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CTRs 2X Higher When Retargeting On Facebook And The Web, Than Web Alone

A new Marin Software whitepaper looks at cross-channel retargeting trends among marketers.

Ginny Marvin on September 23, 2014 at 8:32 am

Despite relatively small budget allocations, cross-channel retargeting has become a nearly ubiquitous tactic among marketers. In a new survey by Marin Software, just 12 percent of marketers said they were not currently using retargeting in their mix. Over half those said they plan to start retargeting within the next 12 months.

In addition to usage trends, Marin also looked at the effect on performance when retargeting across channels among the 233 marketers surveyed.

Cross-Channel Lift

When Marin analyzed click-through rates when marketers retargeted on Facebook and the web compared to those who retargeted on Facebook only, they found that those retargeting on both channels saw somewhat higher CTRs than those retargeting on Facebook alone (0.09 percent versus 0.06 percent).

This effect was even greater when they compared performance when retargeting on Facebook and the web to those retargeting on the web only. CTR was consistently more than double for those that retargeted on both Facebook and the web.

Source: Marin Software

Of those that are retargeting across multiple channels, half of respondents said they have separate goals for each channel they retarget on. Marin points out that this echoes a recent Econsultancy/Oracle report that found just 10 percent of marketers align their marketing messages, execution and delivery across channels and that there is an opportunity for marketers to apply cohesive messaging on all channels.

Display Is Most Popular Retargeting Channel

Among those deploying retargeting, display is the most popular channel among these marketers, with 81 percent participation. Search came in a relatively close second with 77 percent participation among the Marin Software and Perfect Audience (the retargeting platform acquired by Marin early this year) customers surveyed.

Eight-nine percent of the surveyed marketers using retargeting are doing so on Google — through the Google Display Network or retargeting lists for search ads (RLSA). Nearly half (48 percent) are employing both the GDN and RLSA in their retargeting efforts.

Source: Marin Software

Social retargeting, mainly through Facebook and Twitter, is growing in popularity with 48 percent of polled retargeters participating. Mobile retargeting is used by 32 percent and video by just 21 percent, though we can expect retargeting via both of those channels to increase.

Marin was struck by the popularity of search retargeting and attributes its growth to an expanding definition of “search retargeting” beyond the RLSA model to the idea of using search intent to create audience segments for retargeting across other channels like social and display.

For example, a user could categorize a set of search queries under a dimension like “luxury” and use that to further segment audience lists based on their first-party site-behavioral data.

Among the challenges marketers have with retargeting, difficulty attributing performance by far outweighs other concerns. Forty-three percent of marketers cited attribution challenges, followed by 31 percent listing sufficient list volumes as a struggle. Lack of transparency and results not meeting expectations were each cited by 25 percent of respondents as concerns.

These challenges are seen in marketers’ budget allocations for retargeting. Over half (51 percent) of respondents spend 10 percent or less of their marketing budgets on retargeting every month. Yet, more than half of marketers plan to increase retargeting budgets across each of these channels in the coming year.

The full whitepaper with best practice overviews can be downloaded here.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media's Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.