What Google’s Remarketing Features Mean for eCommerce Sites
Monday, April 5th, 2010
Over the last few weeks Google has been rolling out remarketing features to users of its AdWords platform. These new features allow companies to continuously target visitors with ads after they’ve left its website in the hopes of luring them back. Think email remarketing but with ads on a content network.
Remarketing (often called retargeting) is not new. Dozens of companies have been offering this functionality for some time, including Criteo, Fetchback, Dotomi, and Adroll.
So why all the fuss? One big reason. Nearly every online retailer already has an AdWords account. This means the friction of setting up a remarketing program has suddenly been drastically reduced.
The Case For Google Remarketing
For many online retailers, the easiest way to dip a toe into remarketing is to do it with Google’s new features. There are no contracts to sign, no new relationships to forge, and a familiar PPC cost structure. It’s also relatively easy to set up a simple remarketing campaign that retargets site visitors with a generic ad.
Most important, the reach of Google’s AdSense network cannot be beat. No matter where your visitors go after they leave your site, you can be sure that they’ll soon be seeing an ad from Google’s network.
The Case Against Google Remarketing
The biggest drawback to using Google for your remarketing program (if you’re a typical online retailer) is the sheer scale of Google’s business. Google has to make its features appeal to every company in the world in order to make the tiniest contribution to their overall growth. They simply cannot afford to concentrate on adding features specific to integrating with e-commerce processes. Instead, Google’s business dictates that they must provide a self-service set of tools in the hopes that companies will do the heavy lifting with regards to business logic.
The result of Google’s reliance on self-service tools is that you’ll likely need a front-end developer to modify Google’s tracking code on the fly and a lot of patience for manually defining groups and rules in the AdWords interface. And if you want to integrate your remarketing program and reporting with your other systems, it’ll be up to you to do it since Google offers no professional services.
Should You be Using AdWords Remarketing?
If you are a tech savvy organization or are looking to get started with a basic remarketing program, then Google Adwords could be the perfect solution. It has familiar interface, a name you more or less trust, and solid functionality.
But if you are looking to implement a more sophisticated remarketing program or you need some expert help to guide you then you will want to look elsewhere. Like the rest of its tools, Google’s remarketing features are made exclusively for the self-service crowd.
