Expand your search strategy to display advertising with search retargeting (also known as search targeting) through specialized data partners, including Cross Pixel, Datonics, and others. This audience-based targeting approach enables the ability to reach users on other sites based on their search queries.
Offered as a Custom Audience solution within Choozle’s Supported Solutions, search retargeting can be implemented with our Client Experience team’s help.
What is search retargeting?
Search retargeting is a tactic that utilizes the search and browsing activity of users online, allowing you to advertise to an in-market audience. It curates targetable audiences based on previous online searches.
Different from site targeting, search retargeting can target users who may not have visited a certain site before but have been browsing similar sites and keywords.
Setting up a search retargeting campaign
Choozle partners with specialized data partners, including Cross Pixel, Datonics, and others, to create segments based on search behavior which can be used to power search retargeting campaigns.
Cross Pixel uses their referring URL technology to gather data from Yahoo and Bing. Unfortunately, Cross Pixel and many other data partners cannot collect data from Google as Google is a “walled garden,” therefore no one can see Google data except for Google. Cross Pixel also uses the body, title, metatag, selector, URL, and referral URL of webpages as signals of user intent.
Cross Pixel technology includes broad, exact, and phrase matches. Users have the option of utilizing keyword lists. If you do not have a keyword list, your Choozle Account Manager or a member of the Client Engagement team can provide one or can assist you in creating an audience based on your campaign objectives, strategy, competitors, etc. Keywords are not necessary for a campaign but can help increase precision.
Cross Pixel also provides over 1,300 off-the-shelf data segments, which are already available in our catalog.
These custom audiences populate the next day with Cross Pixel’s nightly job push, and the cookie recency can be one to 45 days.
Creating two-hour audiences
Cross Pixel offers an option of two-hour audiences for a CPM of $3.00. This real-time audience is available to target immediately, and the cookie expires within hours if they don’t complete another action.
Two-hour audiences enable advertisers to reach customers at the moment they are actively shopping for a product or service. Once a user has been identified as in-market for a product or service, the user will be available to target in real-time. After two hours, the cookie is no longer active unless the user completes another qualified action.
Two-hour audiences are precise and will improve the performance of any programmatic advertising campaign.
Optimizations & best practices for search retargeting campaigns
Search retargeting can be a great tool for targeting searchers of a client’s brand or for competitive conquesting (target searchers of rival brands).
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- We can craft audiences based on the number of intent signals Cross Pixel receives.
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- If you want to be very sure a user is showing intent, we could ask only to include users who have shown at least three intent signals on keywords. Furthermore, Cross Pixel can “score” individual keywords and make some keywords in your list more valuable than others.
- As an example, for a Subaru dealership in Colorado, “car shopping” might be worth one point, “dealership in Denver” could be worth two points, and “Subaru legacy for sale” might be three points. We could then only target users who have accrued five points or more. Cross Pixel recommends this for keyword lists that have lots of scale, so this would likely be best suited for a search retargeting ad group with >$5k-$10k of spend per month.
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- When utilizing two-hour audiences, we recommend increasing the base bid to become more competitive in auctions.
- We can adjust the recency of audiences to best mirror sales cycles. Using our previous example, a car dealership may want to have a 45-day recency window if that’s typically how long it takes for someone to go from searching around for cars to actually buying one. However, a hotel may only have a five-day sales cycle, so we could adjust the recency to five days (just let Cross Pixel know you want custom recency).
- We can craft audiences based on the number of intent signals Cross Pixel receives.
Ready to jump in and add search retargeting to your next campaign? Chat with us today to get started.
