5 Retargeting Ads Defined: Website, Contextual, IP, Facebook and Email

Retargeting is one of the most effective marketing tactics that focuses advertising efforts and expenditure on traffic that is already familiar with your products and services – traffic that has previously demonstrated interest in your products. It’s cookie-based and uses JavaScript code to follow your target audience anonymously all over the web, delivering ads based on set demographics. No matter the size or scope of your business, you can use retargeting to your advantage to keep your brand top of mind and bring unconverted visitors back to your site. Let’s take an in-depth look at the five different retargeting ads you could use below. 

1. Contextual Advertising

This is where the advertising system scans the content displayed to the user for keywords. It then returns advertisements to the webpage based on the keywords identified. The advertisements may also be displayed as pop-up ads. For instance, if the visitor is viewing content related to flowers, advertisements for flower-related services may appear on the page such as floral arrangement delivery or landscaping services.

In case the visitor does not click on the pop-up or webpage ad within the allotted time, the ad is changed to the next appropriate advertisement but with an option of going back to the previous ad. Some of the top contextual advertising networks include Google AdSense, Microsoft adCenter, Yahoo, Bing Network Contextual Ads and Advertising.com.

2. Website Targeting

Website targeting increases the effectiveness of your online marketing campaigns by collecting the web browsing information of a site visitor. Whenever traffic comes to your site, cookies are left that carry the details of all your vistors’ activity. This makes it easy to profile the visitors based on their areas of interest. The information collected includes the pages visited, the searches made and the items clicked by the visitor while on your website. Using this information, you can then select the kind of advertisements to display to the particular visitor wherever they go all through the web.

3. IP Targeting

This type of targeting uses the Internet Protocol (IP) address to deliver relevant online ads to site visitors. There are several ways IP targeting can be done. Some of them include geo-targeting, audience segmentation targeting and targeting using cookies. All these methods are effective in delivering your marketing message to the right audience. Visitors usually access websites using specific IP addresses that show the country and often city they’re accessing the internet from. This IP data, among other variables, collected is used to target prospects and tailor your message to the right audience.

4. Facebook Retargeting

Through “like” buttons installed on publisher sites all over the web, Facebook is able to watch the website surfing behavior of its users. It then uses this information to display relevant ads the moment the visitors log in to their Facebook accounts. For users who have visited websites that do not have “like” buttons, Facebook still retargets ads using FBX, which is its ad exchange program. This enables you to reach your target audience not only on regular sites with display ads but also while they spend time on social media.

5. Email Retargeting

Most marketers in small and large businesses use email marketing to push prospects through their sales funnel. But what about the people who read an email and then don’t convert? Email retargeting reminds people who have opened your emails but not taken any action about what you’d like them to do as they browse the Web. For example, if you send an email offering a free trial of your product to recipients who click on a link and fill out a form, the people who read the email but didn’t click will see ads during their other online activities for the free trial, reminding them to visit your site.