Digital Advertising

Choosing a retargeting company is a major decision in digital advertising, yet many businesses still judge performance by the metric least connected to revenue. In this article, we explain what retargeting companies actually do, why clicks are a misleading measure of success, and how to compare retargeting platforms so that campaigns are evaluated on real marketing ROI, not vanity metrics.

Digital media moves quickly, and consumer behavior moves with it. The businesses keeping pace are increasingly the ones working with an AdTech company, a specialist vendor that builds the technology behind modern online advertising. In this article, we look at what these companies actually do, how artificial intelligence and in particular, Deep Learning have reshaped the field, and what brands should consider when choosing a partner.

Sports fandom is, and always has been, about unswerving loyalty, passion, and the act of turning up, again and again. This will never change, but today’s increasingly fragmented media environment is bringing significant changes in how fans engage, share, and spend. Any brand looking to capitalize on this new reality will need to adopt innovative approaches that resonate more deeply with fans.

Legacy Machine Learning solutions have much to lose when clients learn an inconvenient truth: using two different-in-kind retargeters leads to demonstrably superior performance. For this reason, legacy vendors tout a “one retargeter” approach to programmatic advertising that doesn’t align with the lived reality of marketers. The one retargeter strategy is driven by a vendor’s internal business concerns, not by what’s best for their clients. If a single-vendor retargeting strategy were so superior and so powerful, why would a proper retargeting stack be such a threat to legacy Machine Learning vendors?

I’m going to look at, and then disprove, four myths around the choice of a single- or multiple-vendor retargeting strategy. And I’ll explain why sophisticated markers build programmatic marketing stacks.

There are more options online for consumers to choose from than ever before. But rather than this manifesting as any kind of “paralysis of choice” or panicked rush to purchase, consumer journeys are actually becoming longer and more researched. More people are starting with careful consideration, comparison, and in-depth research of prices and brands. They make more site visits and spend more time weighing their options before transacting, creating a “messy middle” between consideration and purchase that has significant implications for merchants.

Many of the world’s biggest brands choose to deploy a multiple retargeting strategy (using more than one retargeting vendor in combination) because it delivers a host of benefits like larger audiences, more efficient advertising, and a higher return on ad spend. Despite the advantages, or maybe because of them, it can be tempting for organizations to wonder exactly how much value, in isolation, each provider brings.

But is a straight comparison, as seen with head-to-head testing, a strategically sound approach, or should brands be focusing on the wider picture of true added value? Let’s investigate.