What is Display Ad Retargeting and How Does it Work?

Written by: Virginia Goulding

Retargeting is a form of online advertising that keeps your brand in front of your site visitors after they have left your website. Studies show that in general, only 2% of web traffic converts on the first visit. What about the other 98%. Retargeting aims at bringing those visitors back to your site for further engagement. It works by “following” site visitors and displaying retargeting ads to them as they visit other websites.

How does retargeting work?

A simply JavaScript code placed in the footer of your website anonymously ‘follows’ your audience across the Web. This is done through cookie-based technology that creates a list of site visitors by placing anonymous retargeting “cookies” in their browsers. The code does not affect the performance of your website and is undetectable to site visitors. When new visitors come to your site, the code drops a browser cookie. Then a retargeting provider can display retargeting ads to your potential customers as they visit other websites.

Why is it a valuable form of marketing?

Retargeting is an effective technique because it focuses on serving ads to people who are already familiar with your brand, have visited your website and have demonstrated interest in your products or services. Maybe they aren’t ready to make a purchase, maybe they had to run to a meeting and couldn’t continue to explore your website and your products. The retargeting technique reminds them about your brand and your company as they take their daily journey across the web.

Retargeting can be a powerful branding vehicle when it is part of a larger digital strategy. It can help increase conversions, but only if you have site traffic. Other inbound marketing strategies like SEO, content marketing and PPC that help drive site traffic coupled with remarketing can result in an effective strategy.

Retargeting Best Practices

The best performing retargeting ads have clear call-to-action and include branding. Make it easy for your potential customers to recognize your brand by including your logo and branding colors. Regularly update the ad creative. You don’t want to continuously hit potential customers with the same ad repeatedly.

Consider using audience segmentation so you can tailor your ad messages to users in different stages of the purchase funnel. If you place different retargeting pixels on different pages of your site, you can then tailor creative based on the engagement of each user. For example, site users who visit your home page can be targeted with ads that communicate brand awareness. While users looked at a product page, can be served ads specific to your product offering or assets that can educate them further about that product such as a white paper or spec sheet.

For more information on how WTWH can help you with your ad retargeting campaign, please contact us.