Common sense tells us that when a person sees something numerous times, he or she is more likely to remember it. This same premise applies to ad retargeting (AKA remarketing). Known as one of the most innovative types of ads on the web, remarketing enables advertisers to reach users that visited their site in the past.
For example, say you have a website that sells shoes, and you’re implementing ad remarketing on your store. When a potential customer visits your site without making a purchase, the ad retargeting system drops an anonymous cookie in that person’s browser. This cookie tags a user’s computer and remembers that he or she visited your site. When this user leaves your site and surfs elsewhere, remarketing displays ads for your merchandise on the other websites that the user visits, allowing them to see the products that they previously viewed on your site.
How It Works
Implementing ad retargeting is as simple as adding a code to your site. You’ll also customize the banner ads that are displayed to ensure that the creatives fit your campaigns. Once you have fully set up your campaigns, the remarketing will begin, and ads for your company will be displayed on other sites for your window shopping customers to see.
Providing a Friendly Reminder
Studies indicate that 98 percent of users don’t take any action on a website. This means that nearly all the people that visit your site are simply window shoppers that don’t convert. However, this doesn’t mean that 98% of people have no intention of buying your products. They visited your website, right? This indicates that they have at least some interest in your business. But since people nowadays are bombarded with tons of information per day, it’s easy to get distracted. Remarketing could be just the thing to get lost customers back on track. Send them a friendly reminder to back to your site by displaying your ads on the other web pages that they visit.
Doubt and insecurity are also common reasons for people leaving a site without buying anything. Consumers could be hesitant due to budget, time constraints, or just mere indecision. When customers are on the fence about buying, retargeting could give them the prod that they need to hit the “Add to Cart” button and check out.
Obvious Yet Unobtrusive
With retargeting, ads can appear when a user is surfing other websites, conducting a web search, or composing an email. Remarketing has managed to strike a balance between being obvious and discreet. They appear on numerous places on the web ensuring that users don’t miss the ads, BUT they only appear as banners so they don’t disrupt a person’s browsing experience (unlike pop-up ads that tend to annoy users).
No Harm Done
While it’s true that remarketing uses cookies to remember browsers that visited a website, people should know that the cookies being used are anonymous. This means that no personal or identifiable information is retrieved or stored, so the customers’ privacy is completely safe. However, users who are concerned about these cookies can simply delete their browsing history and other stored data.