Behavioral retargeting

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Behavioral retargeting (also known as behavioral remarketing, or simply, retargeting) is a form of online targeted advertising by which online advertising is targeted to consumers based on their previous internet behaviour. Retargeting tags online users by including a pixel within the target webpage or email, which sets a cookie in the user's browser. [1] Once the cookie is set, the advertiser is able to show ads (often display ads) to that user elsewhere on the internet via an ad exchange.

Contents

Dynamic creative (also known as personalized retargeting), allows an advertiser to display a banner created on-the-fly for a particular consumer based on specific pages that they viewed. [2] For example, if a consumer visits an advertiser's website and browses products A, B, and C – they will then be retargeted with a display banner featuring the exact products A, B, and C that they previously viewed. This is typically restricted to the visitor's browsing on a single website.

A refined version improves on re-engagement with customers. If a customer begins an online order, for example, but fails to complete it, a flag indicates they had an interest in the product being ordered. Later, ads showing the product of interest can be custom-linked to point back into the order system. When the user clicks on the ad, they are returned to their incomplete order.

Types

While all retargeting depends on setting cookies in a user's browser, there are several different methods of doing this:

Pricing

Retargeting ad campaigns usually run on lower cost media, such as display ads, which not only increases effectiveness by specifically targeting an interested audience, but also improves the overall ROI of the advertiser. [3] A common use-case of retargeting is situations where a website visitor's actions did not result in a sale or conversion. [4]

Retargeting providers employ a variety of pricing models to charge advertisers for the ads viewed by consumers. Three prominent models include:

Cost per impression (CPM) is a common metric used in the online advertising industry to charge advertisers for inventory based on a set price per thousand-page impressions. An impression is defined as any time a banner ad loads on an individual's web browser.

Pay per click (PPC) charges advertisers for every verifiable click that leads consumers back to a retailer's website. Unlike the CPM model, which charges advertisers a flat rate, advertisers working under the PPC model are only charged when a person clicks on an ad.

Cost per action (CPA) is a pricing model in which advertisers are charged based on pre-arranged action (a purchase, a view through, etc.), although a completed sale is the most common action used under the CPA model.

Concerns

In the United States, several organizations, including the Federal Trade Commission, Congress and the media, have expressed privacy [5] concerns [6] around the practice of retargeting; however, responsible personalized retargeting providers[ definition needed ] don't collect personally identifiable information (PII) on consumers. Providers should be blind to a user's age, sex and other personal information. Instead, providers rely upon data gathered from cookies that are placed on a consumer's browser by the websites they visit. This information should not be shared among publishers, other advertisers or third parties and cannot be linked to a specific user. [7] The United States has not legislated many laws around the practice, and instead relies upon the industry and its overarching organizations, such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau, Network Advertising Initiative and TRUSTe to self-regulate. In October 2010, the IAB announced its Advertising Option Icon, which partner sites will place near banner advertisements that collect non-PII user data. [8]

In the EU, the 2002 ePrivacy Directive and its 2009 revision require opt-in consent for the use of cookies and stipulate that users must be given the option of opting out.

See also

Related Research Articles

Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to the site content and audience. These advertisements are administered, sorted, and maintained by Google. They can generate revenue on either a per-click or per-impression basis. Google beta-tested a cost-per-action service, but discontinued it in October 2008 in favor of a DoubleClick offering. In Q1 2014, Google earned US$3.4 billion, or 22% of total revenue, through Google AdSense. AdSense is a participant in the AdChoices program, so AdSense ads typically include the triangle-shaped AdChoices icon. This program also operates on HTTP cookies. In 2021, over 38.3 million websites use AdSense.

Cost per impression (CPI) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM) are terms used in traditional advertising media selection, as well as online advertising and marketing related to web traffic. They refer to the cost of traditional advertising or internet marketing or email advertising campaigns, where advertisers pay each time an ad is displayed. CPI is the cost or expense incurred for each potential customer who views the advertisement(s), while CPM refers to the cost or expense incurred for every thousand potential customers who view the advertisement(s). CPM is an initialism for cost per mille, with mille being Latin for thousand.

Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher when the ad is clicked.

Cost per action (CPA), also sometimes misconstrued in marketing environments as cost per acquisition, is an online advertising measurement and pricing model referring to a specified action, for example, a sale, click, or form submit.

Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. Online advertising includes email marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), social media marketing, many types of display advertising, and mobile advertising. Advertisements are increasingly being delivered via automated software systems operating across multiple websites, media services and platforms, known as programmatic advertising.

Cost per mille (CPM), also called cost per thousand (CPT), is a commonly-used measurement in advertising. It is the cost an advertiser pays for one thousand views or impressions of an advertisement. Radio, television, newspaper, magazine, out-of-home advertising, and online advertising can be purchased on the basis of exposing the ad to one thousand viewers or listeners. It is used in marketing as a benchmarking metric to calculate the relative cost of an advertising campaign or an ad message in a given medium.

Click-through rate (CTR) is the ratio of clicks on a specific link to the number of times a page, email, or advertisement is shown. It is commonly used to measure the success of an online advertising campaign for a particular website, as well as the effectiveness of email campaigns.

Keyword advertising is a form of online advertising in which an advertiser pays to have an advertisement appear in the results listing when a person uses a particular phrase to search the Web, typically by employing a search engine. The particular phrase is composed of one or more key terms that are linked to one or more advertisements. The most common form or keyword advertising, focused on payment methods, is pay per click (PPC), with other forms being cost per action (CPA) or cost per mille (CPM).

In Internet marketing, search advertising is a method of placing online advertisements on web pages that show results from search engine queries. Through the same search-engine advertising services, ads can also be placed on Web pages with other published content.

Website monetization is the process of converting existing traffic being sent to a particular website into revenue. The most popular ways of monetizing a website are by implementing pay per click (PPC) and cost per impression (CPI/CPM) advertising. Various ad networks facilitate a webmaster in placing advertisements on pages of the website to benefit from the traffic the site is experiencing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Targeted advertising</span> Form of advertising

Targeted advertising is a form of advertising, including online advertising, that is directed towards an audience with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting. These traits can either be demographic with a focus on race, economic status, sex, age, generation, level of education, income level, and employment, or psychographic focused on the consumer values, personality, attitude, opinion, lifestyle and interest. This focus can also entail behavioral variables, such as browser history, purchase history, and other recent online activities. The process of algorithm targeting eliminates waste.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">In-text advertising</span>

In-text advertising is a form of contextual advertising where specific keywords within the text of a web-page are matched with advertising and/or related information units.

Performance-based advertising, also known as pay for performance advertising, is a form of advertising in which the purchaser pays only when there are measurable results. Performance-based advertising is becoming more common with the spread of electronic media, notably the Internet, where it is possible to measure user actions resulting from advertisement. Performance marketing is different from Brand Marketing which focuses on awareness, consideration and opinions among target consumers.

A view-through rate (VTR), measures the number of post-impression response or viewthrough from display media impressions viewed during and following an online advertising campaign. Such post-exposure behavior can be expressed in site visits, on-site events, conversions occurring at one or more Web sites or potentially offline:

An impression is when an ad is fetched from its source, and is countable. Whether the ad is clicked is not taken into account. Each time an ad is fetched, it is counted as one impression.

In the online advertising industry, a viewable impression is a measure of whether a given advert was actually seen by a human being, as opposed to being out of view or served as the result of automated activity. The viewable impression guidelines are administered by the Media Rating Council and require that a minimum of 50% of the pixels in the advertisement were in an in-focus tab on the viewable space of the browser page for at least one continuous second.

A demand-side platform (DSP) is a concept that combines various software solutions for advertisers to automate the process of buying and selling ad impressions in real time.

Site retargeting is a display advertising technique used by marketers to display advertising to people who have previously visited their website. The marketer includes a pixel within their webpage which sets a cookie in the user's browser. That cookie allows the marketer to target the website visitor with advertising elsewhere on the internet using retargeting.

myThings is a site retargeting company that provides advertisers with display ads (banners), for visitors who have left their sites without completing a purchase. These users are served ads as they continue surfing the web. Behavioral retargeting is a form of online targeted advertising, in which online advertising is delivered to consumers based on their previous actions, such as pages browsed, products added to basket, on a company's website or app.

Email retargeting can refer to either:

References

  1. ↑ "The Future of Retargeting, Remarketing and Remessaging". Marketing Land. 12 March 2012. Retrieved 30 July 2012.
  2. ↑ "How Retargeting Works". adroll.com. Retrieved 9 March 2016.
  3. ↑ Lambrecht, Anja; Tucker, Catherine (October 2013). "When Does Retargeting Work? Information Specificity in Online Advertising". Journal of Marketing Research. 50 (5): 561–576. doi:10.1509/jmr.11.0503. hdl: 1721.1/88160 . ISSN   0022-2437. S2CID   9477528.
  4. ↑ "To Recoup Click-through Losses, Redirect". Search Insider. 5 June 2006.
  5. ↑ Helft, Miguel (29 August 2010). "Retargeting Ads Follow Surfers to Other Sites". The New York Times . Retrieved 6 September 2011.
  6. ↑ Angwin, Julia (30 July 2010). "The New Gold Mine: Your Personal Information & Tracking Data Online – WSJ.com". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 6 September 2011.
  7. ↑ "What's So Creepy About Retargeting?". Adotas.com. Archived from the original on 12 April 2016. Retrieved 6 September 2011.
  8. ↑ "MediaPost Publications Should Behavioral Targeting Be Opt-In? 10/06/2010". Mediapost.com. Archived from the original on 14 November 2010. Retrieved 6 September 2011.
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