Is Retargeting (aka) Remarketing (aka) Remessaging Right for You?

At Microsoft we call it Remessaging. Others call it retargeting, some remarketing. Irrespective of the term you use, they all mean the same thing. A second chance! Remessaging is the simplest form of online targeting but also one of the most versatile and often times the most effective form of digital marketing, regardless of whether your metric is to increase awareness or drive direct sales. The question is whether it’s right for you. So, let’s figure it out.

Firstly, we’ll make sure that we’re all on the same page. Remessaging (as we’ll call it from now on), is a technology that allows an advertiser to interact with a user based upon a previous engagement. It could be as simple as showing an ad to a user who has previously visit a web page, a user who has previously searched for a product or someone who has simply seen a previously shown ad. The advertising opportunity being… don’t let an engaged consumer go to waste by failing to capitalize on their previous engagement.

Site Remessaging is the most common, the patriarch, if you will, of all forms of re-targeting. It’s also been around for an absolute age and has helped direct response advertisers hit engaged users and increase their CTR, their conversion rate and their overall effectiveness. An advertiser tags a page on their site (say the conversion process) and then as consumers, driven through a publisher or network are tagged as they visit the page. The Publisher and or network then enable the advertiser to relocate that tagged (or cookied) user elsewhere on the network at a later date and show a second advertisement.

In recent years, publishers and networks alike have expanded the capabilities of Remessaging. For some networks who also have a search engine (such as Bing) a user can be tagged when they make a search. That user can then be relocated again on the network (in this case, the Microsoft Media Network) and shown an ad relevant to the search and the advertisers desired message. This is called Search Remessaging. In other applications, some Publishers can extend the reach of a display campaign by tagging users who saw an ad. In a simple form of reverse Remessaging (i.e. targeting the users who don’t have a cookie), an advertiser can reach an audience they know they didn’t hit with their first ad campaign. This goes by many names, for Microsoft it’s called Audience Boost!

With the various forms of Remessaging identified. The question still remains, is this right for you? The killer question then becomes: do you buy display advertising? If the answer is yes, then Remessaging is absolutely right for you. If no, then perhaps it isn’t. If you are a direct response advertiser it’s a key component to your DR campaign and can be bought on a CPC, CPM or CPA basis. If you are a brand advertiser, having the ability to talk to your audience again or to talk to an audience you haven’t reached, is, quite simply, a no-brainer. Lastly, and relevant to the SES audience (where the panel I’m speaking on matches this post), the concept of Search Remessaging brings the science of search to the art form of display. It allows your display advertising campaign to be brought further down the funnel and made way more accountable.

To close, we’ve only scratched the surface in this post of what Remessaging can bring to you. Its potential is enormous and as the scale display ecosystem grows, this form of targeting is front and center. Simply put, however, if you do Display advertising then this is definitely for you.

Thank you!

James

Sign in to adCenter | Need an account? Sign up now

Share your thoughts in our forums | Stay updated and ask us questions on Twitter | Like us on Facebook