A Practical Hands-On Marketing and Advertising Blog

Facebook’s Retargeting Chops

06 Aug 2014
In: Uncategorized

Retargeting is emerging as a killer app for lead generation and e-commerce. The products that mysteriously follow people around the web no longer freak out consumers. And marketers are reveling in the better than average response and conversion rates.

A new six-month study of 215 retargeting campaigns that generated 800 million impressions, produced by AdRoll, not only documents this phenomenon but indicates that Facebook is becoming a dominant and effective retargeting platform. Their evolving direct response ad units and mobile placements are fertile ground for even greater results. And since mobile ad units are new and underutilized the CPM costs are 57 percent lower than retargeting in the NewsFeed.

Marketers are experimenting with several different units in different combinations. The News Feed ads  (FBX) on desktops combine a large visual with sufficient space or both sell copy and social elements like comments and sharing. The right hand column is smaller and feels like its designed for high frequency. And now Facebook will match brand website visitors with Facebook users and serve ads exclusively on the basis of the match. This Website Custom Audience (WCA) play adds incremental targeting and gives marketers more options. Combining Facebook units with standard web retargeting appears to be the arena for marketers to test their way to better results.

The reported results are worth considering…

  • CTRs for News Feed desktop are 8.1 times greater and CPC was 24 percent less than standard web retargeting
  • News Feed on mobile yields a 9.1 times CTR advantage and 79 percent lower costs per click over standard web targeting
  • 1+1+1 = >3. Adding mobile to desktop and general web retargeting produces 53 percent more clicks and 58 percent more conversions; a new formula for added yield

As Facebook continues its evolution into a sophisticated direct response mechanism, retargeting will play an important role. It too will evolve as it becomes more personalized and more carefully triggered.

Comments: 1

  1. Posted by Deacon 12 Aug 2014 at 1:47 pm

    The abiilty to think like that shows you’re an expert

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.

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