Understanding Retargeting: What is it and How Does it Work?

You’ll have no doubt been followed around the internet by retargeting adverts. Did it annoy you? Did you ignore it? Did you click on it? Maybe you didn’t even notice it.

Retargeting is often used by large ecommerce brands for specific product marketing but is also used by smaller businesses for lead generation and for encouraging high value leads back to the website. The beauty of retargeting is that it allows digital marketers to target niche messages to very precise audiences.

What is retargeting and how does it work?

Retargeting is used to enforce brand presence and to encourage users to click back on the advert relating to a website they’ve previously visited. Retargeting is simply serving up an advert to somebody who has previously browsed your website. Retargeting is a smart way of tracking a visitor once they have left the website and later serving them adverts specific to their interests on your website.

The digital marketing team will enable a smart pixel and cookie, which will then track the user with an allocated advert and a specific message. Messages are different for different segments and often A/B tested to see which ads perform better and generate the most leads.

A/B testing- of retargeting ads might include changing copy such as the words and tone of voice used in the advert. Also images including the background image or icons used in the advert.

Breaking down segments for retargeting

Digital marketers can set up segments to track user types. There is no point targeting a user who has viewed a page about lawn mowers with an advert about womens shoes. Retargeting gives clear segmented groups which are collected by URLs.

For example a major online retailer may track segments by type of product page their users are looking at.

Segments are set up by URL, for example:

example.com/product/electronics
example.com/product/kitchen
example.com/product/clothing
example.com/product/bathroom
example.com/product/bedroom
example.com/product/food

You would then dig deeper into your segments, for example:

example.com/product/clothing/for-him
example.com/product/clothing/for-her

From here you can break segments into product groups

example.com/product/clothing/for-him/jackets-and-suits
example.com/product/clothing/for-him/trousers
example.com/product/clothing/for-him/socks-and-underware
example.com/product/clothing/for-him/jumpers
example.com/product/clothing/for-him/smart-shirts
example.com/product/clothing/for-him/t-shirts

The next stage for targeting users could be:

example.com/product/clothing/for-him/jumpers/brandname1
example.com/product/clothing/for-him/jumpers/brandname2
example.com/product/clothing/for-him/jumpers/brandname3

Then you can break segments into precise product names, for example:

example.com/product/clothing/for-him/jumpers/brandname1/jumper1

Then you can break segments into individual SKU, for example:

example.com/product/clothing/for-him/jumpers/brandname1/jumper1/colour1

Once precise and very niche segments have high enough visitor levels the smart pixel on the example.com website will talk with cookie on the user’s IP address and begin to serve them adverts on a range of different websites.

What websites do retargeting adverts get displayed on?

This depends on the partner network that your retargeting software provider has arranged. You can set geographical parameters for different campaigns, however you cannot specify which websites your ads will get displayed on.

Reputable retargeting providers networks will not include inappropriate websites as server partners.

Here are some of the websites we’ve seen our client’s retargeting adverts displayed:

• Transport for London
• Premier League
• NYTimes
• Forbes
• Marie Claire
• MSN
• Irish Times
• BT
• Auto Trader
• Yorkshire Evening Post
• Herald Scotland
• Ebay
• The Sun
• Leeds United
• The Daily Mash
• Middlesbrough FC
• Your Weather
• Ultimate Guitar
• Friends United
• Livestrong

Round up

Retargeting messages should be concise, visually engaging, and include a call to action button.

Here are a few example of retargeting adverts that we have created for different user groups for visitors to particular pages on our website: