Behavioural retargeting, or ad retargeting, is the process of showing advertising (particularly display or text link advertising) to visitors based on their previous browsing behavior.
It refers to the move away from simply using Google display ads and implementing advertising campaigns based upon website visitor behaviour. You may have noticed this in the form of advertisements following you around as you search for different items. This is because the advertisers know exactly where people like you spend their time online and have strategically placed their advertisements on those sites.
Nowadays, the online world is a fast paced ever-changing environment. A recent trend proving to be an essential change for online marketing is the advent of re-targeting. It is essential to know how behavioral retargeting can be of great advantage to your business.
Behavioural retargeting aims advertising at the desires of the site visitors rather than relating advertising to the content of the site. If for example, you visit a tech website and then visit a completely different site altogether you may find that tech and gadgets appear across the site, even though they’re not related to the new site at all.
How is it done? Is it effective?
Most platforms identify visitors by assigning a unique id cookie to each and every visitor to the site thereby allowing them to be tracked throughout their web journey, the platform then makes a rules-based decision about what content to serve.
This strategy allows you to reach people who previously visited your website, and match the right people with the right message. You can show users these messages as they browse sites across the internet network your campaign can penetrate.
Here’s how it works: You add a piece of code (remarketing tag) to pages of your site that correspond to certain categories you want to promote. For example, adding a tag for “TV” on all of the pages where you sell TVs will let you later show relevant TV ads to everyone who visits those pages.
You can use behavioral targeting in a different way to individual sites. Since they serve many adverts across many different sites, they are able to build up a picture of the likely demographic makeup of internet users. An example would be a user seen on football sites, business sites and male fashion sites. A reasonable guess would be to assume the user is male.
If you are trying to sell a product or service online, it is important to think about how you might advertise. Placing Google ads on sites that may offer similar products to yours is not enough nor is placing ads on your site for other businesses. Statistics tell us that as much as 98% of people visiting your site will leave without purchasing.
Re-targeting ensures that your ads follow your visitors when they leave your site. If your branding is in place, you can bring back potential customers to your site. This provides the potential for conversion to sales, which results in increased return on your marketing and advertising investment.
Who should use this strategy?
A behavioral retargeting campaign strategy can drive ROI for all types of advertisers, regardless of the focus of their campaigns (brand-oriented, performance-driven, etc.) or ad formats.
Small business can use behavioral retargeting to their advantage by creating an integrated campaign strategy. Say, after driving traffic to your site with search ads, you can then remarket to those users who reach your site by showing them tailored ads on sites throughout the
There are re-targeting networks online who can help you with all your online advertising. Re-targeting empowers you as an advertiser because it tracks the visitors to your site, finds out which products they are showing an interest in and then can target visitors from your area. Imagine being able to target local customers and advise them of your next big sale or promotion. This is the power of re-targeting.