Rethinking Remarketing

Editor's Notes

• #4: Let’s be honest—at this point, most of you probably feel pretty confident with remarketing techniques and strategies. A couple of months ago, I was in the same boat. I was comfortable setting campaigns up for clients and I’d poured over enough blogposts and case studies to master the tricks of the trade. I felt good-that is, until I started working with our in-house data scientist to analyze our accounts’ performance. As we dove into the data, we started to realize that the “best practices” touted by many experts were based on user feedback, rather than hard numbers. So, in the next 15 minutes, I’ll be sharing my findings with you, many of which turn conventional remarketing strategies on their head. You’ll walk away with three powerful new strategies to help you make smart decisions in your account that are truly data driven.
• #5: With the spike in remarketing usage in the past few years, PPC pundits have recommended
• #6: Excepts of people getting annoyed
• #7: MEME: SET YOUR IMPRESSION CAPS
• #8: On average, users are 76% more likely to click on a remarketing ad than a non-remarketing ad on the GDN! (UPDATE GRAPH, add in arrows)
• #10: How many of you all out there are staying at the Wynn? Now, how many of you all couldn’t resist staying at the Wynn, despite it’s pricey room rates, because you it’s ads were following you around like white on rice and you just could not get that luxury suite off your mind? Look, whomever is running the PPC account for Wynn is doing a top-notch job because I’ve seen their banners onjust about every site I’ve visited in the last few weeks. The fact of the matter is, remarketing keeps your products top of mind for your audience. According to our research, a user is still far more likely to engage with a remarketing ad, even having seen it 6 times before, than they are with a brand new, non-remarketing ad. That is wild! Think about it this way—I would not normally spring for a luxury hotel for a business trip. If I saw the Wynn ads only once or twice, I would’ve shrugged them off. But after seeing them six times? Well, now I’m starting to imagine myself lounging at the pool, getting treated at the spa, sampling the restaurants…you get the picture. So, even if an ad for the Cosmopolitan, which is comparable, if not cheaper, comes along, the likelihood of my interacting with it is low. Why? Because I’m already sold on Wynn. So hey, if any of you out there are responsible for setting up Wynn’s remarketing, kudos to you—you’re killin it!
• #11: Ok, without further adieu, let’s dive into tip #1. Set impression caps to unlimited.
• #12: Ok, hold your horses. I know it sounds crazy and you’re all probably thinking, Google paid this crazy woman off to convince us to spend more money and bombard people with ads….but I sound like Google, but believe me, if you want people to see your ads, you need to be aggressive with your impression caps.
• #13: Nope! what many people don’t realize is that they are very seldom served to their true impression cap.
• #14: You mad, bro? Yeah, I know. I was pretty upset when I realized this too.
• #15: My guess is this is because Google doesn’t know how many chances it will have to serve an ad to a given using during a specific period. This about it this way, a user is on a list with an impression cap of 2. They’re served their first ad at noon, then they head off to lunch. They visit their next GDN site during a break at 3PM. Google doesn’t know if this is their last chance to serve an ad, or even it the ad is most likely to get a click, so it doesn’t show anything on that page. If the user then goes offline and leaves for the day before returning online, Google lost the opportunity to serve the ad a second time.
• #16: Very few people even get served a number CLOSE to what you had in mind, it is safe to set your sights high
• #18: With the spike in remarketing usage in the past few years, PPC pundits have recommended
• #22: Yes, I get it, it sounds overwhelming and time consuming.
• #23: It’s easy to manipulate the same design for different formats (example)
• #24: With the spike in remarketing usage in the past few years, PPC pundits have recommended
• #25: Nope, the pundits screwed ya again Wrong again (nene being bitchy?) gif?
• #26: When we compare ad fatigue in remarketing to that in display, the numbers are astounding, fatigued at LESS THAN HALF THE RATE OF NONREM DISPLAY ADS
• #27: Duh – it makes sense! You’re showing people ads for something they’ve already demonstrated genuine interest in
• #28: This increase in exposure pays off-- , an uptick in conversions are coming your way…the more exposure one has to an ad, the more likely they are to be “sold” on a product by the time they make it to your site
• #29: I know the stats sound crazy at first, but we all have first hand experience with this. My most recent example was with my new guilty pleasure, Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream. I first tried it back in July and I was so enamored with it that I just couldn’t help perusing their new flavors online. Next thing I know, start getting ads….and they’re coming pretty frequently, for weeks. Now God knows, I did not need to spend $12.99 plus shipping on a pint of ice cream, nor did I need to sugar binge mid-beach season, but when you’re bombarded with images of gourmet ice cream for days, it’s tough to resist. If I had seen the ad a few times, just after having eaten a pint, I would have been able to resist the temptation. But ongoing? Well, I couldn’t get the image of ice cream out of my mind—I had to have it. In this case, aggressive remarketing worked like a charm…Yes, I did buy $56 worth of ice cream solely because of remarketing,
• #30: We know that everyone’s time frames are dependent on what they are selling, but this standard will ensure that you are capturing any lagging leads that could result in conversions
• #31: For some industries, it’s easy to define an average sales cycle. For others, it can be tricky.
• #32: Here’s a quick trick that we use to determine our membership durations in-house at WordStream.