Internet Ad Retargeting in the Social Media Marketing Mix

Businesses appear to be jumping on the digital ad wagon more and more. The Internet Advertising Bureau recently announced a new record for 2011 in U.S. online ad revenues to $31 billion, a 22 percent increase over 2010’s numbers. While mobile ads are the fastest-growing category, banner ads still rule on the Internet. Revenues for display-related advertising in 2011 totaled $11.1 billion, up 15 percent from $9.6 billion in 2010. And the IAB reports that retail advertisers continue to represent the largest category of internet ad spending, accounting for 22 percent in 2011, or $7.1 billion, up from 21 percent ($5.5 billion) reported in 2010.

If you’re a business owner, finding what works using Internet advertising for your business and what doesn’t is a pretty important element of your marketing mix. You might be testing different types of web ads to help you build your customer base, reach out to new target audiences and boost your company’s brand.

Using social media marketing as a marketing tool in your business is one of the best ways to help build your business’s brand presence on the Internet. But if you wantto also keep your brand in front of web users who’ve searched online for you, you might consider trying ad‘retargeting’ with your pay per click online ad campaigns.

You may have seen retargeting work in your daily time on the Internet. Say you’re searching for a new lawn mower for the family yard and you’ve checked a few lawnmower brand sites for models and prices. In due time, you’ll start seeing targeted web ads for the lawnmower brands that are using ‘retargeting’ methods.

In a nutshell, retargeting is the practice of banner ads following web users around the Internet based on an earlier interaction that user had with your company’s brand. Retargeting works by keeping track of web visitors to your site, and then displaying your retargeted ads to those users as they visit other sites online. For the web users, retargeted ads start to seamlessly show up when browsing different sites. For the brand, that consistent appearance of retargeted ads puts your company and brand name in front of web users.

Some of the key benefits for your brand using ad retargeting as part of your overall digital marketing strategy include boosting your brand name and awareness with ad viewers; retaining your website’s visitors, and bringing web users through your sales conversion funnel.

Ad retargeting works usually in the form of a line of code that drops an ‘advertising cookie’ onto a web user’s computer, after they’ve visited your business’s site. That starts the retargeting process, and pretty quickly your business’s ads can ‘follow’that site visitor around the web.

Retargeting is a smart way to market your company, because retargeting only serves up banner ads to web users who shown at least some attention to your web site or company brand in a search or visit to your site. And the consistent appearance of those banner ads starts to burn into the memory of web users, thereby prolonging your brand’s name and awareness.