AdWords advertisers rejoice!
Google have recently made a change in how remarketing tags are installed that is going to make your life a whole lot easier.
Last month (July 27th, 2012), Google released a sneaky update to AdWords that allows advertisers to install one piece of remarketing code across an entire website as opposed to separate unique tags on specific pages.
Why is this awesome news?
This new ‘site wide’ code is installed the same way you would normally install the standard Google Analytics code and removes the need to get your IT/dev team involved after the initial remarketing tag installation!
What does this mean for you?
Look forward to:
- No more large, detailed code implementation step-by-step emails/documents for your development teams;
- Less chance of incorrect implementations;
- More flexible and refined list building opportunities. For example, you can create a remarketing lists of possible PPC customers just by creating a “URL contains PPC” list; and
- On-the-fly remarketing list creation (no need for ongoing liaisons we development team once initial code is implemented).
What do you need to know?
- Be sure to include the use of remarketing in your privacy policies. You should be doing this already but, if you aren’t, get onto it!
- You can either get you web developer to implement this code or you can even add the code yourself. Just be sure to add it at the bottom of all pages before the closing </body> tag; and
- Don’t worry if you already have remarketing code installed, you can still add the new code. For more information on installation check out: https://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2476688
The Future…
Currently, Google are testing a new remarketing process whereby advertisers can create lists directly through Google Analytics by simply using the analytics code of their website. Granted, businesses will need to update their analytics code in order to enable this function but it may become native in the future.
The obvious advantage of having analytics based remarketing lists is the level of detail you will be able to go into when developing lists. For example, if you had a computer retail site, you could potentially target returning visitors of your site who browsed the ‘Macbook’ section for longer than 2 minutes each time using analytics remarketing.
The only issue during the trial thus far has been that some advertisers have been losing between 10%-50% of their analytics traffic due to the new line of remarketing code conflicting with ad blocking software. The amount of data loss appears to depend on the types of audiences the business attracts with the more ‘techy’ industries reporting higher losses in analytics traffic.
While we wait for this new feature to roll out however, we’re happy to keep our analytics and remarketing codes separate while the kinks are being sorted out and are just glad that we have universal remarketing code for our client’s websites!
Let us know in the comments section below your feelings on the future of remarketing. We haven’t even touched on the whole IE 10 ‘do not track’ elephant in the room yet…
