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Imagine walking into a sporting goods store to check out a few different tennis rackets – a Wilson, a Head, maybe even an old school Donnay. You’re more in checking out mode, rather than buying mode, and soon walk out of the store content with your preliminary research effort. Eventually, you’ll buy a racket. But not today.
Now imagine later that day you go see a romantic comedy at the movies with a lady friend. While watching the previews you see…a Wilson tennis racket ad. “Holy $h!t,” you think to yourself, “I was just looking at tennis rackets earlier today.” Take my example a step further. After a super sized coke, you hit the movie theater bathroom. And there’s an advertisement above the urinal (also imagine that you’re a guy…or a talented woman) for….a Head Tennis racket. Or better yet, imagine that the same sales rep at the sporting goods store saddles up to the urinal next to you and casually strikes up a conversation, “Hey, I remember you…”.
In the real world the concept of retargeting is not very realistic. But in the online world it is a very real, and growing type of advertising. In the digital world, I can look at Canon Digital SLR Cameras on Amazon, even put one in my shopping cart, and then, with my cat like attention span, mosey on over to ESPN.com where I will see a…Canon Digital SLR ad from Amazon. It’s like Amazon whispering “Come back. Come back. Come back. Your camera is still waiting for you in your shopping cart.”
That’s retargeting. And its extremely effective.
Anne Hunter, Vice President of Advertising Effectiveness Products, recently did a study with ValueClick Media to show that Ad Retargeting generates the strongest lift compared to other targeting strategies.
Their research focused on view-through performance of different online display media placement strategies. The study compared the lift in brand website visitation and trademark search queries across six different media placement strategies, including:
- Audience Targeting – Ads served based on online behavioral data, such as a past interest or interaction with a related product
- Contextual Targeting – Ads served to related page-level content
- Efficiency Pricing – Cost-per-click engagement with creative
- Premium Pricing – High visibility placements on premium publishers
- Retargeting – Served to users that have previously visited an advertiser’s site
- Run-of-Network (RON) – Ads which appear anywhere in the network, often optimized by conversion
