Remarketing is the process of displaying your online ads to people who have already visited your website. It serves to remind them about your business and can lead to increased sales if they then click an ad and return to your site.
Most people have experienced remarketing in the form of ads that follow them round the internet and they are typically generated by Google as part of the AdSense program.
Remarketing done badly can be annoying: you see the same ad over and over again which can be tedious at the best of times and aggravating if you’ve already bought the product!
Remarketing works using cookie technology. Cookies are small files that get stored on your browser when you visit a website. They are not always put there by the website owner but can be placed instead by advertising systems like Google Ads. The process is as follows:
- A customer visits your website and a cookie gets placed on their browser by, for example, Google. The cookie anonymously stores the identity of your customer and of your website.
- Customer visits a new unconnected site that uses Google’s AdSense advertising system to generate revenue.
- Google, when deciding what ads to place on this new site, checks the data in its cookies and sees that the visitor has previously been on your site.
- Google then sees that you are running a remarketing campaign using Google Ads and fetches one of your ads for display.
- Customer clicks on your remarketing ad and returns to your site.
- Google charges you for the click and shares the revenue with the new site owner.
- Customer decides to buy from you on this second visit – hopefully!