Ad remarketing - also known as ad retargeting - is currently the most under-used online marketing technology, according to a new survey. That, however, is likely to change as some ad platforms - a group that includes Yahoo - begin to widely deploy this functionality.
Remarketing/retargeting technology is akin to following up with "unsold leads" in the brick-and-mortar world. If consumers visit a website but don't buy, retargeting technology enables retailers to serve them future ads on other sites to try to entice them to return and to remind them what they have left behind. It is the most under-used online marketing technology, according to research conducted by Advertise.com and the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), writes MarketingCharts.
This research supports findings by FetchBack, when it introduced a new analytics package earlier this year. Namely, nearly half of users return to a retail site immediately after being served a retargeting ad - generally within the hour. An average of 42.9% of users come back to a retail site that generated a FetchBack-served retargeting ad within the hour.
Why the technology is so under utilized is unclear. Recognizing its worth, however, a handful of online ad placement companies have incorporated some form of retargeting in their offerings over the last year or so. As more companies recognize the value of the technology - spurred in no small part by the vendors' own promotions - its adoption is bound to pick up.
New Entrants
At the beginning of the year - shortly after CEO Carol Bartz took the helm - Yahoo rolled out several retargeting tools as part of its push to revamp its advertising offerings. Yahoo extended the basic concept of ad retargeting with this product set. For example, its Search Retargeting tool allows an advertiser to track certain search terms and then retargets the user with display ads. Enhanced Retargeting, another Yahoo offering, combines standard site retargeting with ad generation.
Another relatively new entrant is ZEDO, an ad network that formed last year specifically for social networks. It gives advertisers the opportunity to retarget 'lost visitors,' who've recently visited their sites and are shown to be much more likely to make a purchase. "Retargeting is the single most effective form of behavioral targeting we’ve seen so far," says ZEDO founder and CEO Roy de Souza.
Retargeted ads are three times more likely to be clicked and retargeted users are four times more likely to convert, the network has found.
Retargeting is also part of the feature mix at Turn Inc., an application that focuses on customizable pricing, taking into account such factors as recent behavior or relevance to the advertiser's message. Its retargeting feature enables advertisers to monitor consumer behavior in real-time and retarget within seconds.
Advertisers can also narrow their purchase to focus only on those users who have shown an interest, remarket or sequence offers to users who have visited an advertiser's site but not completed a specific action.
Case Studies
While ad retargeting technology is not widely used by companies, a handful of case studies show that it can deliver high ROIs. An online travel company testing Yahoo's Enhanced retargeting saw a 230% increase in total bookings and a 651% increase in click-through rates, after offering consumers searching for flights on the Yahoo Network special deals based on the cities they were traveling between, according to Yahoo.
A telecommunications client using Turn's app saw a 28% lift in click-through-rate and a 423% jump in conversion rate when adding retargeting to their buy, according to the company. In another example, a Fortune 500 financial services client had an increase of over 200% in both click-through and conversion rates after starting their retargeting campaign.
