Google Remarketing Guide

Google – A Guide to Google Remarketing

Introduction

The platform has a feature which allows you to take advantage of Google’s remarketing (or retargeting) functionality for Search campaigns.

With this feature, you are able to do achieve the following via the platform:

• Add, remove, or edit retargeting lists via bulk upload.
• Optimize your search campaigns (RLSAs) at the keyword level.
• View cost metrics at the campaign, group, keyword and creative level.

Important note

When using the platform to assign retargeting lists to Google groups, note that if the group does not have a Target setting, it will automatically be set to Target & Bid. This is mostly applicable when you are assigning a list to a group that has never had retargeting lists associated to it. This is important to know, as it can cause a drop in website traffic.

How to assign a remarketing list

We recommend that you copy existing campaigns or groups to a new campaign. The reason for this is you can then assign a retargeting list to the relevant groups and use a Target and Bid strategy.

To add a remarketing list for one of your Google Search campaigns, simply follow these steps:

1. Create a copy of the campaign you’d like to use with remarketing with the platform’s Copy Tool. For more information on this, see our Help article.
2. Using a bulk upload, assign a retargeting list to your group(s). See below for details on what to include in the bulk upload.
3. Using a bulk upload once again, assign a retargeting list as an exclusion to your original group(s). This will ensure that you do not compete against yourself in the auction for those keywords.
4. Create a bidding folder in the platform for your RLSA campaigns and add the new groups to this folder.
5. Set the folder to Traffic/Preview to have the platform begin pushing bids for these keywords.
6. The platform will now optimize bids for the new campaign at the keyword level, to ensure the best bids are found for each keyword as per the people in your retargeting list.

For more information on Google Remarketing, please read our help article.

Remarketing lists for Display campaigns

You can also use remarketing lists with Display campaigns. To add a remarketing list to a Display campaign, just follow the process outlined above. Again we recommend using the Target and Bid strategy.

Bulk upload columns

In order to assign your remarketing lists in bulk, you will need to include the following columns in your bulk sheet. Columns shown in [brackets] are optional.

• Account
• Campaign
• Group
• Retargeting List
• [Status]
• [Bid Adjustment]
• [Max. CPC]
• [Destination URL]

Note: Max. CPC and Destination URL are applicable for display groups only.

Retargeting List Exclusions

• Account
• Campaign
• [Group]
• Retargeting List
• [Status]

Note: if you do not include Group, the platform will assume the assignment is at the campaign level when uploading exclusions. The Status column values can be either Excluded or Deleted; if not provided, the default is Excluded. Note that groups are required when adding lists. 

Additional notes

• Note that the creation of retargeting lists is carried out on the publisher’s end and synced to the application. You cannot create the lists within the platform at this time.
• You can sync down retargeting lists and view them in the grid.
• Lists can be bulk uploaded via FTP using the prefix groupRetargetList_
• Negative retargeting lists can be managed in bulk only. They are visible in the Negatives grid.
• Cost metrics are not available for retargeting lists.
• Single/multi-edit is not available for retargeting lists at this time.
• Nightly sync will not update your retargeting lists. To do so, you’ll need to perform a hard sync.
• You need to wait overnight before you can bulk add/edit retargeting list assignments in the platform for a newly created list. If you don’t do this, the process will fail because the platform will not be able to recognize this new list.
• The platform does not support bulk add/edit assignments for lists that share the same name (for example, if you have shared lists in your Google account such as All Visitors). You will need to do this within AdWords.
• Target and Bid causes Google to only show the ads when both the keyword and the retargeting list match. As opposed to Bid only where Google will show you ads when a keyword matches (regardless of whether the remarketing list matches). For more information on Target and Bid versus Bid only, please refer to this Google Support article.

Google – Understanding Google Remarketing

Introduction

Remarketing is a way for advertisers to target visitors who have been to certain sections of the advertiser’s site. AdWords allows users to create Audience templates which are simply tags that are placed on desired sections of the website.

Users can then create campaigns to target visitors who have been to those parts of the website (or not). A simple use case is creating two lists (a landing page list and a confirmation page list) and then creating a remarketing campaign targeting all visitors who have been to the landing page but not the confirmation page.
It is worthwhile to note that these campaigns are always Content campaigns.

Remarketing with the platform

Marin currently provides all reporting for Audience-targeted campaigns at the campaign, group and creative level. We however do not provide Audience-level reporting within the app nor allow users to manage/create Audience lists within the app.

Impact

You can continue to create and manage audience lists within AdWords, and can log into Marin to view performance of these campaigns and make adjustments to creatives, bidding, etc.

Setup

All Audience templates must be created within AdWords through the “Audiences” tab. Under this tab, the user can create a pixel for the template and determine cookie life for the Audience. After an Audience template is created, the user can map select campaigns/groups relevant to the Audience template.

Google – A Guide to Dynamic Remarketing Ads

What is the Dynamic Display Ads feature?

Dynamic Display Ads is a new Google beta feature that allows you create ads that are tailored to your target audience. This happens dynamically as your ads are shown to a specific user on a specific website.

The key benefits of this new type of ad are as follow:

• Ads stay fresh and relevant by combining the Display Ad Builder’s content management system with the Google Merchant Center automated product updates.
• Allows advertisers to contextualize ads based on page content, or by specific user. For example, you can show users different languages or currencies based on their location.
• Achieve creative efficiency gains by creating a single display ad that dynamically shows a user the right messages and the right products in the right context.
• Report on and optimize ad performance by selecting different layouts for your ad content and receiving reports on which ads perform best.

What are Dynamic Remarketing Ads?

Dynamic Remarketing Ads are a type of Dynamic Display Ads that let you personalize your ads based on products a customer has viewed on your site or added to their cart.

How Dynamic Remarketing Ads work

Using a special tag on a merchant’s website, Google retrieves product ID numbers for all available products for that merchant. Next it matches these IDs to the site’s Google Merchant Center feed. It then uses this information to create customized Dynamic Remarketing Ads which can display different names, images, prices etc. based on the specific user.

Using Dynamic Remarketing Ads with the platform

Because Dynamic Remarketing Ads are a new creative type, they are not currently available via the API, so cannot yet be managed within the platform.

However, you can sync your campaigns, groups and ads in the platform and run reports on these levels.

Tracking Dynamic Remarketing Ads

When syncing a Dynamic Remarketing campaign, the platform cannot append tracking values to the main destination URL of the banner, as these ad types are not editable. There are two ways to work around this:

1) Individual product URLs can be tracked using the click prefix URL in the AdWords Display Ad Builder. You can specify the redirect in the the Click Prefix URL (optional) field. This will pre-pend the URL specified in this field to the landing page URL for dynamic ads (this could be the destination URL, c:drlp, adwords_redirect, or the product URL).

Here is an example of a pre-pended URL using platform tracking: http://tracker.website.com/rd?cid=abcd1234&pcrid={creative}&lp=

The above method works for any accounts on platform tracking, even if they do not normally use redirects. It should also function for most third-party redirect-based tracking solutions. Please contact your platform representative for more details.

2) You can manually update the destination URL in AdWords and append the correct tracking parameters to its URL.

To get the unique tracking ID with all of the appropriate tracking parameters to be used for each of your remarketing ads, you can generate placeholder keywords for this:

1. Create a bulksheet that contains Account, Campaign, Group, Keyword, Destination URL column headers.
2. Use an existing account, campaign, and group for those values. Use any Google Keyword Planner value (since these are just temporary placeholders). And use the base URL that you want for these remarketing ads as the destination URL value.
3. Upload this bulksheet in Held status but do not post it to the publisher (since these place holder keywords are only going to be used to generate the URLs for the remarketing ads).
4. In the Activity Log, download the file associated with the resulting Activity Log job, the Destination URL field should contain the tagged URLs.
5. Copy these URLs and paste them directly in AdWords; one for each remarketing ad.
6. Once all of your remarketing ads have the correct URL with tracking in AdWords,  cancel the Held Activity Log job in the platform. These placeholder keywords will then be removed, since these are no longer needed in the account.
7. Manually sync the retargeting campaign in the platform and the remarketing ad URLs will get pulled down into the platform for those objects.

Here are some more helpful instructions for method 1 under “Tracking Dynamic Remarketing Ads.” The steps in method 1 are the easiest method for tracking these ads:

Here are instructions on how to set up tracking for Dynamic Remarketing Ads. These instructions can be done by single editing your Dynamic Remarketing Ads in the AdWords interface:

Navigate to the specific ad in AdWords.

In the Destination URL box in AdWords, simply enter the landing page to where your ads are driving. Example: www.example.com

In the Click Prefix URL box in AdWords, you want to insert the redirect URL below. Copy and paste this URL exactly into Adwords.
tracker.marinsm.com/rd?cid=

abc1234

&crid={creative}&lp=

– A redirect URL always needs to be created for the Click Prefix URL box. This is due to an issue were Google drops tracking parameters upon click.

– When the remarketing ad serves, the “lp=” portion of that redirect will be automatically populated with what’s in the Destination URL box.

– Thus, the served URL will be: tracker.example.com/rd?cid=abc1234&pcrid={creative}&lp=www.example.com

– The value after cid= is how the Marin app knows to attribute to this specific client account. If you need to find this value for other client accounts, simply navigate to Admin > Clients and look in the “Tracker ID” column.

– You only need the creative ID to attribute conversion data to an ad in Marin. (therefore, no need to include other tracking parameters to Destination URL box)

You do not need to do anything else in the Marin application, just make sure that these remarketing ads are synced and exist in Marin. To do so, run a hard sync on the campaigns where the ads are located to ensure that the ads are synced to Marin.

Tracking Dynamic Remarketing Ads

When editing these ads in Adwords UI, there is a setting called ‘Click behavior’ (hidden under advanced URL settings). The default for this setting is ‘Navigate to product URL’.

“How it works: If you select a product URL for the click behavior, viewers will be navigated to that product page whether they click the product area of an ad or anywhere else in the ad. But, if you select destination URL for the click behavior, viewers will be navigated to the product page if they click the product area of an ad and to the destination page if they click anywhere else in the ad.”

If ‘Navigate to product URL’ is selected then it does not matter what value is included in the Destination URL field.

Regardless of this Click Behavior setting, if a user clicks one of the product images in the ad, the URL used will be the one in the Merchant Center feed. To track conversions from these clicks, advertisers will need to add ‘Tracking URL query parameters’ and also a ‘Click prefix URL’ if they are using redirect URLs to track clicks.