Google Introduces Remarketing Feature – Search Retargeting

Being an innovator might not necessarily mean you will be successful. In order for an innovative product to catch on, the market should be ready for accepting the product and you need to have the marketing arm that can push the product.

Yahoo was the first major search engine who got into behavioural marketing by acquiring BlueLithium (an online advertising network) back in 2007. The idea was to join behavioral targeting with advanced data analytics to improve campaign optimization over an advertising network for performance-based display advertisers while enhancing the value to the publishers.

Some visitors convert the first time around; however, many will visit your site once and may never come back. The way Behavioral targeting (BT) works is that visitors to your site are tagged by a cookie, which contains no personally identifiable information. Ad retargeting allows you to continue to advertise to and remarket those visitors while they browse other relevant websites utilizing uniquely customized banners created to fit your retargeting campaign.

Not only does retargeting builds brand awareness, but also helps direct marketers by improving conversion rates. As visitors are presented with multiple advertisements from your business, they begin to recognize your brand. Brand recognition earns trust and leads to higher conversion rates.

Search retargeting adds a layer of relevancy to banner served to searchers after they leave your site. This advertising technology recognizes users’ intents based on their original search queries. This theoretically should increase the value of search marketing ( SEM ) by increasing the likelihood of a conversion.

Through this behavioural targeting technology, advertisers can reach a target audience with display ads that are highly relevant to the way users search. For example if Visitor X comes to your site and browses for DSLR cameras but leaves without buying, you can use search retargeting to track Visitor X and serve and remarket DSLR cameras to him/her after s/he leaves your site with targeted ads with a 20% off offer.

As with any other marketing campaign, to effectively utilize behavioral search retargeting, strong creative related to landing pages and search terms are crucial. Developing special offers and unique messages help entice and lure back visitors to your site. The challenge is for the search retargeting to work well you need to have enough traffic volume on your pages.

After almost a year of testing with, Google finally joined the list of companies who offer online ad retargeting by introducing their new Remarketing feature. Now, Google AdWords allows its advertisers use remarketing to reach their audience on sites within the Google Content Network based on their past interactions with their websites.

Now search marketers can then remarket to those visitors who reach their sites by showing them tailored ads on sites throughout the Google Content Network. You can set up your remarketing campaign through the new “Audiences” tab in Google AdWords interface.

Google Remarketing Feature - Audience Tab

The way it works is that you put a piece of code (pixel) on your landing pages, website, or YouTube channel, which will let you later show relevant promotional ads to those audience who have visited those pages, as they browse sites within the Google Content Network.

The beauty of this remarketing feature is that you can run multiple remarketing campaigns at the same time based on audiences’ behavior. Remarketing allows businesses to reach those users who are more likely to be receptive to their text/banner ads and achieve a higher ROI.

Filed Under: PPC Advertising • Search Engine Marketing • SEM