About the Google Display Network & Remarketing
The Google Display Network has the largest reach of any display network in the world. Approximately 90% of global internet users are reached by Google’s Display Network, including 94% of all US internet users. Of these users, 64% are reached every day. Remarketing on the Google Display Network is a crucial pillar for any digital marketing strategy, allowing you to reach your previous website visitors virtually wherever they go on the internet. In this article, we will be exploring two types of Google Display remarketing types, dynamic remarketing and standard remarketing.
What is Standard Remarketing?
Standard remarketing allows a brand to show static or responsive display ads to past visitors of your website as they browse websites and apps on the Display Network. These ads feature headlines, descriptions and images - hand selected by the advertiser to deliver a particular message to the advertiser’s remarketing audience.
What is Dynamic Remarketing?
Dynamic remarketing is a form of remarketing that allows you to show ads to past visitors of any products or services that they viewed on your site. Unlike standard remarketing, the advertiser does not select which images, headlines, or descriptions will be displayed to the user as the ad is automatically tailored to the individual user’s behavior on the website.
When Should You Use Standard Remarketing?
Standard remarketing is likely the form of remarketing that most brands are familiar with when it comes to Google Ads. For standard remarketing, you start by sorting website visitors into lists based on their activity on your website. For example, common ways you could sort your website visitors could include:
- All Website Visitors - Any and all website visitors, this is your largest possible remarketing list.
- Product Page Viewers - Visitors who navigated to your website’s product pages to learn more about a particular product.
- All Purchasers - Visitors who purchased a product from your website.
- Product X Purchasers - Visitors who purchased a specific product from your website.
- Cart Abandoners - Visitors who added an item to their cart, but did not complete their purchase.
These different types of audiences have varying levels of intent. For example, a cart abandoner is much closer to purchasing your product than someone who simply visited your website and did not take any action. The way that we will deliver our ads to these users will also need to vary. This is where standard remarketing is beneficial. Standard remarketing ads allow advertisers to craft their messaging to fit a user’s level of purchase intent at the time.
If your goal is to build brand awareness and long-term consideration, you might show ads to people who have visited any of your pages, highlighting your brand’s differentiating factors or the problem that your products help solve. This form of remarketing can be useful in keeping your brand in people’s minds so that when they eventually decide to make a purchase for products like yours, your brand will be at the top of their minds.
On the other hand, perhaps your goal with your remarketing campaign is to drive efficient conversions. In this situation, you could target users who previously purchased one of your products such as deodorant or body wash, and deliver them an ad about one of your products that they have not purchased yet, such as sunscreen.
Brand loyalty is a strong force, and targeting those who already love your brand is a great place to start when looking to drive conversions at a low cost-per-acquisition.
Maybe you have just launched a new product and you want to make sure that everyone who has previously purchased from your brand is aware, so that they can check it out and make a purchase if interested. In this case, you could craft your messaging to this situation as seen below:
Well-timed targeting and messaging tailored to where the user is in their purchase journey are the primary reasons why standard remarketing should be utilized for any business.
When Should You Use Dynamic Remarketing?
When users research products or services on your site, but leave without converting, you can use Dynamic Remarketing to show the products that they indicated interest in to them as they visit other sites on the Google Display Network. These types of ads allow you to tap into a recent interest, or reawaken an older interest, and drive conversions for users actively showing interest in your products.
Creating dynamic remarketing ads requires a product feed in Google Merchant Center. Once you create a basic .csv, .tsv, .xls, or .xlsx feed, simply connect the feed to your Display Remarketing campaign in the campaign’s settings:
From there, the Google Ads product recommendation engine will pull those products from your feed, determining the best mix of products for each ad based on popularity and what the visitor viewed on your site. Google Ads then predicts which dynamic ad layout is likely to perform best for the person, placement, and platform where the ad will show.
We have seen Dynamic Display Ads work best for brands who have a wide variety of products, and multiple variations of those products. If your brand only sells 1-3 products, then Dynamic Remarketing may not be too beneficial. However, if your brand sells more than 10 product variants, then the ability to serve ads that feature the specific products a user showed interest in becomes incredibly powerful.
Some of the potential downsides of dynamic remarketing ads include:
- Less Control Over Creative - While advertisers can control which products will be allowed to show on dynamic remarketing ads; the order and layout in which they will display is entirely in the hands of Google.
- They Don’t Provide Much of a Message - As you can see from some of the above examples, there is not much in the form of messaging when it comes to dynamic display ads. If you want to deliver a specific message to a specific type of audience, then dynamic display ads may not be the best option.
- As a Result, They Are Less Effective for Branding Campaigns - If your goal is generating general brand awareness and consideration, then you will likely want more control over your creative and messaging.
Using Both Standard and Dynamic Remarketing To Maximize Sales
As discussed above, there are particular scenarios where standard remarketing may be better for a brand than dynamic remarketing, and vice-versa. However, for most ecommerce brands, utilizing both dynamic and standard remarketing is necessary to fully maximize your ability to recapture, upsell, cross-sell and drive consideration from your website visitors.
When it comes to users who viewed your website’s product pages or service pages, we recommend utilizing dynamic remarketing to re-engage the user with the products that they are most likely to engage with, based on their previous behavior. When it comes to delivering a specific message, building awareness, or highlighting a particular product, we recommend utilizing standard remarketing (responsive display ads and stto have greater control over your creative and messaging - so as to ensure that you are reaching the right user, at the right time, with the right message.
Thinking about adding remarketing to your Google Ads strategy? We’ve successfully grown hundreds of brands thanks to effective ad remarketing, and we can do the same for you. Request a free strategy session today!
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