Display advertising is a type of advertising

Advertising

Advertising is a form of communication used to persuade an audience to take some action with respect to products, ideas, or services. Most commonly, the desired result is to drive consumer behavior with respect to a commercial offering, although political and ideological advertising is also common...

 that typically contains text (i.e., copy

Copy (written)

Copy refers to written material, in contrast to photographs or other elements of layout, in a large number of contexts, including magazines, advertising, and book publishing....

), logos, photographs or other images, location maps, and similar items. In periodicals, display advertising can appear on the same page as, or on the page adjacent to, general editorial content. In contrast, classified advertising

Classified advertising

Classified advertising is a form of advertising which is particularly common in newspapers, online and other periodicals which may be sold or distributed free of charge...

 generally appears in a distinct section, was traditionally text-only, and was available in a limited selection of typefaces.

Display advertisements are not required to contain images, audio, or video: Textual advertisements are also used where text may be more appropriate or more effective. An example of textual advertisements is commercial messages

Short message service

Short Message Service is a text messaging service component of phone, web, or mobile communication systems, using standardized communications protocols that allow the exchange of short text messages between fixed line or mobile phone devices...

 sent to mobile device users, or email.

One common form of display advertising involves billboards. Posters, fliers, transit cards, tents, scale models are examples of display advertising.

On the Internet

Display advertising also appears on the Internet

Internet

The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...

, as a form of online advertising

Online advertising

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web to deliver marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, blogs, Rich Media Ads, Social network advertising, interstitial...

. Display advertising appears on web pages in many forms, including web banners. Banner ad standards continue to evolve.