What Is Retargeting and How Does It Work?
Retargeting: still not recognized as a real word, has changed the advertising world in a way we haven’t witnessed since the inception of broadcast influence. Displaying advertising in an environment where you’re target audience frequents is one thing, but having said advertising follow users around the internets is a completely different ball game.
The premise is simple; a user ventures onto a brands website or a site in a specific environment, and based on predetermined qualitative criteria they are tagged via a tracking pixel, or a cookie. The purpose is to target consumers that are considering a purchase, but leave the site without converting. They engaged enough with the brand (amount of clicks, number of visits, etc) to qualify them as a high priority user, and can now be shown banners and advertising no matter where they are.
Retargeting ads is commonly referred to as “behavioral targeting” or “behavioral remarketing”, though it all means the same thing: marketing to the same, qualified user over and over again in a different manner. It’s also a less expensive extension to traditional advertising, since although you are targeting exactly who you want (often drilled down to a very specific profile, which by traditional sense would render it more costly), you are not hitting the masses as you would in a standard branding campaign, and are often using up remnant inventory. I would almost consider it a performance campaign, sold as a branding campaign (you still pay for impressions, CPM, versus clicks, CPC). A quick blurb in case some of this seems like jargon to you: CPM means “cost per thousand (impressions)”, and is how much you pay for every 1,000 impressions. An impression is basically every “view” your advertisement garnishes. CPC is similar, though represents “cost per click”, and in which case you are billed based on the performance of your banner or ad, not the number of impressions. A branding campaign would be a traditional CPM campaign, whereas a standard performance campaign is based on CPC. Let’s move on shall we?
Enter “Retargeting Ads Platforms” – the giant networks that enable behavioral targeting to exist, and exist successfully. You may have heard of “advertising exchanges” in which giant publishers come together to share their less valuable, often undersold, yet highly effective inventory. Retargeting platforms are more often than not tied into these exchanges, which justifies their ability to track users activity, and BANG hit’em with your finely tuned ad’s. Let’s take a closer look (yes, say it in that classic documentary voice) and one of the companies that’s emerged in this genre, and caught our attention:
Perfect Audience Retargeting Ads Review
A graduate of the 2011 class at incubator Y Combinator (a seed accelerator/venture fund, like TechStars and Founder Institute), Perfect Audience has developed into an outstanding one-stop retargeting shop, particularly as a result of their partnerships with juggernauts like Facebook Exchange, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, Rubicon, OpenX, and AppNexus, to name a few. These guys not only finished at top of their class at Y Combinator, they are backed by funds and VC’s with incredible track records tied to very successful tech start-ups.
Perfect Audience specializes in what they refer to as “converting lost customers”, or basically targeting customers that have demonstrated interest in your brand, but left without buying anything. Their rates are advertised are some of the lowest on the market (unless of course you are a giant agency buying bulk impressions, in which case you’re probably used to fractional and sub-$1.00 CPM rates), which for Facebook Exchange are between $0.25 and $0.40 CPM, and for the rest of the web between $1.25 and $2.25 CPM.
They also offer a free trial, which should entice even the most skeptical of advertisers to try it out! Let me put it into perspective for you: Perfect Audience will grant you access to an audience that YOU define, from a possible 7 BILLION Facebook impressions, and another 8 BILLION web impressions, DAILY. I didn’t caps those words by accident. On top of the reach and customization, Perfect Audience’s web inventory is sold via RTB (real-time bidding). Unfortunately, I can’t even scratch the surface of how RTB, DSP’s (demand-side platforms or trading desks), SSP’s (supply-side platforms), and online real-time exchanges are – as we speak – changing the entire digital advertising game as we know it. What I can do though, is put it into perspective for you.
Perfect Audience has provided our visitors with a FREE $70 credit so they can get started with their retargeting service with no upfront costs.
Get started with retargeting ads on Facebook:
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Retargeting Ads On Facebook
Facebook Retargeting is also worth highlighting. Most people are aware of the sheer magnitude Facebook brings to the table, but it can be easy to overlook exactly how much data and information users divulge to the social media giant. They don’t serve traditional banner ads, they don’t offer over-intrusive engagements, but the power of suggestion will never be displayed as strongly as it is with Facebook (eg. “likes”, friends’ suggestions, and subtle persuasive mentions on pretty much every single page you navigate). Facebook users bare all – from personal information, to interests in brands, to how often they buy red shoes and on which day, versus how often they shop online for underwear – which makes them an advertisers fantasy come to life. Perfect Audience is just one (and in our opinion, one of the best) vehicle that can take you to the land of hand-picked a-la-cart audience defining within Facebook.
You have two options when retargeting ads on Facebook. Your first option is sidebar ads which must be 99 pixels by 72 pixels. These ads will appear on the left sidebar.
Facebook Retargeting – Sidebar ads
Your second option is advertising in the NewsFeed on Facebook. Ads must be 200 pixels by 200 pixels. The image below shows you where and how your ad would appear:
Facebook NewsFeed Ad Layout
You decide how high or how low (set the ceiling and the floor) you want to pay for an impression; you define your target audience (number of visits, interactions, time spent, daily, weekly, etc.); you are granted access to platforms like Facebook Exchange, OpenX, DoubleClick (Google), and AppNexus; and you, ultimately, control how much you want to spend and where you want to spend it.
Retargeting ads on Facebook is fairly new but can make a huge impact on your business. It may not drive a ton of traffic to your website but it will help you brand your business. Adding your company logo to your ad is definitely a must. In general retargeting ads on Facebook is a great way to engage visitors who left your website and remind them of who you are and what you do.
Digital Advertising, is this the end?
Most certainly not. Well, maybe of this post, but not of digital advertising as we know it. Advertisers, such as yourself, have long since been demanding lower rates and more control over where they spend their hard earned dollars. We are witnessing the evolution of advertising, in which publishers, networks, and platforms are all conforming to the growing demand of the money men; the advertisers, the ones with with bank. Remnant inventory used to be discarded inconsequentially, and then Google decided to create a market for that. Retargeting was birthed soon after, and when engaged correctly, can absolutely stretch your dollar as far as you’d like. RTB was born, and now every player in the game – from mom and pops shops through to enormous advertising agencies – are able to bid on exactly what they want. You may not see conversions immediately, but if you start watching the output of your highly targeted ad, the metrics won’t lie – higher click-through rates, more time spent engaged, and eventually, higher conversion rates.
Retargeting ads are not limited to Facebook though. Twitter now offers retagreting ads which we have yet to try but it’s definitely worth a shot if your business tailors to the social media world. It’s worth mentioning that retargeting ads can also play a big role on non-social media websites. You can setup retargeting ads on millions of websites through a platfrom such as Perfect Audience. The key is to retarget your ads on relevant websites or you’ll simply be wasting your money.
The key has always been, and will always be reporting. You are ultimately accountable for where you spend your advertising and marketing dollars, and you are responsible for keeping track of the win/loss or success/fail rates of your investments. Not working? Mix it up a little! Change your targets, adjust your expectations, or try new creative. Set a boundary for your ROI and once you get close to breaking it, it’s time for a new plan. Regardless of what you decide, always keep in mind the following two points:
1) The 3 R’s of Advertising are repetition, relevance, and reach – it’s the formula for success.
2) Nobody has ever clicked on a TV commercial (broadcast advertising), and it still remains the most expensive form of advertising today. Clicks aren’t everything.
