Google recently announced that is will implement some changes in the account dashboards of users, so that they have more power on the so called “reminder ads”, i.e. remarketing. The announcement was met with a lot of scared reactions by advertisers and media. Let’s have a sober look on what has changed.
In 2012 Google introduced “Mute this ad” button in the top right corner of display banner ads which allows users to block an ad they keep seeing. Often it could be a product they have already bought, but they are still on the remarketing list.
Since then billions of users reported ads which they did not want to see. Small survey popping after the ad is muted provided Google with valuable information on the quality, targeting and preferences of users.
Now after a record in muted ads across the Google Display Network, Google focused on improving the user experience. They do this especially by providing more control and security to users. The ad muting feature will now function cross device. If an ad is muted on a mobile phone, it will not show on desktop. Also more apps and websites will show ads with a mute button. Ads served by Google AdWords and DoubleClick.
The mute period lasts 90 days, unless the user visits the website again. If they are targeted by two different campaigns from the same advertiser, they will still see the ad from the campaigns they have not muted.
What does this mean for advertisers? Are we facing a tough future for display advertising?
There are few things which can help advertisers make sure they are not muted.
Bring your A game.
Your ads must be very relevant to the user and they can easily recognise your brand. If you are remarketing shopping basket abandoners, make sure the ad shows exactly what they had put in their baskets. Use only top quality images and design. You can design some low budget beautiful banners with platforms like Canva. Otherwise you can outsource design to platforms like Fiverr or Freelancer where you can get professional ads done very well.
Exclude recent buyers.
Make sure you exclude the people who have already bought a certain product recently. Creating a negative list based on urls containing the page visitors come to only after purchase is easy. In this way you also get a more accurate idea on the number of impressions by people who have higher potential to buy.
Use frequency capping.
This feature is available in the settings of a display campaign and allows you to control how often an ad is served to one user per day or week. You can do capping per ad group or campaign. If you have different remarketing lists per ad group, users can easily be on several of them, if they have browsed many pages of your website. This means that they could be seeing way more ads that you initially thought.
Shift budgets to remarketing on Facebook.
Facebook is also going through changes with the way they deliver ads with less priority of company posts in its feed. Still the platform provides very granular and sophisticated tools for targeting like website visitors, email lists and app users.