Retargeting : the new eldorado for online ?

As online advertising is increasingly more complex and fragmented with multiple buying models and strategies on offer, marketers struggle to keep up. So you have just received your media brief, and you struggle to understand the media mix of current online options out there : should you go for audience targeting and contextual targeting... no wait, maybe CPC and efficiency models,... or premium placements and Network ... or what about behavioural and retargeting... Hum ... It obviously depends massively on the objective of the brief.

Yet, Comscore and Valueclick have joined forces to identify relevant strength of these online media-placement strategies. Indeed, the research looks at a number of factors to evaluate strength of those 6 options: media cost, reach, but also search uplifts and site visitation are some of the major factors studied. It is a refreshing approach from the usual click oriented research. And as the recap graph indicates, retargeting shines through as being the overall best performer. Indeed it beats other strategies at combining impact delivery and moderate reach efficiently.

Yet according to SEMPO's study, a massive 70% of marketers don't have retargeting strategies. So definitely  worth giving it a shot. Simplistically put, online retargeting allows marketers to serve specific messaging to users who have dropped out of the brand's site and shopping cart. It is essential that brands consider different messaging to accompany customers throughout the different phases of awareness and purchase funnel. Clever tactics mixed with stronger CTA on remarketing ads should definitely help boost conversions as well reinforce awareness. So make sure you take the time to lay out the user journey and how different messaging could intervene. Even though many players offered retargeting possibilites ages ago, Google noticeably followed and announced earlier this year that is was rolling out its retargeting or “remarketing” offering. The below clip gives a good recap of what is retargeting before jumping into the detail of how you can implement it on Adwords.