Dax Hamman, Chief Revenue Officer at search retargeting platform Chango, mentioned us in a piece today on Search Engine Land. The piece describes the huge opportunity available to search engine marketers (SEMs), who can now use search retargeting to extend their PPC dominance to the world of display advertising.
Why is search retargeting such a MASSIVE opportunity for SEMs?
Here’s a hypothetical scenario: when someone searches for “laptop” on Google, they’re probably looking to buy one, or at least researching products and seeking out retailers and pricing. This intent is incredibly valuable advertising data; someone searching for “laptop” has just raised their hand to a sea of retailers and announced: “Hi, I have between several hundred and several thousand dollars to spend on a laptop.”
Search for “laptop” and dozens of companies instantly start competing for your business.
The searcher may click on one of the ads, but they probably won’t immediately make a purchase; laptops are expensive and a consumer is bound to research several models before making a decision.
If I’m a search marketer at Lenovo, do I only get one chance to grab the buyer’s interest with my search ad? With traditional search, the answer may be yes…the buyer might make a decision after an initial search for “laptop” that puts hundreds of retailers and products out of the running. For example, the buyer searches for “laptop,” does a little research, and from then on, only considers buying Apple laptops, meaning that Lenovo, along with the entire PC laptop industry (which is massive), is out of the running after only one Google search.
A great opportunity to sell a laptop, LOST.
Not quite…
Enter search retargeting (a little more on how it works). The laptop buyer may not have clicked on my search ad, but search retargeting lets me capture the buyer’s intent and use it to show the buyer follow-up display ads. This gives me, the marketer at Lenovo, dozens of additional chances to recapture the buyer’s attention as they surf the web. And if the buyer refines his/her research by searching for “desktop replacement” or “best laptop battery life,” then I am now able to feature display ads for Lenovo’s desktop replacement laptops that have great battery life.
When this kind of targeted follow-up advertising is aggregated over millions of searches and tens of thousands of potential buyers, the lift in performance and ROI over traditional search ads alone can be massive.
Helping search marketers transition into display
The key, of course, as Dax points out, is scaling and segmenting your display ad creative in the same way that SEMs can quickly test, refine, and segment their text ads.
But display ads are so much more complex (more on text-only ad versus display ad complexity). Given that creating text-based search ads requires no extra software or resources at all, the challenge of moving into display can seem quite large, as it may necessitate hiring expensive designers, and going through lengthy review and revision cycles.
It doesn’t need to be that convoluted. Streamlining the display ad creation process for SEMs is one of many things Canned Banners is developing tools for. More to follow on how we’ll be helping SEMs tap into this massive opportunity.
Canned Banners mentioned on Search Engine Land, plus thoughts on search retargeting
Dax Hamman, Chief Revenue Officer at search retargeting platform Chango, mentioned us in a piece today on Search Engine Land. The piece describes the huge opportunity available to search engine marketers (SEMs), who can now use search retargeting to extend their PPC dominance to the world of display advertising.
Why is search retargeting such a MASSIVE opportunity for SEMs?
Here’s a hypothetical scenario: when someone searches for “laptop” on Google, they’re probably looking to buy one, or at least researching products and seeking out retailers and pricing. This intent is incredibly valuable advertising data; someone searching for “laptop” has just raised their hand to a sea of retailers and announced: “Hi, I have between several hundred and several thousand dollars to spend on a laptop.”
Search for “laptop” and dozens of companies instantly start competing for your business.
The searcher may click on one of the ads, but they probably won’t immediately make a purchase; laptops are expensive and a consumer is bound to research several models before making a decision.
If I’m a search marketer at Lenovo, do I only get one chance to grab the buyer’s interest with my search ad? With traditional search, the answer may be yes…the buyer might make a decision after an initial search for “laptop” that puts hundreds of retailers and products out of the running. For example, the buyer searches for “laptop,” does a little research, and from then on, only considers buying Apple laptops, meaning that Lenovo, along with the entire PC laptop industry (which is massive), is out of the running after only one Google search.
A great opportunity to sell a laptop, LOST.
Not quite…
Enter search retargeting (a little more on how it works). The laptop buyer may not have clicked on my search ad, but search retargeting lets me capture the buyer’s intent and use it to show the buyer follow-up display ads. This gives me, the marketer at Lenovo, dozens of additional chances to recapture the buyer’s attention as they surf the web. And if the buyer refines his/her research by searching for “desktop replacement” or “best laptop battery life,” then I am now able to feature display ads for Lenovo’s desktop replacement laptops that have great battery life.
When this kind of targeted follow-up advertising is aggregated over millions of searches and tens of thousands of potential buyers, the lift in performance and ROI over traditional search ads alone can be massive.
Helping search marketers transition into display
The key, of course, as Dax points out, is scaling and segmenting your display ad creative in the same way that SEMs can quickly test, refine, and segment their text ads.
But display ads are so much more complex (more on text-only ad versus display ad complexity). Given that creating text-based search ads requires no extra software or resources at all, the challenge of moving into display can seem quite large, as it may necessitate hiring expensive designers, and going through lengthy review and revision cycles.
It doesn’t need to be that convoluted. Streamlining the display ad creation process for SEMs is one of many things Canned Banners is developing tools for. More to follow on how we’ll be helping SEMs tap into this massive opportunity.