Cross-Device Retargeting Now Available in Adwords

The Digital Essentials, Part 3

Developing a robust digital strategy is both a challenge and an opportunity. Part 3 of the Digital Essentials guide series explores five of the essential technology-driven experiences customers expect, which you may be missing or not fully utilizing.

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With the rise in tablet and mobile device use over the past few years, marketers have been battling the difficult task of tracking individual users across devices. Understanding the impact of one’s ads on a mobile device when users regularly switch over to desktops to complete purchases is nearly impossible. However, as mobile phones become faster and more user friendly, they have surpassed desktop use, and it is now more important than ever to have access to this cross-device tracking information on individual users.
One specific advertising strategy that is being affected by this is remarketing. In traditional remarketing campaigns, advertisers would use the cookie data of a single device to specifically target past visitors of their website with ads on that same device. Past visitors are familiar with the company and tend to interact with the business’ ads at a higher rate, so remarketing is a great way to focus on a more targeted audience. The problem with this system occurs when a user visits the company’s website on one device, and then begins using another. Since cookies do not transfer information between devices being used by the same user, there is no way to retarget that user on another device.
Google is helping to address part of this problem by enabling cross-device retargeting when users are signed in to their Google accounts. With this change, advertisers will have more access to past visitors and be able to target this highly relevant audience with additional ads.
When users are signed into their Google accounts across their desktop, tablet and mobile devices, they will now be eligible to be targeted with remarketing ads from advertisers whose websites that user has previously visited on any device.
What does this mean for advertisers?  In a multi-device world, we’re finally seeing real movement in the ability to track users across devices and market to them in a more effective and relevant way. We can widen our remarketing audience by keeping more users on the remarketing list, which will result in getting more out of your advertising practices.