Case Study | Remarketing

Bidcactus used remarketing to re-engage site visitors and reduce its campaign CPA by 22%.

About Bidcactus • www.bidcactus.com • Westport, CT • Web-based auction site

About ClearSearch | media • www.clearsearchmedia.com • New York, NY • Online media company specializing in SEM

Goals • Reach potential customers on relevant pages across the web • Re-engage registered users who had not made a purchase

Approach

In April 2009, Bidcactus emerged into the online world with a new approach to web-based auctions. Designed to combine online shopping and auction entertainment, Bidcactus lets its members bid on brand-new merchandise, from electronics to gift cards, in penny auctions starting at one cent. With just a handful of employees, the start-up had a modest advertising budget dedicated only to paid search campaigns. Soon after its launch, Bidcactus enlisted the help of Jon Simmons, Principal of online marketing agency ClearSearch | media. Branching out One year later, the employees at Bidcactus have quadrupled, and the company’s online advertising strategy has expanded with ClearSearch’s guidance. “Google’s Display Network is a fantastic outlet for Bidcactus,” says Paul Langtry, Managing Director at ClearSearch, noting that Bidcactus has now branched out into display advertising, is testing various ad networks for performance, and has increased its advertising budget accordingly. ”With Google’s Display Network, we can reach a parallel audience of people who aren’t searching at the moment, and we can reach them in relevant places on the web.” As Bidcactus continued to expand its marketing activities, Paul proposed a new way for the team to get the most bang for its advertising buck: remarketing.

• Used remarketing feature to target precise user groups • Tailored ads to these specific groups • Contextually targeted campaign for even more precision

Getting users back Remarketing allows you to re-engage people who’ve previously visited your website as they browse sites across Google’s Display Network. With remarketing, you can tag users who visit your site, and then show them tailored ads when they later visit other pages on the web.

Results

“Remarketing allows us to add value back into our ‘sunk’ costs – those marketing dollars we’ve already spent,” Jon says. “Bidcactus sees a high volume of website traffic,” he adds. “So remarketing is a great opportunity to win back those users that we’ve already driven to the site through other advertising campaigns.”

• Reduced CPA by 22% compared to average account CPA • Achieved CPA 77% lower than other display ads’ CPA • Increased view-through conversions on remarketing ads

To implement remarketing, Paul added a small piece of code to three pages on the Bidcactus site: the homepage, the “thank you” page for users who registered for the service, and the “thank you” page for users who purchased a bidding package. Paul then set up a campaign to show remarketing ads to users who had registered for the Bidcactus service, but who had not yet purchased a bidding package. Tailoring for results With the goal of targeting this audience of registered users even more precisely, Paul optimized the Remarketing campaign to include contextual targeting. By adding relevant keywords like auctions and discounts to the campaign, the Bidcactus ads were only shown to its registered users (who had not made a purchase) who visited pages with content related to auctions and discounts. This allowed Bidcactus to zero in even more accurately on users who had already visited and registered with its site, and who continued to show interest in similar content. “We’re able to closely tailor the message in our ads to the site the user is viewing,” Paul adds.

About Google Display Network The Google Display Network offers text, image, rich media, and video advertising on Google properties, YouTube, and millions of web, domain, video, gaming, and mobile partner sites. From mass media to niche sites, advertisers can find the most engaged audiences, place ads on the most relevant pages, and achieve performance at scale through our innovative targeting technology. Using our tools, advertisers can build ads, measure results, optimize campaigns, and expand their advertising reach to specific audiences all over the web. For more information, visit www.google.com/displaynetwork

About Remarketing on the Google Display Network Remarketing on the Google Display Network allows you to reach people who previously visited various pages of your website, and show them a tailored message after they leave your site. Your message appears to these visitors as they browse other sites across the Google Display Network. It’s a powerful way to continue the conversation you began with them on your site.

The remarketing campaign with Paul’s optimization proved a success: Bidcactus saw a cost-per-acquisition (CPA) for its remarketing campaign that was 22 percent less than the average CPA for its other AdWords campaigns (both search and Display Network campaigns), and 77 percent lower than the average CPA for its other AdWords display ads. “We’re getting really successful metrics,” says Paul, “and we’re also seeing a sizable amount of view-through conversions on our remarketing ads.” Refine, remarket, repeat Given the results from the optimized remarketing campaign, Paul looks to continue fine-tuning the Bidcactus campaign using remarketing and contextual targeting. He next plans on creating more tightly themed ad groups to enable Bidcactus to add a greater variety of keywords to its remarketing campaign, all while keeping ads precisely targeted to specific groups of users. “Google’s Display Network is leading the charge for us,” adds Paul, “and we’ll definitely be doing more remarketing buys in the future.”

“Remarketing allows us to add value back into our ‘sunk’ costs. It’s a great opportunity to win back those users that we’ve already driven to the site through other advertising campaigns.” — Jon Simmons, Principal, ClearSearch | media © 2010

For more information, visit www.google.com/ads/innovations/remarketing

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