Late this winter, Google announced that it will add an account-level control for signed-in users to mute a given advertiser’s remarketing ads. The control will mute all remarketing campaigns from that advertiser for 90 days – the typical life of a remarketing audience cookie.
Google also is beefing up the two-year-old “Mute this ad” function. Previously, clicking the tiny blue X in the upper right corner of an ad would mute the ad on a single device. Now that action will mute the ad for 90 days across all signed-in devices. Note: “Mute this ad”’ does not mute the advertiser, just the single campaign that served the ad.
These muting updates are Google’s reaction to disgruntled customers who have expressed feeling overwhelmed or compromised in their privacy.
What can advertisers do to avoid being muted?
As these changes roll out, work with your digital marketing team to follow a few basic recommendations for remarketing ads:
- Analyze the campaign’s lag time: Start the ads from the first ad click or site visit and end the ads when the user converts. Limit the remarketing cookie life to a similar time frame.
- Avoid the ‘carpet bomb’ strategy: Use multiple targeting controls to serve remarketing ads only when the targeted consumer intersects with content or actions that are relevant to the remarketing campaign. For example, don’t serve a Find a Doctor remarketing message to a consumer browsing external content about financial investments. Instead, serve that ad to people who are engaging with content about family matters, healthy lifestyles, or medical conditions.
- Incorporate more platforms: Consider using platforms outside Google and Bing to vary remarketing distribution.
- Use frequency capping: This tactic can prevent overwhelming your target audience. You should limit ads served per user per day to a reasonable limit. For example, many advertisers limit ad exposure to 10 impressions per day.
- Use unique and meaningful ad messages: Encourage engagement and create a novel experience by designing new display ad art and messaging. Better yet, send a remarketing ad click to a landing page with unique content. For an even better experience, offer a button on the landing page for returning visitors to resume where they left off on their previous visit.
Final thoughts to keep in mind
Overall, we recommend a lighter touch with remarketing campaigns than organizations might be used to using. This is especially critical in lead generation campaigns, in which users might not be ready to convert immediately. Healthcare tends not to have the decisive conversion moment of an online retailer, so we recommend that organizations frame remarketing messages as nudges or reminders and deliver the content through well-planned campaign.
We anticipate that future remarketing campaigns likely will be planned with increasing strategic messaging and with greatly reduced ad impression goals to avoid high muting rates. However, conversion rates like could increase as ads are better targeted to the most relevant consumers in the moments that best align with their intent.
To discuss healthcare remarketing strategy and implementation, contact us today.
