Google AdWords VS Facebook Ads — Remarketing

Remarketing (or retargeting) is the way of re-targeting users with ads, that is, the advertising targeting of users who have already visited our site. Surely we’ve all met this type of ads looking for a hotel or airline ticket. After visiting a web site, e.g. a hotel after seeing it as a banner ad on the internet.

Lastly, more and more businesses — whether they have e-commerce features on their websites or not — use remarketing to promote their products and services.

This post will look at the two most popular advertising services that provide remarketing, Google Adwords and Facebook Ads, and we will analyse their key features.

Examples

• A user seeking a particular service, e.g. athletic shoes, visits our e-shop but does not buy. Google’s remarketing ads follow him on the websites he visits and remind him of the pair he had seen or the brand of products. They continue to follow him until he buys or for the next x days.
• A user who has already purchased products from e-shop sees ads on the websites he visits and promotes products that match or complement his purchases.
• A company runs an ad for new likes on its Facebook page to everyone who has visited its website and lives in New York.
• An e-shop offers a discount through an Offer Claim Ad on Facebook, to users who have put products in the cart but have never completed a purchase from the e-shop. This is the first prize of the user.

Enable Retargeting

On the Google Network, activation can be done either through Google Analytics or through the website remarketing tag from Google Adwords. Facebook is tracked through Facebook Pixel. Both can be installed by a user with moderate technological knowledge or the developer of the company.

But full use of the possibilities of retargeting for both Google Adwords advertising and Facebook Ads requires good knowledge of Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and of course programming. This will enhance tracking through e-commerce tracking and events that will record the most complex activity of users and their interaction with the website or e-shop.

Google Remarketing VS Facebook Retargeting

Both of our services give us URL-based targeting and events such as:

• Users who have visited our site (e.g.: dvlpr.eu)
• Users who have visited a particular page of our site (e.g.: blog.dvlpr.eu, the websites blog)
• Users who have visited a category of our e-shop (e.g., the URL includes the word / shirt /)
• Users who have visited one of our e-shop and another (e.g., go to pages that show shirt and mug)
• Users who have added products to the cart but have not completed a purchase
• Users who viewed over 10 product pages without adding a product to their cart
• Users who have made purchases worth 50 € or more in the last 5 days

The two services have significant differences in how users target, along with URL and event targeting, give a unique audience to each service.

Exemplary Google targeting but not on Facebook:

• Users who visited the site and stayed for at least 2 minutes
• Users who visited the e-shop from a paid Facebook campaign that targeted the friends of the page and did not visit it again (new users)
• Users who visited the e-shop from a specific keyword in an Adwords campaign added cart products but did not complete their purchase
• Users who visited the site 2 days ago are visiting pages with sporting content

Of course, the list is not complete, but it’s easy to understand how Google can easily create user targets based on their activity on our site, because our data is provided by Google Analytics.

Exemplary Facebook targets but not on Google:

• Users who visited the site and are friends of our Facebook page
• Users who visited the site but are not friends of our Facebook page
• Users who visited the site and like the Brand
• Users who visited the site live in x city, are over 35 and are parents

As before, the list is not complete but it is easy to understand how on Facebook we can easily create user targets with very high precision based on demographics, preferences and interests of the user, and this is because these data have been filled by users in their profile, or Facebook has “caught” them from their behavior.

Conclusions

Both services, Google Adwords & Facebook Ads, have a place in the digital marketeer arsenal and are constantly evolving by providing more and more features. The choice of each service must be based on the overall projection plan chosen by each company.

Don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment with your marketing — Mike Volpe