smn acquisio-using-remarketing-to-drive-increased-display-ad-results

Using Remarketing to Drive Increased Display Ad Results

A Search Marketing Now E-Book

© 2011 Third Door Media, Inc. http://searchmarketingnow.com • Email: [email protected] • (203) 664-13502


Introduction

Owners of web-based businesses have learned to live with the fact that most visitors leave without converting. The percentage of site visitors that stay on the site and take action – buy a product or submit a lead form – is often just 5-10% of the total.

The reasons are simple and varied. Many visitors are comparison-shopping and visit several sites before converting. Others leave because they find sites difficult to navigate or confusing.

But there’s an important segment that is most sorely-missed, made up of people who are close to making a conversion decision, but the timing is wrong. They might have been distracted just before converting, or they need to make one more price comparison before finalizing their decision.

Advertising technology companies like DoubleClick attempted to address this issue in the late 1990’s. Their Boomerang technology allowed site owners to “tag” site visitors by storing a small file called a “cookie” on the visitor’s computer. Thereafter, whenever the person tagged visited a site within DoubleClick’s ad network, they would see ads attempting to draw the visitor back to the original site. This capability was called “retargeting.”

For a number of reasons, use of such technologies was constrained to a small number of large advertisers. The technology tools were expensive and difficult to operate. The ad networks capable of retargeting reached a small percentage of sites and visitors representing most advertisers’ target audiences.

In late 2009, Google unveiled the grandchild of Boomerang. They had acquired the DoubleClick technology and made it available to all Google AdWords advertisers, calling the capability “remarketing.” And while retargeting capabilities are built into several smaller add networks, Google can be credited with popularizing the technology by virtue of the large number of AdWords advertisers, and Google’s deft incorporation of an easy-to-use retargeting control panel within AdWords.

This eBook describes the steps necessary to set up and run Google AdWords remarketing campaigns. The fundamental principles, however, can be applied to retargeting campaigns on any other ad platform.

The following people made a valuable contribution to this report: David Szetela, owner and CEO of Clix Marketing, a search and social marketing agency; Carrie Hill, director of search strategies and client services at Blizzard Internet Marketing; and Brad Geddes, founder of Certified Knowledge, a company dedicated to PPC education and training. Thanks also go to Lynn Russo Whylly for editing this report. n



A Remarketing Campaign in Action

Advertising technology providers have implemented three different kinds of retargeting capabilities.

1. Creative Retargeting ensures that, after a person simply views an ad on a web page, they are presented with an ad from the same advertiser as they visit other sites within the same ad network.2. Keyword Retargeting determines the keywords or search queries employed by a user, and as the user visits other sites within the same ad network, they see ads pertaining to those keywords.3. Site Retargeting is the type described in the first section of this eBook: once a user visits an advertiser’s site, they see the site owners ads as they traverse other sites within the same ad network.

Google AdWords Remarketing allows a site owner to identify subsets of site visitors who visit different pages within the site. So the site owner can serve different ads to:

• Those who did not convert• Those who converted• Those who signed up for an email newsletter• Those who abandoned a shopping cart• Those who signed up for a trial subscription

Imagine that a prospect we’ll call Sue visits her favorite online discount site and looks at site pages related to boots, but leaves without making a purchase. She then goes to her favorite entertainment site to catch up on the latest celebrity news. While there, she sees an ad for boots from the discount site she previously visited. Because of her initial interest in boots, this ad is very relevant and timely, and catches her attention. She clicks on the ad, which takes her back to the discount site, where she decides to purchase the boots. That’s the value of remarketing – driving people back to the original site to make a purchase or a conversion.

Using remarketing capabilities, the site owner can even make complementary offers. For example, the site owner could have tagged Sue after she purchased the boots, and subsequently display ads featuring matching accessories like gloves.

So ads can be very specific to the visitor’s initial behavior. Ads can be displayed only to visitors who abandoned the shopping process, or only to visitors who visited a specific department on the site. Then,

the remarketing message and landing page can be customized to match the identified behavior.

Since remarketing ads are so relevant, so closely related to the ad viewer’s behavior on the advertiser’s site, that ad CTRs (click-through-rates) and conversion rates are frequently much higher than traditional, less-relevant display ads. n

A Remarketing Campaign in Action

Here is a visual walk-through of what a remarketing campaign would look like. Remember, the purpose of remarketing is to

locate people who were previously on your website and entice them to come back, so your ad message should acknowledge this and give them an incentive to return. Note that remarketing ads can be text- or display-based.

Once a person clicks on the ad, they should end up on a relevant landing page with the same customized offer to this specific segment:

The message can also be customized based on each visitor’s history, and marketers can create different ads for different segments. In the example below, the visitor looked at a custom backpack with a photo option:



Again, the offer continues through to the landing page:

Here’s an example of an ad speaking to people who abandoned their shopping cart:

On the landing page, an offer entices them to complete the purchase:

Here’s a more subtle approach. This ad targets the area a person visited but doesn’t outwardly acknowledge it.

Building an interactive ad is as easy as point and click. If you have a simple photo resizing program (you can even use a web-based program like PicNik) you can build some great ads. Marketers with limited coding skills can create ads that feature slideshows and rotating messages, videos, peel-away ads and more.

Note that these ads took just five minutes to build in six different sizes. Even if this marketer chooses not to use remarketing, the display ad builder is a great tool – and something that can be used to quickly build ads just by grabbing a JPEG of the ad.

Make sure all of your ads have a clear call to action. Think of them as billboards, so don’t clutter the creative. And make it very clear what you’re selling!

Finally, be sure to Test! Test! Test! If you’re new to display ads and remarketing, make sure you are testing your messages, images and calls to action. Start with two different creatives and themes and test them. Once there is a clear winner, you’re ready to go.

Now let’s begin building your remarketing campaign. n



Getting Started

Before getting started, we review Google’s remarketing program policy for privacy to ensure all the requirements are met. You can find it under

the “Audiences” tab.

To set up a Google AdWords remarketing campaign, follow these steps:

One. In the AdWords interface, click on “Control Panel and Library” located just below your campaign list in the right hand navigation.

Two. Next, define the visitor subset you want to target; for instance, “Anyone who has visited your site.” It doesn’t matter what means they’ve used to get there.

Go to the “All Online Campaigns” page and click on the first tab, “Campaigns.” In the pulldown menu, click on the first item – “Audiences (Display Network only).”If you do not see the Audience tab displayed, click on the inverted triangle in the far right corner. That will bring up additional paths.

Once you’ve created your audiences, you can choose the campaigns for which you want to enable remarketing. These campaigns must be open to the Display Network, and can be used with automatic or manual Display Network campaigns.

Remarketing can be enabled for every campaign you run on the Display Network. If your site features different products and categories, you could create an audience for each offering and remarket to visitors who hit specific sections of your site.

Note that not all content sites support image ads, so including a text ad in your ad group (or even duplicating the entire ad group so one group has images and is just text) allows you to be able to bid based upon the ad type and audience combination.

Three. To define the audience you want to target, start by selecting an “ad group.” We suggest you create a special ad group within a special campaign before starting this process.

Here are some sample ways of defining an audience:• By product looked at• By product purchased• By shopping category• By those who signed up for a trial subscription• By current subscribers• By those who signed up for your newsletter

Four. Click on “Create and manage lists.” Note that the word “lists”as Google describes it is slightly deceiving, because you’re not making a list as you know it. In other words, there is no personally identifiable information involved. It’s better to think of these lists simply as a population or a group of visitors identifiable by their behavior.

If your site features different products and categories, you could create an audience for each offering and remarket

to visitors who hit specific sections of your site.



Five. Click on “New Audience.”This will bring up a pull down menu. From there, click on “remarketing list.”

This is where you name your first remarketing list. In this example, the first list is named “All visitors to the site that don’t convert.” Essentially, we are setting up an ad group that will display ads to everybody who comes to the site but does not convert. After you name your first remarketing list, click “Save.”

We’ve repeated the above exercise four times, so that, altogether, we’ve created four audiences, or four remarketing lists:

• All visitors to the site• Visitors to the backpack site• Visitors who start the shopping process

• Visitors who convert (this will be used as an exclusion later)

Six. Next, create “custom combinations.” In the example below, we combined the first three lists or audiences together. By excluding the fourth list, the business rule becomes “all visitors to the site who don’t convert,” “all visitors to the backpack department who don’t convert,” and “all visitors who start the shopping process and don’t convert.”

To create a custom combination, choose one or more audiences to include. In the example below, we’ve created two combinations. The first is the population of the first three lists, and the second is the last list, “visitors who convert.”



This will automatically create business rules. In this case, the business rule would say, “I want to show ads to people who have visited the backpack department, and I want to exclude everyone who converted.”

Your combinations will show up in the left column:

Seven. Now you are ready to add the remarketing code. For each of the combinations, Google’s remarketing tool will supply a Java script code that needs to be pasted on specific pages. Don’t be overwhelmed by the fact that you have to work with code here. The code is already written and copying it and pasting it is relatively easy for any marketer to do. You simply click on the name of the combination, grab the code and paste it within the HTML of the pages that you want to trap. Place the code on your site just after the <body> tag on any page where you want visitors to be targeted for remarketing.

For the three combinations above, the code needs to be pasted onto all the pages except the “conversion completion” page, which is also known as the “thank you” page, and the backpack pages.

At this point, you can set up mini ad groups that contain the marketing efforts described here. With

The GoogleAdSense code on that website checks the visitor’s machine

to see if they have been tagged with the marketing code you’ve set

up and, if the condition is true, it displays your ad.



remarketing, there is no need to know where your prospects go on the Google Display Network. Once they have been tagged with a remarketing code and a cookie, the network takes care of reaching them. The GoogleAdSense code on that website checks the visitor’s machine to see if they have been tagged with the marketing code you’ve set up and, if the condition is true, it displays your ad.

You do not have to worry about targeting, placement or choosing keywords with remarketing ad groups. Leave the keyword groups empty, leave the AdSense code empty, and just tell Google to show your ad when anyone who has been tagged as one of these populations visits a site. It also gives your ad a preferred position on the page.

Note that it is possible to cap the frequency of an ad display. In the campaign settings, for instance, there is a prompt that will let you say to Google, “only show my ads 4 or 5 or a chosen number of times per week, per month, etc.” If someone sees your ad 5 or 10 times and hasn’t converted, it’s unlikely they will ever convert. Ostensibly, doing that could result in a higher clickthrough rate and quality score for the campaign.

Eight. At this point, you can set up new ad groups that will contain each one of the mini-campaign remarketing efforts, and apply to that ad group the custom combination we created in the earlier steps called “visitors to the backpack department who don’t convert.”

The final slide below shows what you should see once you have set up the remarketing ad groups. They consist only of targeting and ads. Your ads are now running and the site visitors are being tagged. But keep in mind, if this were live and you clicked on the keywords or the networks tab, you’d see that they are empty.

If you’re a first-timer to the Google Display Network, consider limiting your exposure to sites you chose as managed placements. Automatic placement will work great for remarketing, but for open advertising, you can run through money quickly if you’re not careful.

Another important point to understand about remarketing is that there is no need to weed out poorly performing sites. Some sites will convert and others won’t, but that’s not a function of the site itself, it’s

If you’re a first-timer to the Google Display Network, consider limiting your exposure to sites you chose as managed placements.

Remarketing Code Site Pages

All Visitors to the Site All pages except the conversion completion page (“thank you” page) and the Backpack department pages

Visitors to the All pages in the Backpack Backpack Department department

Visitors Who Start the All shopping process pages Shopping Process All pages except the conversion completion page (“thank you” page)

Visitors Who Convert The conversion completion page (“thank you” page)



a function of the visitors and their response to the ad that they see. Every site is a great site because you know the person visiting the ad has been to your site. Also, don’t bother running placement performance reports or looking at the Networks tab of the interface.

Also, you might want to use the “site exclusion” tool to exclude certain site categories where you or your clients don’t want ads appearing – for instance, “military conflict” sites or “juvenile, gross or bizarre content” sites. As you can see to the right, it’s in list form and you simply check off the ones you want to exclude. n

Targeting Ideas

Now that you know how to create a basic remarketing campaign, let’s examine a few different ways you might use remarketing.

For this example, we are going to use an ecommerce site. The ecommerce site has three major types of audiences:1. Buyers2. Shopping cart abandoners3. Those who viewed site but didn’t enter the shopping cart (called non-converters here)

Remarketing to non-convertersFirst, make an audience of everyone across the entire website. This code will go into a global footer. Next, make an audience of anyone who entered the shopping cart and this code will go on all of your shopping cart pages.

You now have two ways of defining the next step:• Make a custom combination in the audiences tab. This will include everyone from the website visitor audience, but not include anyone who was in the shopping cart audience.• Inside the ad group, add the visitor list as the positive audience. Then add the shopping cart (and buyers which is our next section) to the negative audience list.

This ad group will have the lowest bid of our three ad groups. These consumers visited the site, but did not actually add anything to the cart so they also have the lowest potential of converting.

Remarketing to shopping cart abandonersAssuming this is the same account as the previous list of non-converters, you will already have two audiences: non-converters (or website visitors) and those who entered the shopping cart.

What we do not yet have is a list of those who bought a product. Therefore, create a new audience called buyers. Then put this tag on the “thank you for shopping” page.

Just as with the above section, remarketing to non-converters, you have two options for this next step. You can either create a custom combination of those who entered the shopping cart but did not buy, or you can add the shopping cart abandoners as a positive audience and buyers as the negative audience.

Since these consumers added something to the shopping cart, they did start down the conversion funnel. Therefore, these visitors are usually worth more than just a website visitor. The bids for this ad group will be higher than the previous ad group.Your ads should be customized to talk to the consumer about coming back to your shopping cart. It could be a reminder that the items exist or a discount code if they return.

Remarketing to buyers, now and a month laterLifetime visitor values are essential to track. Just because someone bought from you once does not mean they will buy from you again. You can create



remarketing campaigns aimed at selling something to your most valuable audience—your actual customers.

If you have defined all of the audiences above, this is very simple. Create an ad group and then add the buyers audience as the positive audience. In your ads, remind them of your company and why they should come back and visit your again.

If people do not usually buy from you again immediately after a purchase, but often wait a month before buying, you can even create a remarketing list that will not be displayed to these individuals for 30 days.

First you have your buyers audience. Let’s assume you set this as a 30 day cookie (which is default). Next, create a second audience called “buyers a month later.” You will use the exact same tag to define this audience so you will not have to put another code on your website; however, in the cookie length set it to be ninety days.

Then, create an ad group where the positive audience is “buyers a month later” and add the “buyers” as a negative audience. Someone who just bought will technically be in both lists. However, because you have the negative audience, these consumers will not see your ads for 30 days. Once the cookie has expired thirty days later, then they will no longer be in the negative audience. They will only be in the positive audience and can therefore see your ad.

When you first create a remarketing audience and ad group, start with the basics, such as abandoned funnels. Test ads for each audience you are reaching. If you are remarketing to those who abandoned a funnel, and your remarketing campaigns are not working, you might test ads or examine your shopping cart before giving up on remarketing, as these are some of your most qualified visitors.

Another advantage of remarketing is that it’s “agnostic”—it does not matter if visitors came through adCenter, twitter, Facebook, or some other traffic source. Because they were on your site you can place a cookie and then target these consumers again.

Once you have mastered the basics and tested remarketing ads then start defining some custom audiences to see if you can remarket with even more precision.

Questions and Answers from Search Marketing Now’s Webcast on Remarketing

Will the impending do not track legislation affect remarketing?Not really. The number or percentage of people who choose to opt out of ad display will be relatively small – on par with the percentage of people who prevent cookies from being placed on their computers. It’s an important capability for people who are concerned about privacy, but we expect the number of people who take advantage of it will be relatively small.

Is it possible to use a remarketing code on other sites I own like my Twitter page or YouTube channel?No, at least not with conventional techniques. You have to have access to the underlying HTML code and be able to change the code of the display that the visitor is visiting. For now, you can’t put a code on a page where you don’t control the programming or the server.

Is the search funnel based on Google AdWords clicks only vs. paid, natural or direct traffic? The funnel displays conversions that have happened through all means, including those outside the Google Display Network.

Can targeting options (geotargeting and demographic) be used with remarketing? You can geo-target a remarketing campaign and take advantage of not only the fact that this person has visited your site but knowing their geographic location. So your ad could say, for instance, “we love people from Atlanta who are visiting our backpack department.”

Demographic targeting in Google AdWords doesn’t work that well. Google relies on information that the site owner supplies to identify the demographic segment and, currently, that set of sites is limited to just a few, such as MySpace and YouTube. But it doesn’t work that well right now, so we don’t recommend using it with remarketing, except for assumptions such as, for instance, “I want to target only males.” If you know that your population is one gender or another, or only over 17, for instance, then it’s worthwhile to set those parameters, because even if Google doesn’t have a lot of information, just excluding people under 17, for instance, might save

continued



Remarketing is powerful. The ability to serve an ad to someone who has actually interacted with your website in some fashion means you are serving an ad to someone who has a higher chance of converting than the average user. n

ResultsYou will need to have cookied at least 500 unique visitors on your site before you have any real information to see. It may take up to 24 hours to generate any impressions.

Track your ads very carefully – make sure your AdWords tracking is working correctly in Google Analytics or whatever analytics software you choose. Use the URL builder Google provides to create tracker-friendly URLs. n

The Importance of AttributionAttribution refers to the fact that conversions happen after multiple visits to a site. Over time, people who conduct research online have become more sophisticated. They are shopping around, looking at multiple alternatives, and are taking a longer time between the start of that research and the actual click, much less the conversion. They also will go back to the same site more than once prior to making their final decision. Going forward, we expect to see much more of this – that a conversion will happen after multiple visits to the site than in years past.

As a result of these multiple visits, someone will be generally exposed to your Display ad when they’re not in active search or buy mode. While they’re not converting at that point, they are interested and stimulated enough that they will come back 1, 2, 3 or more times before executing the conversion action.

This is typical behavior, but this behavior is problematic for analytics programs, including Google Analytics, because these programs always attribute the conversion to the single-most recent visit to the site. Looking at those results, the temptation is to conclude that the actions that spurred the most recent visit are the strongest actions in your arsenal, such as bidding on your own terms. Such analytics results leave marketers unaware that those converting actions never would have taken place if earlier actions – particularly paying actions – hadn’t taken place.

Questions and Answers from Search Marketing Now’s Webcast on Remarketing

you some money or improve your clickthrough rate because you’re excluding people who are definitely not interested.

Does the cost of the remarketing go by CPC or CPM?In most respects, the retargeted campaign shares the same attributes of any display network campaign, so you can use either. However, since impressions that use CPC pricing are free, it doesn’t make sense to use CPM pricing on a PPC network.

Does the success effect the account quality score for PPC?That’s a complicated issue. Your entire account’s quality score, even individual keywords, can be affected by overall account quality score. Think of the Google quality score algorithm as designating your account “guilty until proven innocent.” A new account has to prove that it operates within guidelines and that it deserves a good clickthrough rating from the score. If there is reason to believe that the account will not perform well in terms of clickthrough rate especially, then a low account quality score can be imposed that affects the entire account. This only pertains to new accounts, not mature accounts.

Are there other networks besides Google that allow advertisers to retarget?Yes. A Microsoft AdSense launch is imminent. And Yahoo! is beta testing a remarketing service as well. There are also several third-party networks available that are, in aggregate, relatively significant in size, but much smaller than the Google ad network.

What is the proper bidding strategy for remarketing campaigns?Don’t be timid and start bid prices out at a fraction of what you pay for a search campaigns or on par with what you’re bidding on display campaigns. Be aggressive when starting a bid strategy with remarketing campaigns. And don’t assume that the clickthrough rates and conversion rate characteristics are going to be similar to what you usually see without using remarketing. Assume your clickthroughs will be half what you see in generic term search campaigns. For that reason, we suggest being relatively aggressive in setting bids for starting remarketing campaigns, then watch your performance in the first week carefully and adjust accordingly.



Fortunately, Google is starting to pay some attention to this phenomenon and has recently rolled out a feature – called Search Funnels – that addresses multiple-visit attribution and is currently available in your Google AdWords campaign. n

Search FunnelsThe Search Funnels tab can be found on the left hand side of the Reporting and tools tab. Here’s how it works: For any given object, a campaign, an ad group, ad or a keyword, the search funnel will show you the path link. This includes the number of conversions, or the percentage of conversions that happened following the first click or visit to the site and then, separately, how many visits after two or more visits to the site.

Using the Search Funnels capability, you will be able to tell, for a specific ad, what percentage of conversions are happening after multiple site visits to the site. n

ConclusionRemarketing is a valuable tool for your online marketing arsenal. The ability to serve an ad to someone who has actually interacted with your website means you haven’t lost that prospect. By staying connected with people who have previously visited your site, you are building a pool of prospects who have a higher chance of converting than the average visitor because they have already shown an interest in your products or services.

And due to increased relevance of remarketing ads, the response from people receiving them is higher than that of traditional display ads. As a result, some industry observers say that companies will soon be spending as much on their remarketing budget as they do on their search budget.

Add remarketing to your marketing arsenal and you will soon find it to be a powerful capability you cannot do without. n



The world’s leading Performance Media Platform, Acquisio helps marketers buy, track, manage, optimize, and report on media across all channels. The platform was designed for search marketing, and it has evolved to include Facebook ads and all major RTB display networks. Acquisio provides the industry-leading technology for marketers buying ads on any online channel, allowing them to handle all tasks associated with performance advertising, from ad purchase through conversion tracking and beyond, within a single integrated platform. With more than $500MM in ad spend under its management, Acquisio is the multi-channel advertising solution preferred by advertising and marketing agencies around the world. For more information, visit www.acquisio.com.

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