Retargeting 101
Google calls it "remarketing."
The rest of us call it "retargeting."
It works by inserting a few lines of code onto your website which then "tags" (cookies) your visitors as they land on your pages. This starts building your "audience" or some call it, your "cookie pool."
Wikipedia defines a "cookie" as...
A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser while a user is browsing a website.
When the user browses the same website in the future, the data stored in the cookie is sent back to the website by the browser to notify the website of the user's previous activity.
Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember the state of the website or activity the user had taken in the past. This can include clicking particular buttons, logging in, or a record of which pages were visited by the user even months or years ago.
My son wishes I mean something different every time he hears me call it a cookie pool! hahaha
The code you place on your website is given to you by the network you choose to use. Today there are a lot of networks. I'll review them later in this report.
After you place the code on your website, you upload banner ads to the network. I'll also show you what these look like, best practices, and sizes later in this report.
The networks use the code you placed to cookie your visitors. Once you've amassed an audience (cookie pool) they display your banner ads ALL OVER THE INTERNET - but ONLY to people in your cookie pool.
Your website visitors will feel like your ads are everywhere. When, in fact, they only appear everywhere because they have visited your website.
How does it work? Simple. The ad networks that provide the code to you and display your banners have relationships with hundreds of thousands of sites that allow the ad networks to show your ads all over the web.
Some of these sites include USAToday, Youtube, Forbes, MTV, and thousands of smaller sites you've never heard about.
If you're paying attention you just realized that YOU could have YOUR ADS on sites like USAToday, Forbes, and MTV for as little as $100.