What is Retargeting?
It’s a critical part of digital advertising that allows advertisers to target users who visit websites but don’t convert. It can play a significant role in new customer acquisition and building customer loyalty.
Retargeting uses a tracking tag, which is a unique code snippet, to allow advertisers to serve ad impressions to users who visited their website. In many cases, these people clicked on an ad previously that directed them to the website. Other times, users organically found the website through search or other means.
Why Retargeting Is Important?
Retargeting impressions can offer a better return compared to non-retargeting ones. That’s because customers have already demonstrated interest in the product or service. Retargeting helps nudge that person from being aware of the brand to making a purchase.
Because of the increased engagement retargeting offers, 94% of organizations state retargeting is at least somewhat successful.
Our Retargeting Practices
To produce the best results for our clients we use these best practices:
- We'll include product reviews to build credibility.
- We'll reference that the person visited your site, and create some FOMO (fear of missing out) in the creative.
- We A/B Split test ads to collect data.
- We help find a balance between overserving and underserving. Retargeting too much becomes annoying, but doing it too little doesn’t support engagement.
- We'll make ads that include clear branding so that viewers aren’t confused.
- We'll also segment audiences in retargeting, if possible, by behaviors and time since website visit.
When Should Retargeting Be Used?
Retargeting isn’t a tactic for everyone. Here are some examples of when it can be impactful as part of an integrated digital advertising campaign:
Websites with a steady flow of existing traffic: If your website is new or has minimal traffic (fewer than 100 monthly viewers), they aren’t likely ready for retargeting.
Advertisers with best-selling products: If you have a popular product or service, retargeting helps promote these.
(Bonus tip: Ads showing reviews or other “social” proof of the effectiveness of the product or service would be very appealing.)
Introducing new products or services: For those with strong brands in the market, adding retargeting for product or service launches reiterates the messaging and can draw customers back to the website.
Companies that need to move inventory: If you have seasonal merchandise that needs to sell (e.g., local hardware stores have different products for warm vs. cold months). Retargeting with additional promotions could help.
Building brand awareness: Retargeting ads don’t always have to be promotional. They can contribute to awareness for businesses looking to capture market share.
Measurement
Measure the success of the display ad campaign. We’ll provide full reports and transparency on where your ad is being displayed and more. We offer reports sent monthly, daily, weekly or whenever it’s needed.
Display ad delivery is measured in many different ways, but the four key factors are:
Impressions — The number of times the ad has been served.
Reach — The number of people who have seen the ad.
Frequency — The number of times someone sees the ad.
Click-through rate (CTR) — A ratio that tells you how often people who have seen the ad ended up clicking on it.
All these factors can be broken down via individual websites and apps on our reports to provide transparency.
Cross-Device Retargeting for OTT and CTV
Retargeting for OTT and CTV works differently than website retargeting. In this model, retargeting uses device mapping technology. With this tool, you can identify people from the same household where an OTT or CTV ad was served. This creates an ecosystem that increases the frequency of ad serving, which can result in clicks. With cross-device retargeting, users can see ads no matter the screen type.
