share some common required parameters with other ad formats, but have a simpler context since they’re not product-specific. The main required fields are:

  • Marketplace ID (marketplace_id) – Identifies your marketplace, just as with other requests.
    Purpose: Ensures the ad server knows which marketplace’s campaigns to query. (All ads returned will belong to your marketplace’s advertisers/campaigns.)

  • Placement ID (placement_id) – The unique identifier for the display ad slot on your site.
    Example: You might have a placement_id for “Homepage Top Banner” or “Category Page Inline Banner.”
    Business purpose: This is critical for Sponsored Display because the creative dimensions and content are tailored to the placement. The placement_id dictates the size/format of the banner that the ad server should return (e.g., a 970x250 vs a 300x250), and it links to campaigns that specifically target that slot. If the placement_id is incorrect or not provided, you won’t get an ad. Essentially, it matches the request to the correct creative inventory – without it, no banner can be selected.

  • Session ID (session_id) – A stable and unique identifier for the user across the attribution window (not a short, expiring “browser session” token). Include it in every ad request and all events.
    Business purpose: The session_id is used for attribution and frequency control. It ties the delivered ad to the user’s session so that any impressions, clicks, or conversions can be attributed back to this ad view—so it must remain persistent across page views, reloads, and even browser restarts (store via first-party cookie, localStorage or persistent storage). In other words, session_id allows GoWit to track that “User session X saw Ad Y and later purchased Product Z.” This is critical for measuring performance (conversions, ROAS) and for enforcing any per-session limits (like not showing the same ad too many times). Always provide a consistent session_id for a user across pageviews to avoid breaking attribution chains.

  • Page Number (page_number) – Use zero-based indexing (0 for the first page) only if your display placement appears on paginated views.
    Business purpose: Provides analytics context and allows pagination-aware delivery when needed. For top-of-page display banners, the recommended practice is to keep ads consistent across pagination.

Optional Fields for Sponsored Display & Sponsored Brand Display Ads and Their Uses​

While a display ad can be fetched with minimal info, providing contextual data can help GoWit select the most relevant banner ad (if advertisers have set up targeting constraints). Optional fields include:

  • Ad Context – Contextual fields that inform the ad server about the current page and user intent. If the display ad is on a page that has a specific context like a search query or category, you may pass those:

    • search: If this banner is appearing on a search results page (e.g., a banner above the search results), you can include the search query the user entered.
      Purpose: Even though the display creative isn’t a specific product, advertisers might target keywords for their banners. For instance, a brand selling electronics might have a display campaign set to trigger on searches related to “laptops” or “smartphones”. By providing the search term “laptops” in the request, the platform can decide to return that electronics brand’s banner if it matches the keyword targeting. This improves relevance – the user sees a banner related to what they’re searching for, rather than a completely unrelated ad. If omitted, the ad server will treat the request as context-neutral or rely on placement targeting alone.

    • category (or category_id): Similarly, if the banner is on a category or department page (e.g., “Home Appliances”), providing the category context is useful.
      Purpose: Many display campaigns target broad categories or site sections. If you tell GoWit the user is browsing “Home > Kitchen Appliances”, it can choose a Sponsored Display ad from an advertiser targeting that category (say, a kitchenware brand’s banner) if one is available.

  • Visible Products (products list) – An optional array of product identifiers that are currently visible on the page organically (e.g., the top N items on a search or category page). Each entry should include the product id and—when available—the product category.
    Business purpose: When a Sponsored Display campaign is created with Connected Products enabled, this list provides page context so the ad server can prioritize display banners associated with those products (or their categories/brands). Including category per item is recommended: while the platform can derive category from the product ID, doing so introduces a lookup step; sending it up front reduces latency and speeds up relevance evaluation. This field is not required on pages without a product list (e.g., homepage). Ensure product IDs match your product feed.

  • Customer Info (customer object) – This object can carry information about the end user or session, such as a user ID, demographics, or segments.
    Typical sub-fields might be: customer_id, age, gender, city or region, device_type (e.g. Mobile vs Web), and any interest segments/tags.
    Business purpose: Customer data is used for advanced targeting and personalization. For example, if an advertiser’s campaign is targeting a specific audience (say, only users in Istanbul, or only users classified in a “tech enthusiast” segment), providing these attributes allows the ad server to include or exclude campaigns accordingly. Similarly, a customer.id improves attribution. session_id links events within a device/session, while a stable customer.id links events across sessions and devices; together they support end-to-end and cross-device sale attribution (e.g., ad viewed on web, purchase completed later in the app).
    Note: Do not send disallowed PII; if derived from PII (e.g., email), hash/salt per your privacy policy and user consent. If omitted, ads are selected more generically and attribution remains session-scoped.

  • Region (region_id) – Indicates the user’s current region context (e.g., country/zone/city code used by your marketplace).
    Business purpose: Used for campaign eligibility.

  • Location (location_id) – Indicates the user’s current store/fulfillment location (e.g., a store or warehouse code).
    Business purpose: When a Sponsored Display campaign is created with Connected Products enabled, location_id is used to constrain banner eligibility to products available at that location.

  • Language (language) – Language of the user interface.
    Business purpose: Creatives can be tagged with a language during campaign setup. When language is sent, the ad server returns only creatives tagged with that language.
    Note: Use it only if your marketplace supports multiple languages and you’ve configured language-tagged creatives.

  • Filters (filters) – Optional array of predefined tag groups ([][]string) from your product integration. Evaluated only when the Sponsored Display campaign is created with Connected Products enabled.

    • AND/OR semantics ([][]string)
      filters is evaluated as an array of filter groups, where each group contains one or more tag values. Inside a group, values are treated with OR; across groups, evaluation is AND. An ad is eligible when at least one tag in each group matches the product’s tags.

    Example:

    filters = [
      ["color:red", "color:blue"], // Group 1 (OR)
      ["brand:apple", "brand:samsung"] // Group 2 (OR)
    ]

    The product must have (color:red OR color:blue) AND (brand:apple OR brand:samsung) among its tags to qualify.
    If multiple groups are provided, all groups must match; if no group matches, the response may be empty.

These fields are optional because not all display placements have a clear query or category (e.g., homepage banners are general). But when applicable, they function as additional filters or signals for the ad selection.

Key Aspect​

Because Sponsored Display doesn’t rely on having your product feed, it’s often the first format partners integrate when product catalog sync is still in progress. This allows testing the whole ad delivery pipeline early. You’ll validate that your placement calls are working, that you can render an image, and that clicking the ad goes through (and events log) – all without product data. It’s a quick way to start generating revenue.